Health & Fitness
Patch Blog: Meet the Lambs of Cityfarm
The birth of new lambs brings joy, bliss and also a reminder of the complexities of life.
Few images represent innocence quite like that of a newborn lamb learning to walk and nurse from its mother on a spring day. This image is branded in many of our minds, we may have even seen it in a children's book or a movie, yet few of us city folk have witnessed it in the flesh. Last week, I was fortunate enough to see this symbol of spring and innocence first hand.
Last Saturday morning, my daughter and I opened the door to the sheep house to find a baby lamb. He was attempting to stand on wobbly legs, still bloodied from the ordeal of being born. His mother, who had not yet delivered the afterbirth, was licking the blood off of his face. I helped his little mouth find his mother’s udders and made sure that he was getting some of the precious colostrum. Then we left so that mother and offspring could bond for a bit.
Upon returning a few hours later, the little one was steady on his feet and his face was clean and presentable. He was already nursing vigorously on his own. Despite this impressive show of strength only hours into his life, his cuteness is what impressed my daughter most. She ran, scooping him up in her arms, letting out little screeches of joy. After a few minutes of this bliss, she turned to look at me with her brow furrowed. Still holding the lamb protectively in her arms, she accused, “You’re going to kill him aren’t you, Papa?!”
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While I had no plans to kill this adorable little lamb, now nor in the future, I do have to admit that her accusation was not too far off base--we do slaughter some of our animals for food on the Cityfarm. While we’ve not yet killed a lamb (or even a fellow mammal for that matter), we have slaughtered poultry. This is not a task that is easily executed, but one that is necessary when raising livestock for food.
The killing of animals for food is a complex issue that requires care and thought, and in our busy lives, is usually given neither. Eating meat is typically done casually in our land of plenty, but my daughter is quite right to link eating and killing, as when eating meat, one cannot occur without the other. In other words, to eat meat is to cause death unto a living thing, whether directly or not. It’s easy and convenient for us to forget this but on that Saturday morning, witnessing the miracle of birth together, my daughter made sure that I did not.
