I was sitting in the living room this afternoon nursing the cold that the progeny has shared with both Steve & I, watching the sheep in the pasture, when I noticed that there was one extra lamb out there. I counted again, just to make sure, and sure enough, there were three lambs out there. The newest one was acting kind of odd: running from sheep-to-sheep looking for someone to nurse from, and was not really being tended by any ewe. That was not good, so I called to Steve, who was nursing his cold upstairs while "supervising" the cleaning of the daughter's room. After some discussion, he agreed with me that we needed to get the sheep in the barn and figure out who the lamb belonged to so we could isolate them overnight and hopefully get the lamb bonded to the ewe. When we went in the barn, our jobs got a whole lot easier, since there was a ewe delivering the afterbirth in the corner. The second twin was hovering nearby, trying to get in to get his first meal. Apparently the one I had seen in the pasture was the first-born and was strong enough to follow the rest of the sheep out. Unfortunately, she wasn't smart enough to stay with her mama after she got her first drink. All three are now settled in a jug (a small pen specifically intended to keep lambs in close proximity to the ewe to facilitate bonding). Oh, the second lamb is a boy. The count for this batch so far is 3 girls and 1 boy. For the record, the mother is ewe #13.
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| The one laying down is tired from her adventures in the pasture |
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| This is the best shot I could get of the little boy - he was too busy nursing to pose. |
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