WOODLAND HILLS : Ewe’s Lengthy Labor Ends in Happy Family

Cappy still looked pregnant after giving birth to a white female lamb on a recent Sunday evening, so her keeper, Carol Abt, knew that more lambs were coming. What Abt didn’t realize was that Cappy’s labor would drag on for four more days.

A hormone injection to stimulate Cappy’s milk flow after the first birth should have induced labor for the remaining lambs, but didn’t. By the third night, Abt, a Pierce College veterinary student, began to worry that any lambs left inside Cappy would be stillborn.

“I pushed on her belly,” Abt said. “I could feel something; I was hoping it was still alive.”

Nothing happened, so Abt went home. But when she returned the following morning, she discovered a second female lamb, this one black, beside the mother.

At first Abt thought someone had taken a lamb from another pen and placed it next to Cappy as a joke. Then it dawned on her that the newcomer was Cappy’s.

About two hours later, Abt said, the ewe started acting unusual.

“Cappy was doing a little dance, and then I saw these two little hooves come out,” she said. “I just couldn’t believe it.”

A third lamb, a white female, was born, said Abt. With that, the family was complete.

After the birth, Abt, who keeps 10 sheep at Pierce’s farm in the college’s agricultural program, supplemented the lambs’ diet with a special mixture that she added to Cappy’s milk and bottle-fed to the newborns, she said. But as the days went by, the lambs began to nurse from their mother.

“Now Mom’s taking over,” Abt said.