Life According to Pinto Bean

I have often read accounts of how the sheer will to live has resulted in people and animals surviving extreme and appalling conditions and the stubborn refusal to die was cited as a primary reason why survival was the only outcome. Conversely, although less documented because it doesn’t make a heart-warming story, when there is no will to live, death follows pretty quickly.
In lambing, I have now seen both. We knew that we would be subject toxoplasmosis which results in abortion or deformities. The only laboratory in the UK failed to successfully make the vaccine that we needed so we braced ourselves.
A pattern swiftly emerged mainly among the ewes expecting twins. The first lamb was born weak and very small. The second followed shortly afterwards, either dead or unviable, usually not lasting the first 8 hours. These lambs had that look in their eyes which said I don’t want to live. No amount of warm colostrum tubed into their little tummies, infrared lamps to keep their body temperatures up, antibiotic injections to fight infection or indeed attentive and caring mothers pawing at them to encourage them to stand up and suckle could reverse the path these creatures where on. And there were seven of them, hell bent on leaving this life. I reconciled myself that I had done what I could and my intervention was not going change things. The exception was little Pinto Bean as she has been named.
She was so tiny at birth she would not have been able to reach up to suckle even if she had been born with the strength to do so. And she just reminded me of a little bean. Her first 12 hours where horrible and any other personality would have decided that life was literally not worth living. But not Pinto – she was hell bent on surviving, she defied all odds. She was a definitely a toxo baby, her twin sister didn’t survive the night. Then Pinto’s mother decided to reject her and not only to turn her back but to trample on her and head butt her across the pen. Each time this happened, little Pinto would meekly struggle to her feet as best she could, bleating piteously before apologetically trying to approach her mother only to be sent flying across the pen. I allowed this to happen only twice before I whisked her away, wrapped her in a towel and settled down to watch TV with her in my lap. If she going to die, I thought let her at least know the comfort of a surrogate mother for a couple of hours, holding and accepting her. After about half an hour, I felt her stop shivering and she tentatively began sucking my finger. The antibiotics were clearly working and I managed to get 100ml of warm milk into her. Although she remained desperate for a mother - she tried to suckle the Labrador and the Collie and I even caught her eyeing the cats and hens, Pinto was on the mend. Her second trauma was when I tried to get another ewe to adopt her. We had a healthy single born and after donning gloves, I collected the birth fluid and rubbed all over Pinto before offering her to the new mum. The ewe wasn’t having any of this and Pinto got head butted across a pen again. Again I scooped her out and this time used a towel not to keep her warm but to wash off all the slime before taking back into the house to watch some more TV.

Pinto is now a month old. She has just clocked in at 10kgs and is an authority on international developments as reported by the BBC.
I am definitely her mother and I still give her a bottle twice a day but she has been integrated into the flock since I really want her to know that she is a sheep. At meal times I take her bottle into the field. As I call, she answers loudly and comes bouncing up to me before butting my knees in search of the teat. She then drains her bottle without pausing, her eyes closing in delight. Odd that I can differentiate her call from all the other lambs. The other night as I took my leave of her, I said “Bbbbyee Pinto”. Mom, you are spending too much time with the sheep, said Cameron.