In mid-February (about 10 days before we were due to begin lambing), I attended the Society for Range Management annual conference in Denver, Colorado. Coronavirus had been in the news since January (mostly focused on the outbreak in China initially, then moving on to Iran and Italy). In late January and early February, there were a handful of confirmed cases in the U.S. (including California), but the disease still seemed far-off - geographically and mentally. But on my last day at the conference (February 19), I awoke with a dry cough, which I attributed to the dry air of the hotel and the abrupt weather change outside (it started to snow). My cough persisted through the rest of the day (which included a crowded flight into Sacramento); when Emma and I finally got home around 8 p.m., I was exhausted. I also had a fever and the chills. I went to bed and stayed there for most of the next day. I have no idea whether I had COVID-19, but I sure felt lousy.
My fever ebbed and returned for the next several days as I checked in at the office and took care of the sheep. According to my calendar, lambing was due to begin no sooner than February 22 (145 days after the rams were turned in with the ewes the preceding September). Ewe 251 doesn't read the calendar, though; on February 21, my morning check of the sheep revealed that she'd delivered a set of twins! Lambing season had begun. And by Monday, February 24, I was feeling significantly better. My cough persisted for several more weeks, but my fever was gone.
On March 4, a Placer County resident who had been on a cruise where there had been confirmed infections passed away. Even with this news hitting closer to home, the possibility of significant disruption to my daily life seemed remote. On March 6, I was part of a committee who interviewed candidates for a job with the California Wool Growers Association (of which I'm president). Again, we talked about what was happening elsewhere, but coronavirus still seemed like a background issue. That was about to change.
By Friday, March 13, I had decided that the issues were significant enough to warrant a cancellation of 4-H activities in Placer and Nevada Counties through the end of March. We contacted our members, leaders, and other volunteers that morning. I agonized a bit over the decision and finally decided that I would rather be accused of overreaction than inaction. At that point, the public response to the outbreak began to accelerate.
On Monday, March 16, I was actually on a conference call talking about UC's response to coronavirus when we learned that six Bay Area counties had issued a shelter-at-home order. UC administrators told us to transition our staff to work-at-home status by midweek. And on March 19, the shelter-at-home order was extended to the entire state.
At some point, I realized, I would probably know someone with the virus (and, I suspected, I'd know someone who died). On March 25, Kaleiah Schiller, a UC Davis PhD student studying maternal behavior in our ewes, informed me that a professor in the Animal Science Department, had tested positive. And by March 30, our shelter-at-home order had been extended until May 1.
One of the common threads in the local and statewide shelter-at-home orders has been the recognition that food and fiber production are essential to the county, state, and nation. Indeed, taking care of lambing ewes seemed essential to me, and so I didn't curtail my daily trips to the lambing paddock. My partner Roger and I typically split up the work during lambing - I usually check the flock early in the morning, as well as most evenings; Roger checks midday and builds fence. We usually work together when moving sheep, but we always work at some distance - and so we've been able to maintain the social distancing recommended by medical experts. Similarly, Kaleiah's research protocols don't require working in close proximity to one another.
Our work during lambing has been largely the same as in every other year. We had to assist a small handful of ewes in delivering their lambs. We had several ewes for whom the concept of motherhood was totally overwhelming; they either went into the trailer until they figured it out, or their lambs came home to be bottle-raised. Even though we worried about drought (and remain worried today), the largely dry weather was a blessing for the lambs - I think we only used 4-5 LambMac raincoats.
Here are few statistics for future reference:
- Conception Rate: 89% (this was off this year because we used younger rams, I suspect)
- Lambs Born per Pregnant Ewe: 1.61
- Live Lambs per Pregnant Ewe: 1.51
- Death Loss (including 1 abortion): 6.7%
- Bottle Lambs: 5
- Total Live Lambs (as of 4/1/20): 111
- About 80 percent of the lambs were born in the first two weeks of lambing. We then had a lull (around March 6-10). The rest trickled in.
Lambing season is always both exhilarating and exhausting, and this year has been no different in that regard. I do feel like the stress induced by the pandemic has added to my exhaustion, but at the same time, I found that a daily reason to participate in the new life of our flock kept me grounded. Having a reason to be outside, and a purpose once I got there, brought stability to an otherwise chaotic time. And I found that sharing photos and videos of my work with the sheep seemed to be helpful to others.
I hope to never experience another lambing season (or any other time of year, really) as crazy as March 2020 has been. When I'm not working with the sheep, I find that I have difficulty focusing on any particular task for more than 15-20 minutes. Part of this is due to the overwhelming need that academia seems to have for dealing with administrative tasks in times of crisis. Part of it, I'm sure, is my own anxiety. When I'm working with the sheep, however, each job requires presence of mind and attention to detail. For me, these attributes to my shepherding work have been incredibly comforting.
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