Part of being in Farm Club is that you get a complete Lambing Journal report every night with all the nitty-gritty of what happened during the day. Sometimes it gets a little long-winded like today’s report. However my blog posts are usually mostly photos. I’m thinking about writing a post every day there are lambs, but realistically that may not happen. I don’t write one every day when there are NOT lambs, so I don’t know why I think I’ll have time to do it now.
And is this really Day 2 of Lambing? Day 1 was really a month ago when the surprise lambs were born. But I’m calling that the Prologue to lambing season. Or maybe it’s the Prequel. Anyway, I’m calling this Day 2. Only two more ewes lambed but it seemed hectic, partly because it got complicated by a dog semi-emergency. Rusty described that in his blog post just a minute ago.
This is Mae, who lambed with twins a little after midnight.
Before I went in the house at 2 a.m. I put Athena in the lambing area because she didn’t look right and I figured that she was in labor. (A good sign that something was off was that she showed no interest in the grain I offered her as enticement to follow me in.)
It’s a long story, but she probably had ketosis (pregnancy toxemia), fortunately in the early stages. After talking to my vet I got more proactive and pulled the lambs.
That black lamb is 11.4 pounds and his brother is almost 8 pounds. The only other white lamb I’ve had sired the BFL ram was this same cross–Athena x Faulkner–and there was also one black and one white. After some careful watching and TLC (interspersed with dealing with Maggie) Athena seems to be doing fine.
And how about a little more baby horse cuteness? I went down the road to visit this guy again. Here he is about 36 hours old. I got to pet him this time. So soft!
One lamb.
Two lambs.
Three lambs. All were up and nursing quickly. Good job, Ears!
…I knew that, however unlikely, a lamb could get stuck between it and the wall. 
Sure enough, that happened while I was still sitting there.
How about this foal that was just 12 hours old?
He was born down the road at my friend’s house. We have to wait 5 months for lambs to be born. This foal was due on January 29 (11 months) and was just born today on February 22! That is almost a year of gestation for the mare.
Mae from the front.
Mae from the rear.
Shelby from the side.
Shelby from the rear.
Esmerelda, front.
Esmerelda, rear.
Athena from the front.
Athena from the rear.
Marilyn is due 2/26. 
Here she is from the rear. She was shorn in November. I sure like the recently shorn views better for this.
Noel is due 2/27.
Fran is due 2/28.
Fran from the rear.
Spring isn’t due until March 5 but she always looks so big I thought I’d just give you a view.
Who is this? Trick question. That is Delight who is nursing twins.
And here is Dazzle with her single. You can sure see the difference in body condition of ewes that are nursing month old lambs.
This is a poor view of the sliding door at the south end of the barn.
This is looking from the other end. This happened once before–a lamb stumbled into the opening between the door and the wall and then couldn’t get out. Fortunately it wasn’t wet or too cold that night.
Here he is with mom, Dazzle, in the barn.
Dazzle’s lamb was a surprise although I didn’t have a breeding date for her, which was an indication that she may have already been bred. I went back out last night to check the ewe I expected to lamb.
She was lambing and had nice big twins.
These are some flashy looking lambs, especially the little ram on the right. If he grows up nicely, those markings would make him a very pretty show lamb. Too bad he doesn’t have a known father so he can’t be in the show. Maybe he’ll make someone a nice fiber pet if he’s wethered.
Ginny was just a baby at last lambing season and wasn’t out on her own much. Today it didn’t take her long to discover a dog’s favorite part of lambing time. I usually make sure the afterbirth is not dog-accessible but when it falls out of the wheelbarrow it’s up for grabs.
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