The Art of Raising Orphaned Lambs

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Raising your orphaned lamb 101


If you find an orphaned lamb whose mother has died, you will need to feed it and care for it or it will most likely die, depending on its age. You will have to decide between the responsibility of caring for the lamb, or the responsibility of letting it die. The choice is yours. While it is time consuming and incurs costs to keep an orphan lamb alive, it is well worth the time, money and effort. Lambs are great fun and very affectionate, and make excellent pets. I have successfully raised 31 orphaned lambs over the last 10 years, and unfortunately, have been unsuccessful with three little lambs. That's a 90% success rate so that should give you hope!
If the mother is not dead but instead has rejected the lamb you could try re-mothering the lamb, as long as the mother is well and capable of feeding her lamb. I have never done this, but I will add this information from the Western Australian Agriculture Department website for you if you want to try it:
Place the ewe and lamb in a small enclosure. One can be made from four 1.25 metre mesh screen wired together in the corners. Cover the screens with old seed or fertiliser bags so the ewe cannot see out. This will reduce distractions. Stabilise the enclosure by driving star pickets into the ground and tying the mesh to these. Apparently, the ewe will usually mother the lamb in 24- 48 hours.


If you choose to raise the lamb yourself, as we did with all of our orphans, here is my advice:


What to do first:

Warm him up and keep him warm


First you will need to warm the lamb if he has been out in cold weather or feels cold to touch. Place him in a box out of drafts under a heat lamp, if you have one. If not rug him up and use heated (but not hot!) wheat packs that are not placed directly on his body. Wrap them in towels first. Once he is warm and looking active, he can be given his first feed. Keep drafts away from the lamb- here I have used bags of oats.

A shed is a good place to keep your warmed up lamb, but make sure he is confined and cannot wander too far from the heat lamp. He does need room to move away from the lamp if he gets too warm, but not so much room he gets lost and gets cold again. Keeping him warm is important, so check him regularly. Make sure he is not cold, and also not hot. Body temperature is what you are aiming for. Although these lambs below were in poor condition and unwell when I was given them, two of the three survived and are now very healthy adult sheep.

You can keep him rugged up in a box, with a heat pack or hot wheat pack wrapped in a towel underneath him if you do not have a heat lamp. Keep checking that he is not too hot and make sure the heat pack or bottle is not directly in contact with his body or he will burn.

Body warmth is good enough for your lamb once he has warmed up. He will feel safe if he has you close by. He will become dependant on you and follow you everywhere, calling when you go out of sight. Despite this, he will need to be placed somewhere away at night time so you can sleep. He can be placed in the laundry or bathroom with a box full of rags and some towels on the floor to keep him warmer. Make sure he is warm and out of draughts. He can also be placed in a warm draught free shed with hay or straw on the floor. He needs to be kept warm at night for the first few week of his life. 

It is good medicine for both you and the lamb to be close together.

If you have a trustworthy gentle dog, she can be useful as a substitute mother and provide warmth for the lambs.

Once he is a week or so old and full of vigour (running around and eating well) he can be kept outside under a shelter, instead of in a shed or in the house, as long as the outside temperature is above freezing and it is not rainy and windy. He does not have his mother to lay against for warmth, so needs to be kept out of the cold. Make sure he has plenty of hay or straw to nestle into to sleep.

Feeding Your Lamb

First you need some Colostrum: If his mother died  shortly after his birth, he will need some colostrum. If you cannot get any colostrum start him on sheep's milk replacement.
Do try and get some colostrum from the mother or another ewe who has a newborn lamb less than 48 hours old. Colostrum is produced only for the first 48 hours after birth. It contains many antibodies to boost immunity, growth factors to aid rumen activation, a laxative to help the lamb pass his first stool and is lower in fat and higher in protein than normal sheep's milk. If your lamb does not receive any colostrum his chances of survival do drop, but he can certainly still survive. Ideally your lamb will get 1/10 his body weight in real colostrum in the first 24 hours of life.
If you cannot get any real colostrum, you can make a colostrum substitute from:
680ml cow's milk
1 x beaten egg
1x teaspoon cod liver oil
1 x teaspoon glucose
-feed 50mls every three hours for the first 24 hours. If your lamb is small and weak feed smaller quantities (20-50 ml) more frequently (every 4 hours). This is not ideal and does not contain the antibodies that are passed to the lamb through the colostrum, but if you don't have colostrum it can give the lamb an energy boost and it will help him pass his first stool.

