Yesterday’s post ended with Lamb #38. As of this evening we’re at #60. I’ll fill in a few of the others here.

In the last post I said that Betty rejected one of her lambs after it got on the other side of a gate. I’d rather have lambs raised by a ewe than bottle feed them. Ruth lambed at around 1:30 a.m. the following day and one lamb died right at birth. I repeated the process I did with Terri’s lamb the previous day, although this time I used the dead lamb to cover Betty’s lamb with membranes and slime. Ruth thought that it smelled right and she started cleaning the new lamb. Success!

Meanwhile, Raquel lambed with triplets.

Aphrodite had a BFL X lamb that weighed 13.4 lbs!

The following day three Farm Club members came to help with lamb tasks. That was much appreciated. By this time there were ewes and lambs in overflow pens everywhere so we were able to start moving some and cleaning pens. Before moving we give each lamb a BOSE (selenium) injection, ear tag it, and band the tail. We had to pay attention to the lamb numbers since we had moved rejected lambs to other ewes and needed to make sure we could correctly identify the biological mother of those lambs.

I had discovered that morning that one of Raquel’s triplets didn’t look so good. I thought that they had all nursed, but now I realize that with all that was going on (another story) I hadn’t paid close enough attention. At this point he was weak and cold. We tried bottle feeding him, but that didn’t work. I ended up tube feeding that lamb twice and after that he was able to get up and nurse on his own.

I set up a heat lamp and all three lambs cuddled up under it.

During the night Patsy (the ewe in the last post who lambed with 4 and 8 pound lambs) died. I had seen that she wasn’t feeling well and started her on antibiotics at the advice of the vet but it was too late. We took her for a necropsy and I’m still waiting for the final report. (Preliminary report shows infection and uterine tear.) Her death leaves two more bottle babies so Farm Club members helped feed them.

They also were there to watch another birth.

Hazel and Jade are still our friendliest sheep.

The next morning Belle lambed. Belle is owned by my 7-year-old granddaughter who lives in Texas. This blog post from 2019 tells the story of Kirby showing Belle as a lamb and has one of my favorite photos of her with Belle and the pink ribbon she won. But back to the present. Since Belle is registered to Kirby, the lambs are also hers. She named Belle’s 2021 lamb Beauty and she is still in the flock. I texted photos of these lambs to Kirby and she asked if she could name them. She wants to name the ram Beast and the ewe Rose. Do you catch the theme?

This is the ewe lamb, Rose.

These are Patsy’s lambs that are now bottle fed.

I have started taking photos of lambs to have them for the website. The crossbred ones aren’t listed on the site, but they sure are photogenic.