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Having a newborn lamb or goat kid get chilled and hypothermic is pretty common, especially when you live in a colder climate like we do. We generally plan our breedings so that the ewes and does are giving birth in April or later, but even in April and May we get below freezing at night and the newborn babies are at risk of hypothermia.
This year things are a bit different on our farm, and we had a ewe due in the middle of this bitter cold snap. To be sure we didn’t lose the lambs, we were checking on the ewe every 1-2 hours, day and night. She snuck the babies out between one-hour checks, and when we arrived one of the twins was hypothermic. Thankfully, we arrived in time, recognized the symptoms, and treated him right away.