Little Fluffy White Lambs

So, I lied. I said I would post pictures of our new little fluffy baby lamb on Saturday. I didn’t. Oops.

The story:

As you may know, my husband bought 4 young St. Croix sheep several months ago, one ram and three ewes. I named the ewes Madame Rosmerta, Bathilda Bagshot, and Hepsibah Smith. 

 

The ram is the one with the mane.

We were hoping for some spring lambs but hadn’t seen the ram taking his job very seriously so we weren’t sure we would get any. All of the sudden, a couple of weeks ago the ewes started to look HUGE and we got more hopeful. But we weren’t expecting lambs so soon because the ewes had JUST STARTED to look pregnant (notice how I’m discussing lamb gestation as if I have any idea what I’m talking about). Then lo and behold! We looked outside Friday and there was a sweet little boy lamb frolicking around the back pasture with a proud first time sheep mama.

 

Then yesterday morning as Benjamin and I were eating breakfast, the sun came up and illuminated the sight of TWO more baby lambs snuggling with the proud sheep mama of TWINS. One was bigger than the other with black spots over his eyes like glasses (named him Harry Potter, yes, I’m a little obsessed) and the other was half the size and trying to keep up.

 

We tried to get the sheep in the barn early that morning because there were severe thunderstorms in the forecast but our sheep are very skittish and we weren’t able to corral all of them in. One of the twins got separated from mama and for the rest of the morning she ignored it in favor of the other lamb. In an effort to get her to bond with twin number two and to get them out of the bad weather, Daniel, TJ, and Kris were able to get all of them into the barn and constructed a makeshift ‘lambing jug’ for bonding. This did the trick and mama #2 started nursing both new lambs beautifully.  I’m so glad they were able to get all of them inside because the storms in the afternoon and late evening were terrible and little lambs can get hypothermia from being in the rain too soon after birth.

 

We let them all out this morning to graze and frolick in the beautiful spring weather and all are doing wonderfully.

 

Little Bear is loving the new arrivals, of course.

John and Luke took him out to see them in the pasture a couple of days ago and then he got to see them up close in the barn this morning.

 

I think the third ewe is going to lamb anytime now.

In case you wanted to see some good pictures, my friend Holly brought her sweet little girls, Margot and Stella, over to play and took and some beautiful shots of the first little newborn lamb. Here’s a couple:

 

Go to her beautiful photoblog, Times Two to see more photos of the little one.