I wrote about this in my mara post.
Maras will raise their babies communally.
However, females will allow only their offspring to nurse.
So you do get tense situations when the guard changes at the crèche.
***
This story reminds me of a documentary on sheep I saw a few years ago.
This Scottish shepherd had a ewe that had given birth to three lambs, but because these were hardy Highland sheep, he didn’t want to nurse a lamb and turn it into a pet.
One of his other ewes had given birth to the usual twins, but one of these twins died shortly after birth. The ewe had nurse the lamb and was bonded to it, but it just died.
Ewes will not nurse lambs that are not their own, so the extra lamb that the other ewe had could not be fostered without some innovation.
The shepherd skinned the dead lamb, and then he dressed the third lamb in its pelt.
The foster ewe thought the third lamb was her baby, and she allowed him to nurse.
The third lamb continued to wear the skin of the deceased for a day or two. By then the third lamb had drank enough of its new mother’s milk to smell right.
.
I saw that exact same thing on Last American Cowboy on Animal Planet. They called it grafting.
we had a Lincoln ewe in our mixed-breed flock who always threw nice lambs – generally twins – but was utterly incapable of nursing them.
she had excellent wool, was a good auntie for minding all the lambs and shouting if someone got out, was stuck, etc, so we bottle-reared her infants for a week or two at the house, then put them in with the flock;
they did fine, and it actually made them easier to handle –
shearing, hoof-trims, etc.
– terry
some sheep will in fact take on other sheep’s lambs. My old Cotswolds were great for that. Some of my Dorsets have “stolen” other ewe’s lambs. The method of using a dead lamb for grafting has the plus of ensuring that the ewe who has lost a lamb doesn’t end up with Mastitis. It tends to be better for a ewe who has lost a lamb for her to have one to take care of if it’s possible.
sometimes with ewes who won’t acknowledge their lambs, it’s possible to use a dog to pressure them (present a threat) –just enough to trigger a defense fight mode . By triggering the behavior, one often finds that after protecting a lamb, a ewe will take care of it — sometimes grafting can be done this way also. I’ve done it a few times over the years with my dogs.
If you have a barn, cross tying the ewe for a few days so she can’t escape the bummer lamb will usually result in her adopting them also.
Peggy Richter.
Grafting is a “common” method of trying to get a bummer lamb to nurse. But it’s not a sure fire method. I’ve seen sheep at Davis absolutely refuse to accept a grafted bummer lamb. Sheep don’t just rely on their sense of smell to identify their young – they also rely heavily on visual cues, which are often lost with grafting (sheep are great at id’ng different faces, as are most social species).
I read somewhere that sheep can recognize hundreds of individuals just from their facial features.
Sheep are probably as smart as horses are.
But horses don’t taste good with mint jelly.
At least in the English speaking countries….