Animals and people

This is in response to Sis' post about animals and people who are recovering from illness or are differently abled (hey I have to be PC sometime).

We had about 50K visitors to the farm, often groups from schools, old folks homes, children with various learning needs etc as well as the good old general public. Lamb feeding was a real bun fight and what may be termed as organised chaos. Mix 80+ lambs, 20 bottles and upto 300 people equals a Baa headache. While there were many other types of animals in my care the lambs were the ones with the most reactions.

2 Lamb stories although I have many more.

A group of children with learning difficulties came in one day and it was pretty quiet so I could spend more time with the group than normal. It was a fairly small group and didn't book a guide, I got some lambs out for the kids to stroke and get close to. I held one of the lambs up to a boy in a wheelchair and asked him if he wanted to stroke her. He put out his little hand tenetively and touched her, became more bold and stroked her properly. I asked him what she felt like but his teacher started to say something to me as he said in a quiet voice ... 'She feels nice and soft'. The teacher and the rest of the group helpers looked up in shock and his teacher said, 'He hasn't spoken in over a year, thank you!'

I hadn't done anything at all!

Twin lambs were born one night, I found one of the lambs with a common problem of the hind feet were tucked under so she couldn't walk with them. She could however, move very fast with her front feet and once I'd managed to check her over I saw Mom was looking after her and she was going to be fine. The problem is caused by being in an akward position in the womb and corrects itself in a few days. To cut a long story short (and threats of violence, or people asking me to put her down) a family group with a girl in a wheel chair came and asked to stroke her. 10 minutes, lots of laughs later and a good demonstration of why she was still with Mom (she could move far faster than I could) I passed her over the fence to the girl. The girl cradled the lamb and asked if she would ever walk properly. Everything went silent and a hot reddness came to my face as I said yes she would in a couple of days. The girl then said 'Good, because I will walk properly soon if I practise hard like this little lamb.' I told her the lamb hadn't got a name as yet and would she like to call her something, 'Becky, thats my name and shes just like me'. I walked away with a lump in my throat.

Incidently, the lamb did walk after 5 days, Mom had stood by her when it was milk time on a slope so she could reach. Returning visitors asked what we had done with the lamb and I pointed her out each time with a big grin on my face.

I'll shut up now. Anyone else got any stories?

Baa