Knitters Across Australia Are Making Sweet Jumpers For Lambs Struggling In The Drought
Want to support Australian farmers? Here's one easy way.
In heartwarming news today, knitters across Australia are banding together to knit little jumpers for lambs struggling to survive the drought on farms across the country.
If you’re a city-dweller, that might sound a little stupid to you — after all, shearing sheep to make wool that’s just going to get put back onto sheep in the form of a jumper sounds somewhat counter-productive. But actually, as the team behind Lamb Jumpers “Helping Our Farmers” told Junkee, these little jumpers are serving a really important purpose.
That’s because these jumpers are for poddy lambs, or lambs that need to be fed by hand because they’re either orphaned, or twin or triplet lambs their mothers just can’t support.
“During drought mothers for some unknown reason have more multiple births than usual,” the team explained. “As such they are not strong enough to look after all of their young and will generally abandon one or all. These jumpers help to give the extra warmth that a mother would normally while the farmers substitute with bottle feeding.”
And yes, let this be your reminder that Australia is still in a really severe drought, something that can be easy to miss from the cities. Life for farming families is pretty tough at the moment, which is the other reason these lamb jumpers are so welcome: every delivery that shows up is a sign that people care and want to pitch in.
The Lamb Jumpers project was started by Country Women’s Association member and Coonabarabran sheep farmer Marie Knight after a Facebook post she made a few weeks ago offering to send out some of her leftover jumpers from recent years saw an overwhelming response.
“We have sent out well over 1000 jumpers so far to very thankful farmers with many more on our waiting list,” the Lamb Jumpers team said today. “There are jumpers arriving daily with hundreds of people jumping on board to help knit and distribute.”
If you can knit, crochet or sew and want to pitch in, you can find patterns and information on where to send finished jumpers over here at the Lamb Jumpers Facebook page.
Feature image via Lamb Jumpers “Helping Our Farmers” on Facebook