Thursday, May 18, 2006

Baby Lambs on the farm...

Life is never dull around here. Yesterday my last ewe went into labor. I have Shetlands and Shetland crosses. They have never had any trouble lambing. This lamb was Sunshine, my herd matriarch. I have never really seen the sheep in labor. I check them about every 3 hours or so when birth looks imminent. Then I go out one time and there are baby lambs. I have seen my goats kid every time, so I do know what labor in an animal looks like. I saw that she was in labor and so I brought a chair out to the barn along with my camera. However, something did not look quite right. After about 2 hours of nothing happening, I called a friend. She told me to check just inside to see what I felt. I should feel 2 little feet and a nose. I could feel nothing. I waited some more thinking she was in early labor. After more time went by, I checked again. There were legs only and they were not close to coming out. I could not feel a head, so I knew it was breech. I had to pull when she pushed the next time and a nice size ram lamb was born. He was pure white. I was told to wait up to an hour between births. This sheep was huge and I was thinking she was going to have triplets for the first time. After an hour and a half, nothing was happening even with her pushing. I checked her again. All I could feel was the rump. I could find part of one leg, but that was it. My arm would go no further. I called a friend who lived nearby and raises sheep. She told me if I would come and get her, she would come and help. After she got there, she was able to go in and pull another ram lamb out in the breech position. She had to pull his legs back first. He was mostly white but very speckled with black. We thought she was done and low and behold here came more feet. It was another breech ram lamb. He was almost all black except some white around his head. My poor sheep, Sunshine was totally spent. We helped her clean the lambs up and dry them off. We made sure they got some colostrum and then let Momma rest. They are adorable. The little black one will turn brown. I told my husband, that I should call them Chocolate, Vanilla and Cookies and Cream.

1 comment:

Patty said...

I am so happy to see you blogging !
Tomorrow I will link you to my blog