Annika's lambs
Annika had her lambs mid-day on Friday. This is the last group of AI lambs out of the frozen semen from Finland. These lambs and Lumi's lambs are sired by Tanu, a grey ram.
It is amazing that the three ewes who had lambs from the AI gave birth 5 days apart! And of course since it was AI, they were all bred on November 9, 2007 between 3:00 and 5:30 PM. Helmi had her lamb at 142 days gestation, Lumi at 144 (about normal for a Finnsheep) and Annika at 146.
Despite Annika's small size and not looking all that fat, she gave birth to fairly large twins. The ewe lamb was 7 lbs 6 oz and the ram lamb was 8 pounds. The ewe lamb is grey for sure. She is mostly black, but already had grey wool coming in on her flanks at birth. She also has the bluish pink tongue. The ram lamb looks fairly black at this point and it is hard to tell if the lighter color that I see in a few tiny spots is grey wool or dried up amniotic fluid that isn't totally cleaned off yet. His tongue is completely pink at the base and a darker color of blue or maybe black at the end. It is like it is divided in half with the colors crosswise. (This is not typical of black Finnsheep who have a completely black tongue like a Chow dog.) An email friend in Finland whose farm specializes in the grey Finnsheep says that she believes he will turn grey.
These twins were the spunkiest, smartest, most vigorous lambs we have ever had. I am sure it helps that they were born mid-day in April when the temperature in the barn was 60 F (15.55 C) so it was very easy to get them dried off. And they didn't have a very hard time being born. Annika was in hard labor for about 30 minutes with the first one. Then about 15 minutes later the next one came out with only about 2 rounds of pushing. But still... Finn lambs are pretty active and quick to try to get up on their little "Bambi-legs", but these two were up walking around and got on the teats with almost help. (All I did was speed the process by sticking them under the right part of the ewe, since they were looking for teats in her armpits.) Within two hours of birth, they were not only running around the jug, they were hopping up and down!!
Here is a not so great photo of me holding them a couple hours after they were born. The ewe lamb is on the left and the ram lamb is on the right. I was tired, but not as tired as I look in this photo! I had to have Upal take a photo of me holding them, so you can see their faces. It was hard to get a photo for the first couple of days since they seemed to never be asleep and had their heads under their mother nursing whenever I went out to the barn to check on them!
In this photo, you can see that the little ewe lamb was already grey on her rear at birth. When she grows up, she will be a silvery color like her father. Although Annika looks sort of greyish in this photo, she is genetically a black and has a black tongue.
It is amazing that the three ewes who had lambs from the AI gave birth 5 days apart! And of course since it was AI, they were all bred on November 9, 2007 between 3:00 and 5:30 PM. Helmi had her lamb at 142 days gestation, Lumi at 144 (about normal for a Finnsheep) and Annika at 146.
Despite Annika's small size and not looking all that fat, she gave birth to fairly large twins. The ewe lamb was 7 lbs 6 oz and the ram lamb was 8 pounds. The ewe lamb is grey for sure. She is mostly black, but already had grey wool coming in on her flanks at birth. She also has the bluish pink tongue. The ram lamb looks fairly black at this point and it is hard to tell if the lighter color that I see in a few tiny spots is grey wool or dried up amniotic fluid that isn't totally cleaned off yet. His tongue is completely pink at the base and a darker color of blue or maybe black at the end. It is like it is divided in half with the colors crosswise. (This is not typical of black Finnsheep who have a completely black tongue like a Chow dog.) An email friend in Finland whose farm specializes in the grey Finnsheep says that she believes he will turn grey.
These twins were the spunkiest, smartest, most vigorous lambs we have ever had. I am sure it helps that they were born mid-day in April when the temperature in the barn was 60 F (15.55 C) so it was very easy to get them dried off. And they didn't have a very hard time being born. Annika was in hard labor for about 30 minutes with the first one. Then about 15 minutes later the next one came out with only about 2 rounds of pushing. But still... Finn lambs are pretty active and quick to try to get up on their little "Bambi-legs", but these two were up walking around and got on the teats with almost help. (All I did was speed the process by sticking them under the right part of the ewe, since they were looking for teats in her armpits.) Within two hours of birth, they were not only running around the jug, they were hopping up and down!!
Here is a not so great photo of me holding them a couple hours after they were born. The ewe lamb is on the left and the ram lamb is on the right. I was tired, but not as tired as I look in this photo! I had to have Upal take a photo of me holding them, so you can see their faces. It was hard to get a photo for the first couple of days since they seemed to never be asleep and had their heads under their mother nursing whenever I went out to the barn to check on them!
In this photo, you can see that the little ewe lamb was already grey on her rear at birth. When she grows up, she will be a silvery color like her father. Although Annika looks sort of greyish in this photo, she is genetically a black and has a black tongue.
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