Spring Lambing: What Concerns Ordos’ Herders?

The timing and duration of lambing are linked to the breeding of the herds in autumn. Skilled herders always look one step further; the systematic care, feeding, and managed breeding of rams in autumn ensures the survival of the lambs and a smooth lambing process.

The herds of Mongolian herders are known as the ‘Five Livestock’, consisting of cattle, sheep, goats, camels, and horses. Among these, sheep and goats are categorised as small livestock (*bog mal*), while cattle, camels, and horses are known as large livestock (*bota mal*).

Herders in Ordos also refer to *bog mal* as ‘*gar mal*’, meaning ‘livestock grazed within arm’s reach’. This is because grazing small livestock requires constant attention and care, and their pastures are not as remote as those used for cattle, horses, and camels.

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Goats, on the other hand, are active and curious, easily distracted, and prone to wandering far from the grazing area as they follow the wind while foraging. Yet, their calls are loud enough to be heard in times of danger. By grazing them together, the two species complement one another.

Jirimutu’s mother, now in her eighties, mainly herded goats in her youth. Since the installation of wire fences, goats have frequently slipped underneath the wire and wandered into neighbouring pastures, leading to frequent disputes and arguments between neighbours. Due to this inherent nature of goats, they have been gradually abandoned by local herders.

In 1953, the central government and the Inner Mongolia Party Committee decided to optimise and improve local livestock breeds to enhance the quality and yield of animal products. The improvement of sheep breeds in S Banner began in 1957; by 1971, the introduced Xinjiang fine-wool rams had been promoted from a few pilot communes (now known as sumus and towns) across the entire banner.

The offspring of local S Banner ewes and Xinjiang fine-wool rams were named the “Ordos Fine-wool Sheep”. These sheep possessed finer wool than the indigenous breeds, and their purchase price once reached as high as approximately 40 yuan per jin.

Before the sheep breed improvement in S Banner, herders’ small livestock consisted of local sheep and goats. At that time, spring birthing primarily concerned the goats, whereas the sheep had already finished lambing before spring arrived. The indigenous sheep of S Banner are a fat-tailed Mongolian breed; they are sturdy, cold-resistant, produce large lambs, and have high survival rates. Consequently, even with insufficient pastoral infrastructure, winter lambing had no impact on the survival rate of the young livestock.

During the lambing season, the herders of Gacha A find their days and nights turned upside down. Visit any household now, and the host who comes to greet you will almost certainly be bleary-eyed and dishevelled, having perhaps just endured a night without a wink of sleep.

Sleep during the day is equally scarce. They must maintain a constant vigil over ewes on the verge of giving birth, while simultaneously ensuring that newborns have found their feet, are suckling independently, and are moved to warmer shelter if necessary.

Ewes nearing birth lie on the floor of the pens, panting rhythmically with the onset of contractions. Under normal circumstances, the ewes give birth unaided. As soon as a lamb is born, the herdsman reaches into its mouth to clear away the brownish-yellow mucus; only after hearing a crisp, sharp bleat is the lamb’s health confirmed.

When the weather is exceptionally cold, the herdsmen wrap the lamb’s back and belly in strips of worn cotton clothing. If the ewe shows signs of a difficult birth, the children of the house are called in to assist.

They use their hands to check the position and condition of the lamb, correcting the presentation or pulling the lamb out directly under the guidance of an adult. A sheep’s birth canal is small and narrow; once an adult hand is inside, there is little room to manoeuvre. Yet nowadays, during the lambing season, the children are in school—most of them boarding—meaning they can no longer take part in these family chores.

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Performing Caesarean sections on livestock during the lambing season is the most demanding part of a vet’s workload.

Qenamu, a veteran vet from L Sumu in S Banner, says that in recent years, he and several other vets have had to perform an average of 40 to 50 C-sections a day during the spring lambing season, mostly on ewes. Station Master De, along with vets Qinggele and Dayang, often make house calls until two or three in the morning. After I left W Sumu, I heard that Dayang had fallen asleep at the wheel during one of these visits, and his car had plunged into a roadside ditch.

One day in early March, Dayang received an urgent call from Siriji. One of Siriji’s ewes had been experiencing contractions since the previous day, but 24 hours later, she had failed to give birth and was now exhausted and refusing food.

Upon arriving at Siriji’s home, Dayang asked Siriji’s wife, Udabala, to prepare a basin of warm water, towels, and some washing-up liquid. Together with Siriji, he carried the sick sheep from the pen to a bricked area in front of the house, laying her flat on a clean cardboard box.

Dayang began by shaving the wool from the lower abdomen, scrubbing the belly with warm water mixed with washing-up liquid, and drying it with a towel. He then used a scalpel to make a crescent-shaped incision along the approximate position of the uterus. As the abdomen opened, Dayang reached in with a blue rubber-gloved hand to investigate; he found that a torsion of the uterus had caused the difficult birth. Because of the delay, the lamb inside had stopped breathing.

Dayang pulled the carcass of the lamb from the opened uterus. The body was encased in a transparent membrane stained pink with blood. Siriji placed the carcass and the placenta into a prepared white flour bag, intending to bury them beneath the saxaul shrubs a short while later.

