What a Week!

This week we had our first lambs. Last week we lost a ewe and this week the first ewe's lamb didn't survive. Not a very auspicious start but things turned around somewhat.

Later the first afternoon we had 2 more ewes with lambs; Aaron found 3 mothers and 5 lambs clustered together in the pasture. One was the first ewe who lost her baby. We decided to try to get her to adopt one of the triplets since one was so much smaller and it often happens that one doesn't do well. She was pretty accommodating; we milked her and gave the lamb a bottle several times for the first few days and she seems to have decided that's okay with her.

More confusion the next day. Three ewes, four lambs. We made an executive decision on that one and everyone seems to have accepted that as well.

Our next dilemma was caused by baby donkey. In her curiosity about the lambs, she was too rough and hurt the legs on a set of twins. Aaron and I were both yelling at her and trying to get to them, but she was determined. We put the baby donkey in a different pasture from the ewes (and her mother). Now the donkeys spend all their time hanging together so we're not very confident they're going to do their job.

And on the fourth day, we had a set of quadruplets--only 3 survived--and immediately afterwards another ewe had an enormous lamb born dead. Aaron got one of the surviving triplets right over to the new mother and she nursed it right away.

Today, one more single and a set of twins. We're one-third of the way done. Hopefully things will go better with the next round!

The twins at the top were tucked down in a little depression out of the wind this afternoon and were pretty sleepy. The little lamb by itself is a singleton, so is a bit bigger.

Totals so far: 21 lambs from 13 ewes.