I really didn’t plan on a bottle baby, but I may have one. Here she is meeting the family.

When I went out this morning Paula had one live lamb and one dead one. As I was doing chores I noticed her pushing some more. I checked and there was a third lamb with the legs and head pointed down inside instead of out. I fished around inside and got everything straightened out and delivered the lamb. It was just about dead when I got it out–completely limp and not taking a breath. I got the lamb breathing but it remained completely flaccid and was losing body temperature quickly. Paula was still licking it so I left it with her covered in a towel while I warmed towels in the dryer. I wrapped up the lamb in the warm towels, tube fed it about an ounce of colostrum, and then brought it to the house and woke up my son so that the lamb could stay snuggled in bed with him while I finished chores. The lamb was still shivering and not trying to get up so I finally brought a crate and a heat lamp in the house.

All that was this morning. The lamb showed enough spunk to try and nurse earlier in the day and I took it back to the barn, but due to the the combination of inexperience on the lamb’s part and Paula’s increasing skepticism that she really had 2 lambs I finally gave up. The lamb is in the house tonight and I’m feeding it.  So far it’s not doing real well with the bottle and I’ve tube fed it a couple of times. I hope that at  the next feeding it will have figured it out.

Zelda lambed last night with twins sired by Savor.

Look at the horns on this ram lamb!

Moon had twin ewe lambs this afternoon. This lamb was very striking after she was clean and dry–sparkling white and none of the coarser  birth coat that Jacob lambs are often born with.

While waiting for Moon to deliver, Jackie and I first castrated the two lambs that were born in January and then we dealt with one of last night’s twins that died. (If you don’t want to read the details then skip to the pretty yellow flower photo below.) When the lamb was born last night I thought that the umbilical cord was unusually large in diameter. My iodine dip didn’t dry this cord up like it did the other lamb’s.  This morning the lamb looked cold, but finally nursed and seemed to warm up. It was in the afternoon that I saw that she was very sick (near death). She was bloated and there was smelly brown fluid draining from the over-sized umbilical cord. I necropsied her and found what I suspected–her intestine had a dead-end. There was no connection between the colon and the rectum so there was no where for digested food to go. I’m not sure what was leaking out the umbilical cord, but I wonder if it was putrid  intestinal contents that filled the abdominal cavity.  Hopefully this is the only birth defect this lambing season.

It’s a month before spring officially starts so it must be time for my annual blooming acacia photo. How can I resist that intense color?

I got back from 3 days at TNNA (trade-show which needs a blog post by itself) and an hour later there were lambs! This wasn’t a complete surprise because, although lambing isn’t due to start for another 6 weeks, one ewe definitely stood out from the flock as “more pregnant”. Phyllis is a lilac ewe that had been sold a few years ago. She returned to me this fall, but no one said anything about being bred. I guess that was due to a mishap at her previous home. Even though I knew that these lambs would not be 100% Jacob, I’m so used to seeing spots, these were an initial surprise.

The lambs’ fleeces are quite different. The one in the foreground has that wavy, coarser look and the other is curly. Notice too that the one in the back is lighter. I don’t know how much of that is due to the camera (I think it flashed when I took this photo) and how much is real. I thought that he didn’t look true black, but in this photo he is definitely lighter. He might make a great fleece wether. (I think the sire may have  been a Merino–have to ask about that again.)