(soft country music) - [Narrator] It was spring lambing season on George Wherry's sheep farm in Scenery Hill, Pennsylvania.
Photographer Dave Forstate and I were there to film a sheep shearing class for a documentary about jobs in farming.
And I asked George, "What's the chance we can see a lamb being born?"
Dave and I were about to witness nature at its most dramatic.
(soft guitar music) In the pasture, we saw a yearling ewe obviously in distress.
- I moved a little closer and it was showing the start of the birthing process.
- [Narrator] The mother sheep was struggling to deliver the lamb and she was agitated.
- She just jumped up and ran and that was when the race was on.
- [Narrator] Why was she running?
- Well, she was running mainly because she was a young ewe.
She was strong, able-bodied and something was going wrong behind her.
The lamb was stuck-- just plain, plain words.
- [Narrator] What followed was a mad dash through the meadow.
George chased on wheels while his daughter and another worker raced to corner and catch the mother sheep to help deliver the lamb.
- His legs were kind of caught back and so I was trying to pull 'em forward because they need to be straight, stretched out, so that the head will follow and the head was kind of in the way, and so I was trying to get ahold of the feet and pull 'em out then the baby would slide right out.
There it is, there it is, there it is, there it is.
- Go, go, go.
Alright, get him out.
- From a lay person's perspective, it was so dramatic.
Did it feel that way to you?
- Yes, there is an urgency because the longer the baby's there then you worry about the umbilical cord coming disconnected.
There you go.
That's a good one.
- [George] (indistinct) him downhill.
- We're not hurting him or anything.
We're just trying to get him to take a breath.
- [Narrator] The lamb did finally breathe and the rest of us breathed a sigh of relief.
Now to get the mother to bond with her baby.
- It took mom just a little bit to come around to accepting him because she had gone through a lot of pain and stress.
When she made the first move to smell it, to lick it then the bond was forming.
Come on, girl.
- [Narrator] The Wherry farm has hundreds of ewes ready to give birth and most do so without any help from people.
Tell us something about sheep that we don't know.
- What a lot of people don't know is that they have an amazing personality.
You can friend different ones and they will remember you.
We have one over here that's blind.
Come here, Helen.
Come on, Helen.
Come get some feed.
And she still remembers when I yell for her to come.
She likes to be itched on her back and so you start itching her on her back and her tongue starts wagging and her tail and everything.
I think that they're very gentle and easygoing.
- [Narrator] That day in the pasture we witnessed something extraordinary and beautiful and yes, dramatic.
- Had you not captured her and helped, what would've happened to either one of them?
- Most probable probability would've been the lamb would've died.
They were happily united.
(soft guitar music)
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