Lambs with a death wish...
But they all survive!

May 5th 2020
In the morning we noticed that “Dandy” the little black lamb was trying frantically to nurse on us and not able to move around very well. At first we thought he might have an injured leg, which can happen when you have to help them during birth. It turned out that he was just having trouble figuring out how to nurse. We got him latched on and he suckled well. Later that day we had to repeat the process. Maybe he had some oxygen deprivation in the womb. Seems a little slow on the uptake. Cute though, and now getting stronger. His sister “Daffy” has been vigorous from the beginning. Dandelion and Daffodil. These lambs hardly touch the ground before Hope is trying to figure out what to name them. It drives her absolutely crazy that Kelsi and I will sometimes wait days until a name comes to us.
May 6th 2020
Last night I went to check on the sheep at 3 am. We had put a brown ewe of Hope’s named Doodle into a lambing stall yesterday evening when she had left the herd and begun hanging out alone. At bedtime and midnight there were neither lambs nor visible labor. On my way up the hill behind my house, with the moon low in the sky, I heard an unbelievable ruckus in the barn and envisioned a lamb stuck in a water bucket or impaled on something sharp. I was greatly relieved to find that no such disaster had occurred and instead, Doodle had two beautiful little girls, wet and freshly birthed. One was all reddish brown, just like her mother and the other had large splotches of white on a backdrop of red, much like a Guernsey cow. The mother was in a tizzy about something, baaing frantically at her newer lamb, who was right there with her, while it baa-d back. Apparently the screaming of each was upsetting the other and they were just winding each other up. Seeing everyone safe, I went back to bed.
This morning we saw that both of the new little ones were a bit cold and shaky on their feet. They really should have been a little stronger by now so I checked the mom’s udder. I couldn’t get even a drop of milk out of either side. Uh oh. I gave her a homeopathic remedy for anxiety, because that can keep their milk from letting down and we mixed up some powdered colostrum to get the lambs started on. We couldn’t get them to latch on to bottles so we resorted to syringing the formula into their mouths. Starving lambs often act as if they are being murdered when we try to feed them. We have to pin them down in our laps and force the tip into their mouths and dispense about a quarter teaspoon at a time. If they truly are in need of sustenance, they look thrilled at this spontaneous arrival of nourishment but then fight like the dickens each and every time we try to deliver another installment. Not the sharpest knives. They sometimes learn to appreciate the food, and sometimes not.






