Angelo the Lamb Finds a Home

Angelo, a lamb who was rescued after being born in a transport truck headed for a New York City slaughterhouse, has found a permanent new home just in time for the holidays. After spending nearly two months at Farm Sanctuary, an organization in upstate New York that rescues farm animals, Angelo was adopted by a couple in Michigan with a farm and other sheep. "Angelo will live out his life there," Susie Coston, National Shelter Director for Farm Sanctuary, tells Paw Nation. "He could easily live 16 years." That the little lamb would live at all was, at one time, highly doubtful.

Coston tells Paw Nation that in September, a good Samaritan named Cindy Rexhaj was shopping at a market in the Bronx when she noticed sheep being unloaded from a truck. As Rexhaj watched, she spotted a baby lamb in the truck, struggling to survive amidst the commotion of sheep. Rexhaj pointed out the lamb to the truck driver, who said he had no use for it and agreed to relinquish the animal to Rexhaj. "Where was the lamb's mother?" Rexhaj asked the driver, who shrugged. "You'll never find the mother," he said, as he ran the sheep into the slaughterhouse. "There are hundreds of sheep in here."

Rexhaj took the baby lamb home with her, where she nursed it with a baby bottle filled with human infant formula. After five days, she called Farm Sanctuary, who brought the lamb to live at their sanctuary. "We named him Angelo because he looked so angelic," says Coston. "He's a pure black lamb, but has a few white markings on him including a swirly, white hairdo on the top of his head."

Angelo was only 5 days old and weighed 7 pounds when he arrived at the Sanctuary on September 20. "He was very precious and sweet," says Coston. "Very needy. He cried when he was separated from his original human mother." Angelo quickly latched onto an intern who worked at the Sanctuary, sleeping next to her each night.

"He's very lucky he was alive," says Coston, adding that lambs don't have natural antibodies because the mother doesn't pass them along through the placenta – as other mammals do – so it is critical that lambs receive nutrient-rich colostrum through the first milk and within the first 24 hours. "If Angelo hadn't gotten it, he would probably have been very sick and possibly died," explains Coston. "But blood work indicated that he must have gotten antibodies from his mother."

Despite his early trauma, Angelo thrived at Farm Sanctuary. "He ran around the farm, and jumped and played," says Coston. "It was cold here, so we got him dog coats and sweaters and he wore those around a lot." Angelo weighed 26 pounds when he left for his new life in Michigan, and is expected to grow to about 175 to 200 pounds. "He'll be a nice, big boy," says Costron, laughing. "He even has his own Facebook page!"

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