We had an amazing lambing story unfold last night; Eleanor, our black “Periwinkle” ewe, half Cormo, half Corriedale, lambed by herself in the middle of the night. Her lambs were much anticipated, as she had been bred to our black Cormo ram, Prince, who we lost after breeding last fall, and we are very eager for this year’s crop of his lambs, his only offspring in our flock, who will be ¾ Cormo “princes” and “princesses.”
Our guest Cynthia who is staying with us for a few days looked at the barn-cam in the middle of the night and saw two lambs in the barn. She woke me and we went up. Eleanor had one lamb and our Moorit-carrier Romney ewe Cap had the other. The lamb that Cap was mothering didn’t look like a Romney, and Cap did not have any telltale signs of having lambed. But Cap loved that lamb, was licking it off and letting it nurse.
Thank goodness for our barn-cameras! We played back the camera and found that Eleanor had given birth to both lambs, but as a first-time mother she wasn’t entirely with the program, and hadn’t been quick to attend to her second lamb after it was born. Cap, who must have been in the hormone-charged throes of early labor, swooped in and stole that lamb! And she really LOVED that stolen lamb. But we knew that what usually happens when an expecting mother steals a lamb is that, when she finally gives birth to her own lambs, they smell like her and she winds up loving them more and rejecting the stolen lamb. We tried to take the lamb away from Cap and give her back to her mother, but Eleanor wanted nothing to do with her, and Cap nearly had a nervous breakdown. So…we left Eleanor in a jug with the one lamb she loved, and left Cap out in the drop area with her stolen lamb. By morning, Cap had delivered twins of her own, a black girl and a Moorit boy. She loves them all, including the one she stole, but probably won’t have enough milk for three, so we plan to give away Cap’s girl for someone to raise as a bottle lamb, and leave Cap to raise her Moorit boy and her little stolen Princess.