Real colostrum can be frozen, thawed and used to feed orphaned lambs. Thaw at room temperature and heat slowly in a bowl of hot water to 37 degrees celsius. No more, as the antibodies that provide protection against disease may be destroyed. Do not heat in a microwave as this can also destroy the antibodies. Use a thermometer, don't guess! If you have the time at the beginning of your lambing season it may be a good idea to milk a bit of colostrum from the first ewes who give birth and freeze it, just in case, for later. You can also use cow's colostrum for lambs , and it too can be frozen in 100ml containers.  Having a few feeds of colostrum will increase your lamb's chance of survival.

Now he needs a sheep's milk replacement:  After he has had a day of colostrum, your lamb will need to go onto a normal sheep's milk substitute. If you find an orphaned lamb and do not have any sheep milk replacement, you can feed the lamb full cream powdered milk until you can buy some. The ratios are 250 grams added to 1 litre of boiled and cooled water. You can feed warmed pasteurised full cream cow's milk if you have nothing else. We have successfully raised several lambs on cow's milk, but it is expensive. Switch to sheep milk replacement as soon as possible and follow the manufacturer's instructions on how to prepare it. Buy the best brand you can afford and use the same brand until the lamb is weaned. This will reduce the risk of abdominal upsets and scours.

How much to feed your lamb:
For the first 24 hours, feed colostrum only if possible. Young lambs need small feeds, little and often. It is important not to over feed your lamb. For the first day feed 80 mls per feed only. Feed every 2 hours. Follow the manufacturer's instructions on your sheep's milk replacement formula, but if you are feeding cow's milk follow the guidelines below.

 1 – 2 days 80 - 120 ml 6 times per day- every 4 hours, even overnight
 3 – 7 days up to 120 – 150 ml 6 times per day -every 4 hours, even overnight
 1 – 3 weeks 180 – 250 ml 5 times per day- every 4 hours, no night time feed
 4 – 6 weeks 500 ml 4 times per day
 6 + weeks 500 ml 3 times per day. 

 Lambs can have access to grass from as soon as they are born but their rumen does not start working until they are around 2 weeks old. From 2 weeks old onwards, they need to have access to grass to encourage their rumen to activate. Early rumen activation is healthier for your lamb. A healthy rumen will ensure your lamb grows into a healthy sheep. Your lamb should be eating grass as soon as possible and allowed to graze for most of the day from a month old onwards.

Be Clean and be Careful: When you have a new born or a sick lamb, clean and sterilise all your lamb bottles etc as you would a baby's bottles. Dirty bottles and sour milk breed bacteria and make lambs sick, or cause scours. You can stop sterilising bottles after the lamb is eating grass- it would be pointless to continue sterilising bottles when your lamb is eating dirt off of the ground! But continue to wash the bottles and teats thoroughly, removing all milk residue after each use. Dispose of any formula that is more than twenty four hours old. When you heat a bottle in the microwave shake it thoroughly and test it on your wrist, as you would a baby's bottle. Microwave heating can cause 'hot spot' inside the bottle that can scald your lamb's mouth. Shake thoroughly!

Hold the lamb securely on your lap. Raise his head and push the teat into his mouth. Keep his head elevated and rub his chin and neck gently. He should start to drink. You can give the bottle a little squeeze if he does not suck- but not too hard- only squeeze out enough milk so he can get a taste. Once he gets a taste he should start to drink, unless he is too weak or sick. If he does not take any milk after a few attempts, seek veterinary advice.

