If a lamb smells like her offspring, a mother sheep will naturally believe it is her own, regardless of whose lamb it is. That's the theory behind a long-term research project to increase lamb survival in flocks suffering losses from predators and birth defects. "The timing is critical in establishing a bond for pairing orphaned lambs with new mothers," says Ed Price, professor and chair of the UC Davis animal science department. Price and colleagues use two techniques for matching unrelated lambs and ewes. The first, developed several years ago, involves rubbing the odor of a ewe's newborn lamb on a body-jacket and placing the jacket on an orphaned lamb. The most recent technique involves rubbing a solution of neetsfoot oil -- a common animal odorant -- on the orphaned lamb and the ewe's own lamb within 12 hours of birth. The body-jacket approach has a 65 percent success rate, and the neetsfoot oil treatment about a 50 percent acceptance rate, according to Price. "Our goal is to attain a rate of 90 percent successful pairings by using a combination of the two techniques," he says.