Friday’s Fuzzy First Babies

Last Friday we had two of our yearling ewes birth their first ever lambs. Both did a terrific job, but they produced babies on the opposite ends of the size spectrum.

Here, Shiver has just delivered the tiniest lambs I’ve ever seen. These miniscule twins, born on a balmy afternoon, were so fragile it took them about a half an hour to stand up. I was really worried about them, but Shiver, who is our biggest yearling by far, was really attentive to them and got them standing and nursing with lots of anxious licking and pushing. By morning they were strong and active.

I named these two adorable ewes Plum and Blossom because the wild plums were richly fragrant the afternoon they were born. Both have beautiful grey-rimmed eyes, but Plum has wider lines.

Later that day, around dusk, Tawanda, our second-to-smallest yearling, delivered a huge lamb almost her size! The eweling dropped and was on her feet in minutes. Within a half hour, she was dancing literal circles around her tired mom and hadn’t stopped moving by the time I went into the house around 9:30 in the evening. I named her Bliss for the sheer joy she seems to have at being alive. Hooray for you, little one!

Tawanda went to the back of the dark barn to have her lamb, but you can still see how gigantic the eweling is compared to her mom!

I think we’ve got three or so more moms that are pregnant in the field, and then we’ll be done for the season. It is tough to tell how many we’ve actually got left because those that remain are yearlings, the first time ewes. However, not all of the yearlings were old enough to get bred when we put the rams in last fall, and those that did are so small they don’t really show much. Every day is an adventure!