186 
DOMESTIC ANIMALS. 
for miles with her nose close to the lamb, and may be led wherever the 
shepherd chooses. . 
The Substitute Lamb. — The bereaved and affectionate ewe is induced 
to follow the remains of her little one to the lambing pound, or to some 
other convenient place. A lamb that has lost, or been abandoned by 
its mother is then selected. The head, tail, and legs of the dead lamb 
are cut off; an incision is made along the belly, and the body turned 
out, and this skin is then drawn over the substitute lamb. The body 
of the dead lamb is opened, the liver taken out, and the head and legs 
of the living lamb, and what other parts the skin does not cover, are 
smeared with blood. In the darkness of the night, and after the skin 
has been warmed on it, so as to give something of the smell of her own 
progeny, the substitute is put to the bereaved ewe. In the majority of 
cases the fraud is altogether successful, and the impostor is at once 
received, and fondled, and suckled. This being effected, the shepherd 
hastens to remove the false clothing; the lamb is returned to her, and 
“ whether it is from joy at this apparent reanimation of her young one, 
or because a little doubt remains on her mind, which she would fain dis- 
pel, cannot be decided ; but for a number of days she shows more fond- 
ness by bleating over and caressing this one, than she did formerly over 
the one that was really her own.” 
If she does not take to it at first, she must be compelled to suckle it, 
and confined so that she shall not be able to kick or otherwise hurt it. 
In two or three days she will generally own it, and then they may be 
turned together into the field without any apprehension or trouble. 
Care, however, should be taken that the age of the substitute lamb 
and that of the true one should correspond as much as possible. If a 
lamb lately dropped is put to a ewe whose young one would have been 
a week or two old, the milk will be too strong, and a purging will be 
set up, which, probably, no medicine can arrest. On the other hand, if 
the substitute lamb is a week or two old, and the foster-mother had lost 
hers in the act of yeaning, her milk will be injurious on account of that 
purgative quality by which the intestines of the newly-dropped lamb 
are first excited to action. Sometimes' the foster-lamb, frightened or 
exhausted, will not readily take the teat, however disposed the ewe may 
be to adopt and feed it. Care should be taken to ascertain whether this 
is the case, and, if necessary, the lamb should be held while a little of 
the milk is pressed into its mouth from the udder. This will rarely 
need to be repeated, for instinct will teach it where to seek and how to 
obtain its proper nutriment. 
After-Care of the Lambs. — In the course of a little more than a week, 
the great majority of the ewes will have produced their young, and the 
lamber will have more leisure for those cases which particularly require 
his attention. The twin-field will particularly demand his care. Ho 
will seldom enter it on the morning without finding some degree of con- 
fusion. Some of the lambs will have strayed from or been abandoned 
by their mothers ; and these twin-mothers are sometimes not a little ca- 
pricious, and especially when, not having sufficient milk for the two, they 
are teased and worried by the incessant sucking of the twins. In such 
case they will, in the most determined and furious manner, repulse one 
