Tåtelam - Hvordan det hele begynte

The time had come that I wanted to investigate the opportunity of buying a bottle-fed lamb, or two. Lambs are bottle-fed when they for some reason can´t be with their mother. A ewe only has enough milk for two lambs. But sometimes they give birth to both triplets and quadruplets, and therefor need help taking care of some of the babies. It may also happen that a ewe will die, or doesn´t accept her baby, but luckily that does not happen too often. I called Eivind Odd, a farmer we know and asked if he had a couple of spare lambs. He sure did!

He had, in fact, several lambs that needed bottle-feeding, and he wondered if we could cooperate. We could take care of his lambs by keeping them on our farm until they were old enough to be weaned from the bottle. Then we could enjoy having the baby lambs, while helping him care for them. He would make all the necessary arrangements, and pay us for the work we put in. He said that he expected fifteen extra lambs this season, so good help would really come in handy.

Flere tåtelam enn ventet…

Five lambs? Yes, that should work. It wasn´t so many, really. Only three more than I had pictured. We then put our heads together and made a plan. When everything was worked out, Eivind Odd said: “Then you will get fifteen lambs to bottle-feed this year,” as to confirm our arrangement. FIFTEEN!?! Wow, I had thought he said five, not fifteen!

Fifteen bottle-fed baby lambs… I noticed that I had become very quiet. But then again, we had a good plan. And I was looking forward to cooperating. And didn´t I wish for more excitement in my everyday life? “Yes, that´s it,” I answered, and hoped I was able to hide my surprise. In my head I thought that this would be an adventure. And it was.