How Cold is Too Cold for a Baby Lamb?

In an exciting update, we’re here to announce the arrival of the first ever lamb born on the farm.

His appearance was something of a surprise, as we didn’t have an accurate due date for his mother. Our ram, (poetically named Sam-I-am), had been in with the ewes since they arrived on the farm last summer, but we didn’t know how long it would be before nature took its course. Not very long, as it turned out.

It is quite a double take moment when you go out in the morning and find a somewhat unexpected animal walking around. The first reaction was to wonder by what strange process Sam had shrunk to a tenth of his usual size. No, that’s Sam over there looking normal…Wait, what is that? Ohhh, it’s a newborn lamb!!

On closer inspection the new arrival was found to be male, and promptly named “JimBob.”

Now, we are firmly in the camp of not having time to “pamper” our animals.

But young JimBob not only made his appearance in mid-January, but did it a few days before the coldest cold snap (so far) of a very cold winter. There was no way we were letting him spend the night in our house. But with two sub-zero nights in the forecast, we decided to ask our sheep-farmer friends if we should do “something” for this seemingly delicate baby creature in our care. After all, artic winds were swirling around the farm and we only had a very rudimentary shelter available for him.

The answer? He doesn’t need anything.

Reader, what would you expect to find the next morning if you left a baby lamb out all night in extremely frigid temperatures. Would you think you would come across a pathetically small, shivering heap, clinging to survival by a thread?

Not a bit of it.

Our friends were right. Tough little JimBob was not fazed by his night on the tundra. We farmers wore several layers of clothing and hurried to complete our chores before beating a strategic retreat to the warmth of the house. We can report with one hundred percent honesty that our breath was literally forming icicles on our eyelashes before we finished. But JimBob, wearing only his own fluffy coat, skipped around and wiggled his tail as though it were already spring.

Great job, JimBob! We’re sure you’ll taste delicious one day, too.

Oh, and to answer the question in the title of this post, we cannot actually say how cold is too cold. But we can tell you that -7°F seems to be just fine.