My cousin Linda left to return to Idaho last week. Her departure coincided with a big rainstorm, and a total lull in lambing.
After Linda left, no lambs were born for 3 days! By the end of the lull, the lambing jugs where mothers and lambs spend their first 3 days were totally empty. We were still busy caring for mothers and lambs; first-time mother Sarina turned out not to have much milk, so we began supplementing her two 88% Cormo ram lambs with a bottle, making total pets of them.
The good news is that in the past few days, Sarina’s milk has come in, and her twins are weaning themselves from the bottle feedings. Although they still are friendly and follow us around the mixing pen like puppies.
We had some pretty big puddles in the alley between the barns, necessitating the ferrying of some lambs that were scared to make the crossing on their first trip from the lambing barn to the mix pen in the other barn.
Then on Friday night began a flurry of lambing that hasn’t stopped yet!
Friday evening Lolo and Lola cooked a special lamb birria dinner for everyone.
Before the dinner, I checked the pregnant ewes, and Choco was baaing and baaing, often a sign that a ewe is going to go into labor soon. Lisa brought the ewes into the barn early so we could watch them on the lamb camera during our dinner. Choco was clearly super-charged with hormones and was fixated on a young Romney ewe that she was bullying, chasing and chasing her around the barn! After dinner Lisa went to the barn to keep an eye on her. By the end of Lisa’s shift, at 10:00, Choco had stopped bullying the poor young ewe, but still wasn’t in labor. I set my alarm to wake me at 12:45, and when I woke up and checked the barn camera, Choco had a lamb! I went up and took care of the lamb, while Choco went into labor and delivered a second; two nice black girls. I left the barn at 2:00 and none of the other ewes was showing signs of labor, but the next morning when Mo got to the barn she found Heidi with twins–a black boy and a white girl, all clean and dry and well-fed. We played back the camera feed and saw that Heidi had gone into labor not long after I left, and delivered her first lamb at 3:00.
Mo weighed and recorded Heidi’s lambs and got them settled in a jug, then went out to feed the rest of the sheep. When she went to feed the pregnant ewes who who weren’t being brought into the barn yet, there was a pasture surprise–Opal up on the hill in the pig pasture with a beautiful single girl.
Our friend Cynthia arrived around noon on Saturday and after lunch, Cynthia, Mo and I returned to the barns a little after 1:00. I looked up at the middle pasture where the ewes not due to lamb yet were spending the day, and counted 5 ewes, although there should have been six. We walked up to investigate. Over the hill and down on the east side where it is sheltered form the wind, we found one of our white 3/4 Cormo ewes, who doesn’t yet have a name, with twin lambs, the second of which had just been born seconds ago.
Mo and I carried the lambs back to the barn, talking to the mother to keep her with us, while Cynthia assisted.
The lambs are both boys, two more candidates for the 88% Cormo ram lamb I want to keep as a replacement. That bloody, orange little mess in my hands turned out to clean up to the cutest white Cormo lamb ever, with butterscotch feet and knees.
That evening after dinner Lisa texted that Eleanor had broken her water and Cynthia went up to keep Lisa and Eleanor company. They ushered in Eleanor’s single boy and took care of him before calling it a night. But the ewes were not done; some time in the night, in the shadows of the barn where no one who was watching could see her on camera (and there were several of us watching!) Prudence had twin lambs. Melinda found them this morning and replayed the camera and had a heck of a time seeing when either was born. She finally decided the first was born around 12:30, but none of us could ever see the second being born; she just suddenly appeared on camera before morning.
We had a busy morning taking care of lambs and cleaning the barns, between rain squalls and hail storms. And then, just as we were thinking of taking lunch, we found one of our young Romney ewes in the shelter outside, in labor. She was working hard and Melinda, Cynthia and I stayed with her as she delivered a large Moorit girl, who presented with one leg back and needed a firm pull. The ewe, Brenda’s daughter, didn’t have a name and we decided to name her Bronte, after our friend and fellow shepherd, Bronte Edwards, who is also a stewardship assistant at MALT. We decided to name her Moorit daughter Charlotte (apologies Bronte!).
Bronte was a first-time mother, just a year old, and Charlotte was a large lamb, so we assumed she was a single. We let mother and daughter bond for a while, then got them out of the storm and into the barn. We were just about to leave them to settle, and take our lunch break, when Melinda remarked, “is that a foot?” A moment later, with a SPLAT !, a second lamb, this one black, just fell out of the ewe. This lamb was tiny and had difficulty breathing at first. We thought we were going to lose her as she convulsed and gurgled, but we brought her around and tonight little Emily is happily nursing from her mother and curling up with her sister who is literally twice her size. Charlotte weighed in at 11.25 lbs, and Emily at 5.5 lbs. The Bronte sisters and their mother are doing well under Lisa’s watch tonight.
As of tonight we have 38 lambs from 25 ewes, 20 girls and 18 boys,13 sets of twins and 12 singles. And 6 ewes left to lamb.
