First lambs born...

 

First, let me reintroduce my everyday helper, Sue.  She always accompanies me to the lambing shed.   She knows when to sit and stay and when to help me get the sheep in the shed.  Today I had Peach and Toodles too, but I promised their mom and dad that I wouldn't put their photos on my blog.  (sorry)

 These are the ladies in waiting....waiting for their lambs to come.  In the meantime, they're enjoying a good helping of ground hay to pass the time.

 Here's the first ewe to lamb.  She had twins.  She especially liked the lamb in the foreground, but the lamb in the back she mostly neglected.  After a couple of hours of checking on the little thing, I decided to take her out and bring her home to warm her up and see if I could get her to take some milk.  She was one chilled lambie pie. 

 

Each year we try to save a little colostrum from some of the old ewes who have lots of milk.  I pour their milk into ice cube trays and save them for days like this when I have a chilled lamb who needs a little extra help.  I warmed a couple cubes of colostrum milk up in a glass jar and then fed her by using a syringe until she had a little down her throat and in her tummy.  She really perked up after about a half hour and began bleating for more milk and she took milk from a bottle.  Yay!  The girls and I took her back to her mama at the shed, but Mama Ewe wouldn't have anything to do with her.  If Mama Ewe had lambed by herself on the prairie, there's no doubt she would have walked off with the first-born lamb and left this one to die.  That's how nature is sometimes, and that's why our life's work is called animal husbandry.  So tonight this li'l girl lamb whom Peach named Anna Lamba, will spend the night in my mudroom.  We'll bottle feed her with hopes that eventually we'll find a new mama for her when another ewe gives birth and has just a single lamb.  I hope that's how it works, anyway!

It's still cold here.  We had 12* for a high today and then some blasted wind which made it feel much colder.  The little girls really wanted to go ice skating so I gave up saying "we'll see" and took them to the pond  bundled up in snow pants, coats, mittens, hats and skates.  They were walking puff balls.    Papa scraped the snow off the pond with the tractor (God bless him!) and we slid around for a few minutes and then decided it was just too stinkin' cold and went home for hot cocoa and a cookie.  I'm hoping that you are staying warm where ever you are!