Bottles get dirty and need to be thoroughly cleaned after each use. Note the black "lamb teat"- this is the best teat to use as it is specifically designed for lambs, and can be bought at any farm supply shop, many pet shops or possibly even the vets. You can use a human baby teat if you have nothing else available. Make the hole in the human baby teat larger to help the lamb suck, but not so large it drowns him. The milk should drip out freely but not pour out or run out when you turn the bottle upside down.

Over feeding:  The most important thing I learned was: It is important not to over feed your lambs- it can kill them quickly! Feed each lamb the recommended amount of milk replacement for its age and feed the lamb at the regular intervals required. When nursed by their mother, lambs will take small drinks up to forty times in twenty four hours. They are not meant to have large feeds twice a day. Please do not feed your lamb large amounts twice a day because it is easier for you. You will increase the chances of your lamb getting sick and dying. If you are going to raise an orphaned lamb, do it well and do it properly with all the care and effort that is required and you will be rewarded for your efforts with happy, healthy lambs.
I do not recommend feeding your lamb with a lamb bar, although every other site and book will advise you to do so. I found that it was impossible to monitor how much each lamb was drinking, and some lambs are gluttons and some hardly drink at all. You need to know exactly how much each lamb is taking. This prevents overeating disorder and also slow development because of low intake. We had a lamb die of overeating disorder after he gouged himself at a lamb bar a friend had loaned to us- it is a terrible way for a lamb to die. It is not hard to feed lambs by hand with a bottle, and the lamb only needs feeding for at least 6 weeks before he will be weaned.

Overeating disorder, or Enterotoxaemia is a very serious effect of feeding large amounts of food to your lamb- more than his rumen and digestive system can process. The rumen is unable to process the amount of food properly and it is passed into the intestines partially digested. This partially digested food may contain starches and proteins that a particular bowel bacteria called Clostridium Perfringens, can use to proliferate. Clostridium Perfringens is present in your lambs' and sheeps' bowels in small numbers where it does little harm. But if it is given the right conditions to reproduce and proliferate, it causes severe gastric disturbance, blood poisoning, and death in young ruminants. Clostridium perfringens produce a toxin that is responsible for severe intestinal damage. Some young animals may die before any signs are observed.  Some young animals may stop feeding, appearing listless and become much less active, possibly lying down and not rising. Diarrhoea is a common sign, and death usually occurs within days of onset. However death may also occur rapidly and dramatically within a few hours of onset of signs of acute diarrhoea, excruciating abdominal pain, rolling about in an effort to relieve the pain, kicking at stomach, convulsions, and strange posturing where the animal becomes rigid and arches or stretches its back and neck. The animal appears to be in severe distress and it is in severe distress. This is a terrible way to die.

Enterotoxaemia can be caused by overeating any food, including milk or formula. It occurs any time the rumen is unable to properly breakdown the starches in food and these starches pass unprocessed into the intestine. It is not only caused by feeding sudden large amounts of grain- Excessive amounts of any food stuff at all can cause enterotoxaemia. The good news is, animals can be vaccinated against enterotoxaemia. Usually the mother is vaccinated when she is in lamb and the protection from the vaccine is passed on to the offspring across the placenta. This is the best way to prevent this disease. However if the mother was not vaccinated or you are unsure if the mother was vaccinated, the young animal can be vaccinated at 2 weeks old and again a month later. Any earlier than two weeks can mean the vaccine is rendered ineffective


Read all about overeating disorder at this website: http://www.aces.edu/pubs/docs/U/UNP-0089/UNP-0089.pdf


Making a nappy for your lamb

If you are going to keep your lamb inside your house, he will need a nappy or he will urinate everywhere. A nappy can be made from an old pair of children's tight and a towel cut up into rags. Place the tights over the lamb's back legs and pull them up and over his back and stomach. Locate his tail and cut a hole in the stockings to allow his tail to be outside the stockings, so he can defaecate. Fold up one of the rags into quarters and place if under the ram lamb's pizzle or behind the ewe lamb's vagina. It is harder to keep a pad around the ewe lamb's vagina- you may need to use a strong tape to tape around the pad and onto the sides of the stockings. Don't tape directly to the lamb's body. If your lamb is producing normal faeces, these will look like small hard currants and be very easy to pick up without leaving any residue behind. However, if your lamb has scours to any degree and his faeces is soft or runny, you will not be able to keep him inside as he will make a mess! He will need to be relocated to the barn or shed, or the laundry.