As the dead lamb was removed from the uterus, the uterine wall was nicked once more. After using gauze to soak up the blood pooling in the abdomen, Dayang slowly released the hemostatic forceps from the incision and began suturing. A C-section requires three separate layers of stitching: the uterine wall, the peritoneum, and the skin. Fortunately, the suturing proceeded without incident, and the ewe’s struggling subsided.

Ordos fine-wool sheep are remarkably docile; even during such a complex operation, no sedatives are required. With two people simply holding down the head and hind legs, the sheep only let out a few low, short bleats when the pain becomes acute.

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Despite having just “lost” a lamb, a look of slight relief appeared on the faces of Siriji and Udabala. Dayang retrieved a bottle of nutrient solution from the car and started an infusion for the ewe lying on the ground to help her recover her strength.

After nearly two hours of frantic activity, we were invited inside for tea. Just as I was pouring a second bowl, I heard Udabala calling out to Dayang from outside. Siriji had knelt down, resting the ewe’s head on his knee, and pulled back her eyelid—the whites of her eyes were clear, without a single bloodshot vein. Before the nutrient solution had even finished dripping, the ewe’s breathing grew shallower and shallower, until all signs of life vanished.

Siriji regretted not having called Dayang sooner. As we prepared to leave, Siriji and Udabala placed two hundred yuan on the coffee table for Dayang. “I can’t take this; the ewe didn’t survive,” Dayang replied. Hearing this, Siriji stopped insisting and saw us to the door.

Dayang felt a sense of guilt for failing to save the animal. While Siriji and Udabala showed no sign of blame, in many such cases, herders express immediate doubt, and sometimes even anger. Some attribute the death of a ewe to vaccinations or the perceived incompetence of the veterinarian.

Veterinarians, however, maintain that birthing complications are unrelated to vaccinations and are instead caused by more complex factors. Almost every case of difficult birth in ewes is attributed to “uterine torsion”.

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Currently, livestock breeds among herders in S Banner are diverse. To keep pace with market-driven sales rules and maximise the number of lambs sent to market, herders have introduced breeds better suited to stall-feeding, capable of rapid weight gain, twice-yearly pregnancies, and higher twinning rates—such as Suffolk, Dorper, Cold-resistant sheep, and various ‘F2 hybrids’.

When herders in A GaCha introduce new breeds, they typically purchase rams from outside the banner or city, while the pregnant ewes remain Ordos fine-wool sheep. These rams are tall with large frames, creating a stark size difference compared to the Ordos fine-wool ewes, which makes them prone to dystocia due to oversized foetuses.

S Banner has suffered from severe drought for three consecutive years. Following dry summers and autumns, pasture vegetation becomes even sparser during winter and spring. This drought has made winter and spring incredibly difficult for herders, who either supplement natural forage with fodder crops or purchase large quantities of hay, feed, and fodder to maintain their livestock. In A GaCha, nearly every household spends between 50% and 80% of their annual income on grass and feed. During the lambing season, herders use synthetic feed to boost the ewes’ Taimir nutrition and ensure the health of the lambs.

Nowadays, all herders in S Banner possess spacious and warm livestock shelters. Even the most rudimentary shelters feature colour-steel roofs and walls made of concrete and brick. The sheep pens are generally connected to the fodder sheds.

Whenever a herder enters the pen with a plastic bucket full of feed, the ewes scramble and fight to reach the troughs. Crowding shoulder to shoulder and straining to reach the feed, they inevitably trample and jostle one another. Veterinarians believe that the crowding and rushing during feeding are likely significant causes of ‘uterine torsion’.

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Herders in A GaCha now engage in at least one side business. Even during the period of livestock collectivisation in the last century, a portion of their important income derived from non-pastoral activities, such as selling hunted game.

In A GaCha, aside from a small number of herders who have amassed great wealth through proximity to surrounding coal mines, most supplement their income through seasonal labour, the sale of livestock products, or by operating coal transport trucks.

Regardless, the bulk sale of that year’s spring lambs in late summer and early autumn remains the primary source of household income. Consequently, the productivity of the ewes in spring and the healthy growth of the lambs directly impact the extent of autumn earnings. Furthermore, the annual trade price of livestock is subject to fluctuations in the meat market.

Had Siriji called the veterinarian the moment the dystocia occurred on the first day, perhaps both the lamb and the ewe could have survived. Dayang expressed frustration over this.

Deciding when to call a veterinarian is a delicate calculation for herders. On one hand, they hope to alleviate the condition through traditional remedies, therapeutic techniques, or simply the animal’s own resilience; on the other, they wait for the right moment to seek ‘paid’ intervention.

But if the livestock appears beyond help, the herder may simply give up. As a result, by the time veterinarians are called, they often arrive a step too late.

About the Author

Urijhan

From Tongliao, Inner Mongolia, PhD in Anthropology.

 

 

 

 

Unless otherwise stated, all photographs are by the author

Layout slightly altered from the original

Original Editor: Gu Yuling/Zai Chang