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I take it a lamb is a baby sheep and the ewe in the story is its mother. It take it the ewe went in search of her baby lamb and found it dead [half-eaten].
rather, i think, as Dr bill said, the ewe had gone down to a back pasture (as many animals, she sought out a private place) and either while she was birthing, or very soon afterwards, they were attacked, and newborn lamb was eaten..
it might have interupted the birth, (did she pass the placenta? did the coyote eat that too with the lamb?) hard to tell, but the shock of the attack -while giving birth, or so soon following it could have been more than she could bear.
ewe's that have stillborn lamb 'act, appear' sad- it partly hormomal-- even human mothers 'feel better' right after birth if they nurse.. a ewe that doesn't have a lamb doesn't have a lamb to suckle--and unless one is found for the ewe to suckle, the ewe doesn't fare well. (they don't usually die)
(and they are easily fooled by taking the skin of the dead newborn lamb, and putting the skin over a lamb that is motherless (sometimes a ewe will reject a lamb, or sometimes a ewe will birth twins, and only 'recognize' one..and sometimes lamb die birthing, too.)
ewes are sensitive mothers..
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they are easily fooled by taking the skin of the dead newborn lamb, and putting the skin over a lamb that is motherless
Yes, I saw a demonstration of that on tv very recently.
You certainly know more about ewes than I do [he confessed, sheepishly].
[I was going to recognize your erewedition, but that could have unintended ramifications. So I'll take it on the lamb, instead. Adewe.]
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I was going to recognize your erewedition
oh, you can, you can, i have earned my sheepskin!
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[I was going to recognize your erewedition, but that could have unintended ramifications. So I'll take it on the lamb, instead. Adewe.]
someone should horn in on this one before grapho gets all the good ones. or maybe I don't know mutton...
formerly known as etaoin...
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Carpal Tunnel
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Dear etaoin: let none of us have carnal knowledge of mutton.
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someone should horn in on this one before grapho gets all the good ones. or maybe I don't know mutton...
well, shofar, so good--what else have you got, eta.
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"Shock" is a medical term for vascular collapse, which is so complicated I had a hundred page book just on the one topic.
The trouble is, it's not a well-defined phenomenon.
In the ICU it refers to something like "drop in blood pressure accompanied by impaired flow of blood to the peripheral and even the vital organs with resulting multi-system failure; death ensues unless the process can be interrupted and reversed," which is more a description than an explanation.
This means we can't say much about exactly what caused it in any given case (if indeed there is "a" cause), or precisely where the lesion is. We do recognize it when we see it, and we know a bunch of things to try, and then we see if the patient responds or not.
I don't imagine it's too different in veterinary medicine.
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Dear wofahulicodoc: the thing that baffled me was that the ewe lived five days after the event, and seemed to die more from dehydration that anything else.
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let none of us have carnal knowledge of mutton
It's better to get nuthin than mutton, wwh.
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I think I've written about this phenomenon on this board before, but since we're discussing the ewe in shock and dying perhaps of the broken heart that grapho suggested, I'll mention the phenomenon again:
It has been observed that when a sheep is depressed--loses a lamb, is injured, and so on--the sheep friend to which the ewe passes most time will weep with it. Yes, sheep shed tears. They are unusually sensitive animals.
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