Forget the cost, consider the lamb's best interests: Don't look at your lamb as income, how much he is going to be worth in the end, and base your decisions to feed him on that.  Don't skimp on the milk formula and buy cheap powdered cow's milk, water the formula down, or feed your lamb less than is recommended because you are trying to save money and the lamb is only going to be 'worth' about $120 anyway. Use the best quality lamb milk replacement you can afford. It is worth it to end up with healthy sheep! Each of my orphaned lambs cost me $37.50 to feed until they were weaned. I costed it out because you need to know what things do actually cost, as part of your accounting system. But even if it cost three times that much, it would still have been worth it. Not a great deal of money to save a life- the cost of a meal in a Bistro!

This photo is of Enoch "The Noo"- our first orphaned lamb. He is in several of the photos on this page. He is now a very healthy, very handsome Merino ram with a ultra fine wool of 16.5 microns. He has sired many  lambs for us over the years, although he is an old fellow now and has long since retired. The Noo did not get any colostrum, and yet he survived and thrived!

Other things you need to know:


B12 and vaccinations: If you have orphaned lambs make sure they get a B12  injection. It will improve their health no end. Vaccinate against diseases as soon as your lambs are old enough, usually at six weeks, but it can be as early as three weeks if required. Use a vaccination that has added B12 and kill two birds with one stone. Worm your lambs as soon as they are old enough. Use a worming drench that has added selenium to prevent your lamb developing nutritional multiple sclerosis, or white muscle disease. If you use any product with selenium, make sure you give the correct dose for the weight of your lamb- overdosing with selenium will kill your lamb. Your lamb needs selenium, but not too much! Keep on top of these preventative health measures and you will keep your lambs healthy!


Treat scours promptly:  Scours (watery diarrhoea) can kill little lambs! Scours are usually caused by using unclean utensils to feed your lamb, from feeding too large a feed, from changing your lamb's diet suddenly, or from making your sheep's milk replacement formula too rich (not getting the measurements right when mixing it up). Be clean, feed little and often and you should prevent scours. If your lamb gets scours separate him from the other lambs. Keep him warm and dry. Give him boiled and cooled water instead of milk for 24 hours. Give him Scourstop (or a similar product), according to the instructions on the packet. If he does not get better within 48 hours take him to the vet.


Natural therapy: Make sure your lamb gets plenty of sun, fresh air, grass to nibble at, but are that he is also kept warm and dry. Give him warm bedding to sleep on- rags or hay. Lambs will need extra heat in the way of a heat lamp or heat packs or be kept inside the warm house for about 2 weeks after birth if the weather is cold. They are only babies after all and need your protection from the elements! Sunshine provides your lamb with vitamin D. Encourage your lamb to start nibbling at grass early- He would follow his mother's example in nature. Green feed is needed from 2 weeks onwards to activate his rumen and to allow the lamb to absorb vitamin E from the green grass. A long standing vitamin E deficiency will cause your lamb to develop nutritional multiple sclerosis and he will be unable to stand. If your lamb is born during a time of dry pastures, try to get him some green grass, or grow some oat grass in a patch for him to nibble on. Keep your lamb's enclosure clean and free of his waste. Avoid keeping him in damp, musty and draughty places. No draughts, but he still needs to be somewhere that has adequate air circulation!


