186 Western Live-stock Management 
arated from the remainder of the flock and shut up in 
one of the lambing pens. If she has been properly fed 
and cared for during the winter, little difficulty will 
present itself. She must be watched carefully to see that 
the lamb is presented properly and that she own her 
lamb after it is born. The latter difficulty presents itself 
very commonly when the ewe has little milk. With stub- 
born ewes stanchions often have to be used. These are 
made by driving stakes into the ground one on each side 
of the ewe’s neck. In such a case it is well to feed the 
lamb a little cow’s milk until its mother’s milk-flow is 
started. The ewe and her lamb should be penned up 
until the proper maternal relations have been well es- 
tablished. This system of penning the ewes about to 
lamb will prove valuable, especially when the ewes drop 
twins or triplets. In such a case if the ewe were left with 
the flock she very likely would disown one of them, be- 
cause the first lamb born usually is the strongest and would 
wander off looking for its first meal while its mother was 
giving birth to the other lamb, or lambs. It would thus 
be surrounded by other ewes and its mother would lose 
its scent and consequently disown it. When a lamb dies 
the ewe may be induced to become a stepmother to some 
orphan. The method of making the ewe own a strange 
lamb has been discussed in the chapter on lambing of 
range ewes. 
Castration and docking. 
All male lambs not intended for breeding purposes 
must be castrated. As a rule, at about the age of three 
months the ram lambs begin to know that they are males, 
become restless and not only fail to gain but actually lose 
the flesh put on in an early period. Asa result, ram lambs 
