Firsts: Part 1 of 2

Part 1: Lambs! A backstory

About a month ago, our ewes started giving birth to their lambs. I had been prepping for this by reading books on sheep care and watching the sheep to learn both to tell them apart and to get a sense for what Normal sheep behavior is. Finally, after weeks and weeks of waiting, one Sunday morning I was in my room, determined to take my day off and waste my time as I chose, when the murmur of "lambs!" floated up from downstairs. E had gone outside for chores and discovered two new faces in the flock. I threw on some clothes and ran outside and, sure enough, Tiffany had given birth to a little fawn ram and a little white ewe - tiny, white wool still yellow and damp with amniotic fluid, incredible. I was in awe. E carefully lifted up the lambs and led their mama into a jug (small pen). All ewes and new lambs hang out in a jug for a few days to bond, nurse, avoid getting trampled, and generally stay where we can keep an eye on them to make sure everyone is healthy.

Fast forward a few weeks, to last Monday. Our lamb count had slowly climbed to eight, and the youngsters had grown big enough to run back and forth as a group in the sheep pen, playing tag, jumping onto their mothers. They've lost that gangly, newborn look and have started to grow up and out; they're big enough that they have to go down on their front knees to be low enough to reach their mama's udder, and they're strong enough that the upward head jabs they make when nursing have got to hurt. But the mamas still dominated the flock, though, and each lamb was unique enough that telling them apart was a straightforward no-brainer. But since last Sunday, a ewe has been popping out lambs about every twelve hours, and we've been busy.

Our sheep generally don't need help with birth - we may notice that one looks uncomfortable, and when we come back half an hour later we find that ewe licking off her newborn lamb. The trouble came last week when five ewes all decided to lamb at once during an extra cold snap. One of the really dim ewes actually had a lamb in the snow, but three or four other lambs were in serious danger of freezing to death simply by being born wet into a world below 32 F. So for three days in a row A & E (and later me!) picked up the slimy lambs and hugged them in our coats to warm them up and melt the amniotic ice. We dried them off as best we could, made sure they were nursing properly, and after a few hours they were all fine and dandy.

Aside from a few problems encouraging two of the ewes to stand still for nursing, the lambs have been healthy, and they've all left the jugs to rejoin the flock. This means that watching the sheep now involves not only the mental gymnastics of remembering which sheep is which but also whose lamb is whose. And the flock is almost half lambs now - fawn, white, brown-black, black-black, black with white star on forehead, grey-fawn-white, red. They're beautiful. And that's where we were this morning.

To be continued...