Lambs will die, despite your best efforts: Sometimes a lamb will just give up, stop eating and die. We had 2 such deaths- one in the first week and one at 3 months old. No matter what I did I couldn't save these lambs.  Just the same don't give up on a sick lamb. Seek advice from your vet- it is cheaper than you think to get treatment for your sick lamb. Just because farmers often don't seek vet's help for sick lambs, doesn't mean it can't be done.  Where we previously lived it was sometimes heard from farmers that " a sick lamb is a dead lamb".  A sick lamb is not a dead lamb unless you are unmotivated to try to save it. I saved several of these 'sick' lambs lives with good nursing care and a lot of love! However, do not be discouraged from trying again if you do lose a lamb. Some are not well enough to make it, some will get to you too late and you will make mistakes from time to time. But each time you do nurse an orphaned lamb you learn more and get better at it, and it is just one of the most rewarding things you can do.

A group of the 17 orphaned lambs I raised after they were dumped on the road and left for dead by sheep thieves who had stolen their mothers.

Walter "Wally One Eye" who I raised after he was attacked by a fox and lost his eye. He survived hand rearing and several operations to repair his face and remove his eye. You know you love sheep when you pay for their plastic surgery before you get any yourself! He is a happy, friendly and loving addition to our flock. You can read about Wally on my page : "Victorious Lamb" on this blog.

This is Walter after surgical debridement of his wound.

This is Walter's bandaged face

This is Walter after his eye has been removed and his wound healed.

Weaning your lamb:

When first born, lambs cannot digest anything but milk, but by the time they are three weeks old their rumens have developed sufficiently to allow them to be weaned if required- not recommended, as it is too early, but it can be done if you must wean him early. He cannot be weaned prior to this as his rumen will not have been fully activated-he would not have eaten enough grass and dirt to have his rumen colonised by the necessary bacteria the rumen needs to break down food and make it digestible. These bacteria come from outside the lamb- from eating grass and dirt, from his mother's teats and from getting licked in the face by his mother. If you try to wean the lamb before his rumen is working properly, he will not get the nutrition he needs and will most probably starve to death. 

Before you wean your lamb he needs to be eating solid food, drinking water on his own and he should weigh at least 20 kilograms, although he can weigh less if he is eating solids and you have a real need to wean him. Start him off on a starter feed at ten days old and allow him access to grass as well and fresh water, as well as his usual bottle regime. Once he is eating the starter feed, nibbling grass and drinking water from a trough he can be weaned, if you wish to do so. Feed the starter feed according to manufacturer's directions. Having him penned with other sheep will help him get the hang of the grass and water trough and can save you grief trying to teach him yourself.  The first lamb we raised did not get weaned until he was six months old, however, even I believe this was a little late. The rest of our lambs have been weaned at three months, but it is not uncommon for lambs to be weaned from six weeks old and onwards. Just make sure they are eating solid food easily and freely and drinking water from the trough before you wean. It is best to wean them in a familiar environment to reduce stress. They get used to their new situation surprisingly quickly.


Some literature recommends going cold turkey, but I just decreased the amount of bottles to two a day, then one a day. I did not give the lambs weaker formula. Never give your lambs weaker formula, as you are simply reducing the nutrition they receive and filling them up on water!  It is better to just stop giving them bottles and wean them cold turkey than give weak formula!

Once they are weaned, they make great pets just like dogs. Here is Enoch thinking he is a dog and sharing a dog bed with Holly. Make sure your dog is trustworthy before you let your lamb out to play!

Research, listen but be open minded:

Read all you can about raising orphaned lambs, listen to your neighbouring farmers, but don't take their words as Gospel. Farmers can be, and often are, a source of good advice. But farmers can also get it wrong, disagree with each other's ideas, may have different priorities to you, don't know everything about farming, and, like any one else, some are simply not very good at what they do! One farmer near us advised me to save myself a lot of trouble by feeding the lambs a couple of bottles twice a day.  He also said it was 'normal' for around half of orphaned lambs to die.....People please- Read widely and find literature and research from reputable places such as university sites, government agricultural site and veterinary sites and use these reliable sources to gain information. Don't simply take my advice either- do further research into sheep and lamb care and you will increase your chances of raising healthy happy lambs greatly.