It s lambing time. It s a time of tragedy. When so many ewes are giving birth at the same time, shepherds must often make difficult and heart-wrenching decisions. Sometimes a lamb dies at birth and sometimes a ewe dies giving birth. Over there is a mother sheep who has lost her baby at birth and over there is a lamb that has lost its mother in the birthing process.
Sheep are very strange and difficult animals.
A ewe will not accept a lamb that is not her own. So we sometimes have a situation where there is a mother sheep full of milk that will not nourish her own baby and a motherless lamb who is hungry and has no milk to drink. Soon the orphaned lamb will starve to death. Then he will wash the living lamb with the blood of the one which has died. The dead lamb gives life to the lamb who is motherless.