Come on Wal!
Wal!
Come on!
We are at Volcanic Produce, which is just outside of Warrnambool.
And this is what we know is a little baby Dorper sheep, who was born really, really
super tiny.
Here we are with Wally, hey Wally!
And just to give you a bit of perspective, all right.
Here is Wally's brother!
Guess who did the best in the womb?
They're twins, yes!
Wally, was not much bigger than a can of Coke.
He was around just a bit over 900 grams when he was born.
We put him in a nappy.
And this was it!
As you can see, it isn't overly big.
He fit into my pocket of my jacket.
So I would carry him around in my pocket as I was going around doing stuff, just because
he wanted to be next to somebody you know, otherwise he'd start crying.
We can't find anything on the Internet of a lamb that's smaller in size that's survived
for more than a month.
Come on!
We were in the middle of lambing.
I saw that there was ewe who had just given birth, there was this thing on the ground,
I didn't even recognize it as a lamb.
He said, "Oh, you got to come.
You got to come to the field."
So I went out there and I just saw this little white thing on the ground, all by itself,
shivering head down.
He was minutes from death, he was down and out.
We could see the mum over in the distance with the other one.
We tried to put them back together.
But she wasn't having a bar of it.
We rang a couple of farmers who I knew.
And they said "Nah, never seen one or heard of a lamb that little before.
It's got no chance."
We were told the best thing to do was to end its life quickly.
Put it out of its misery.
I just could not see this lamb surviving.
So I'm a midwife.
And I work at the local hospital and well, I guess I do deal with premmie babies and
little newborns.
It was my wife who said, "No way!
We're doing this!".
We knew we had to get some colostrum into him.
So we caught the mum.
Ben held her and I was able to express the colostrum, which is what we do for mums sometimes
with human babies.
And we syringed it into his mouth, which is what we do with the babies.
You pop you little finger in and he was sucking and we just syringed it in, bit by bit.
He's getting into it.
Go buddy!
Yep, so is that twelve?
Look at him!
He's standing so well.
Yeah
He required 24 hour care at that stage to try and get him to pull through initially.
Training him for the olympics!
Yeah.
Go Wally, Go!
Look at that.
Three days ago, this lamb was practically dead.
Now, he is full of life, full of beans, able to run.
He's amazing!
Go Wally go!
Ready?
Wally, jump!
Yes!
Good job Wally, good job.
Ready?
Wally jump!
Yay.
There we go, one leg through.
And the other one.
I know, we're gonna go somewhere, aren't we?
We're gonna go for a walk!
Wally, is extremely loyal.
When you're walking around, he just follows you like a shadow.
He is; "where are we going where we going?"
He baas a lot.
So, you know, we'll always know when he's hungry or when it's gotten lost in our house.
Yeah.
Here we go.
Oh, he knows what's going on.
He knows exactly what's going on.
Put it in the microwave.
Yes Wally, it's coming!
And Wally will run over to his spot where he gets fed.
This has been the perfect thing for us in lockdown.
It's been the best distraction for the kids.
Lock down, you know, I know for a lot of people, you know, it leaves them in their houses with
not a lot to do.
We had a lamb to look after.
And it was great.
I don't really like online school.
I just find it really hard.
I felt really calming when he was just in my arms.
And I could like pat him and just like the pleasure of like getting to look after a lamb
this size.
And like he's honestly made me really happy.
You know, he's so happy and jumpy and very cute as well.
Ideally, we would love to be able to put him back out with the rest of the flock.
But... so far, he doesn't really like being out there with the rest of them.
So we'll see.
I don't want him to grow up.
I want him to stay a little lamb forever.