It's been a busy two weeks here at the farm. Although March did not go out with any lambs, April sure came in with a bunch of them. The first to go was Margaret with another set of triplets and this year all survived (last year two were still born). Margaret is a fantastic mother and is having no problems raising all three, two ram lambs and a ewe. One of the rams has officially been dubbed "VanBuren" due to his resemblance of the late president and the random knowledge that my brain tends to recall at odd moments, like what Martin VanBuren looked like while clipping a lamb's umbilical cord. So far he's the only one to get an official name because as much as i try not to do favorites, he is mine. Actually all three triplets are my buddy's. They run to me when I come up to visit (which is pretty often) happily expecting chest rubs and back massages. He is also the only one I'm certain that we will be keeping. We will be selling many of the others , along with some of their mothers, but we won't decide who goes & who stays until we figure out how many we get all together. So far 6 are already spoken for from interested buyers and (I know gasp...) a few are destine for the freezer, but we'll wait to see who gets honored with that untimely fate a little later.
The day after Margaret's triplets arrived, Lamby's twins showed up, one ram & one ewe, both strapping and beautiful. Of course it was 19 degrees that morning so I was up quite often to make sure no one had hypothermia, but it's pretty amazing how a newborn lamb can tolerate extreme cold after they've had a few swigs of mama's colostrum (the first milk, full of all the antibodies and other goodies that a newborn needs for a great start to life.). Day three brought another 4 lambs from three more ewes. Venus gave a single ewe lamb that morning, Cups had twin ewes in the afternoon, & Serena finished out the day with a single ewe. At the end of day three I was pretty much exhausted, but thrilled. Nine lambs in three days, not a bad haul. All were alive and healthy and all mom's were doing a great job of tending to their babes. Only had a few minor issues, like Margaret's third and tiniest lamb took a little coaxing and some warm up time in the house before he was able to finally get up and get a little milk in him and Cups' second ewe was born back legs first so it took her a little more ompf to get the poor thing out and when it did, the sack was still covering it's face, so I quickly wiped it away and cleared it's airways so it didn't take it's first breath and get a lung full of amniotic fluid, then let mom take over from there. Other than that, everyone has had pretty easy and unassisted deliveries, thank the Good Lord for that. I was able to get a break over the weekend before starting again the following Monday with Lamby II dropping twin ewe lambs out in the mud on a chilly rainy morning. She was a first-time mom & the poor thing seemed to be thoroughly confused by these small creatures that so rudely exited her nether regions, but her maternal instincts kicked in and she had them somewhat cleaned up by the time i noticed the poor things stumbling around in the icky weather and got them all snug in a clean, dry lambing pen. Then Wednesday night (yesterday) a young ewe (who I didn't think was pregnant) surprised me with a single ewe lamb. So needless to say it's been a busy start to the month and I don't expect it to end anytime soon. We've had 12 lambs from 7 ewes, which means we've got 9 more to go. Due to his travel's for work, Hubby has missed every one so far, but I think he'll get to have his turn this weekend, because this good shepherdess needs a little time away and has decided to head south to visit some good friends for the weekend, leaving hubby to tend to any births that may happen, while I get some much needed R & R.
1 Comment
|
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
June 2020
Categories |