Little Stinky has been having a particularly hard time lately. We only added her to the bottle rotation recently and while she has taken to being fed, she's still going to need a little TLC and monitoring.
Issues of the bowel variety have sadly resulted in her entire back-end being caked and crusted to the point that she was walking funny. We mentioned it to the farmers here and were instructed on how to best go about cleaning her. A tub of lukewarm water, gentle shampoo, rubber gloves, the blunt end of a butter knife, scissors to be used with extreme caution. When we finally caught her and first set her into the tub she rested her little head on my arm while I held her in. I could feel her tiny heart beating against my hand as she breathed heavily into my shirt sleeve. I talked to her softly and scratched behind her ears. She eventually even sat down in the tub so we could let her soak. The task of cleaning this unwieldy little creature seemed daunting, if not impossible. At one point, I gave up all sense of reservation and dove in, ungloved, to finagle and detangle every morsel and clump of caked on lamb shit from her soft brown wool. It took forever, she was terrified, it even started to rain midway through. It was probably one of the most disgusting things I have ever done (or been covered with) in my life. But seeing her wander back to her family a new little lamb made me almost want to cry. A few days later and I'm still not over it. But she is doing great.
...Yet another day on the farm that brought me more than I could have ever anticipated.