Dear Blogospherians,

I am so sorry to neglect you all summer.  But I have good excuses; really I do.  Recently, I have received some sad emails from one of the three people on earth that read this blog and she is starting to sound desperate.  Frankly, I just don't want to be responsible.  (I have enough responsibility with taking care of the sheep, lambs, dogs, cats, ducks and bunny... and last but not least a husband.)  I will try not to ignore you so much in the future.... and this time I really, really mean it! 

Sincerely,
Tracy

So here we go...

When last we spoke, Emmi's survivng little lamb was starting to thrive.  Emmi was a very good mama.  The main difficulty was that something weird happened with her udder this year.  For most of her pregnancy, her udder stayed really small. The day before Emmi had her lambs, her udder suddenly became huge.  The surviving baby started to thrive and she was able to nurse off Emmi's right teat which returned to a normal size.  The left udder and teat stayed really huge though she had no symptoms of mastitis (infection).  I did a California mastitis test with negative (not infected) results more than once.  On the advice of a vet, I kept that side milked out to keep her milk from drying up and prevent infection so that the lamb could nurse both sides once she got bigger.  The conclusion here is that I never, ever want to do dairy or anything related to it.  Emmi was enough sheep milking for me. 

So here are the rest of the lambs I got this year:



On April 22nd, Annika had triplets: a black ewe lamb (lower right), a black ram lamb (lower left) and a brown ewe lamb (top).  Wendall (brown) is their sire, so the black lambs are recessive for brown.  Finally my first brown EWE!!  Unfortunately when she was born, her neck was extremely floppy.  I don't know if she was crammed in the womb some weird way or what.  My vet thought that she was just weak. I have never had this happen in any lamb.  Her legs were strong and she could stand and walk around, only her neck was weak.  So I had to milk colostrum out of Annika and feed her, and then she was bottle fed for a few days since she could not hold her neck in the correct position to nurse.  But pretty soon, her neck started to get stronger and she turned out to be totally normal.  She ended up both nursing from Annika and getting supplemented from a bottle a few times per day.  Annika had plenty of milk but the other two lambs were so much stronger from the beginning and learned they could just push her away if they wanted to.  The ram lamb is really big and has a very proud look to him.  He also has beautiful markings.  The black ewe lamb is like a little elf and bounces around whenever she can.

Then on April 26th, Uma had quads.  Unfortunately one lamb - a beautiful solid grey ram lamb - was stillborn.  The 3 survivors were a white ewe lamb, a grey "panda" faced ewe lamb and a teeny, tiny black ram lamb (who we would later wether).  The grey panda is my first panda-faced lamb that is not a piebald.  The tiny lamb, who we called "the micro-lamb" was the smallest surviving lamb we have ever had born on the farm -- just 2 pounds 12 ounces.  And the truly amazing thing was that he was strong and spunky!  He was up walking around like a normal lamb really quickly and he didn't have a the scooped out face that some of the "premie" lambs have. 


Here are all 3 lambs together at one day old.  The grey panda girl is on the upper left and the Micro-lamb (boy) is on the upper right.  The white girl is (obviously) at the bottom.

Unfortunately, he had a teeny, tiny mouth and his mother is my biggest ewe and has big teats which were about twice as large as his tiny mouth!  And the little Prichard teats, that I use to bottle feed my newborn Finns when needed, were also way too huge.  So for about 3 days I tube fed this tiny lamb with minute amounts of milk -- first with colostrum from Uma and then with Super Lamb (lamb formula) -- every 2 hours for the first day, and then every 3 hours after that.  Did I sleep?  Not much.  When I had recovered just slightly from my sleep deprived delirium, I drove into town and got a couple of small animal nursing set (made for puppies, kittens etc) that each had a little 2 ounce bottle and a variety of teats.  One was shaped like the Prichard teats but, slightly smaller and an even softer latex.  So then I was able to bottle feed the little guy. 


Here I am feeding the Micro-lamb his tiny bottles, while his sisters nibble on my t-shirt. 

He also had a problem that even with weighing him and calculating what should be his milk intake each day, he still tended to scour (get diarrhea) every time we increased his daily quantity of milk.  (I use the schedule and amounts in the blue Laura Lawson book "Managing Your Ewe and her Newborn Lambs".)    I felt we were walking a fine line between starving him to death and killing him with diarrhea.  But amazingly, he survived.  Because of the diarrhea, many of his early photos show red lamb medicine on his mouth.

This is not a great photo, but it shows the relative heights of the grey panda (who is an average size Finn lamb) and the tiny microlamb who is totally normal, just very small.  So... Reason #1 Why This Blog Is So Far Behind:  The Micro-lamb!!

On April 27th, Helmi had triplet rams: one brown and two black -- all with gorgeous wool!!  All three lambs were healthy and Helmi is a wonderful and experienced Mom -- so there was no drama with this litter -- thank God!  I think this year was the most difficult lambing since my first year when I barely had a clue.  Last year was extremely easy, so I guess I was due.

One weird thing about this group was that the brown ram was born with obviously nice birth wool.  The two black ones were born with a very strange straight birth coat -- like a dog.  It didn't look like bad birth wool.  It didn't look like wool at all.  This seemed bizarre to me since both parents have really good wool and Wendall's wool is quite fine.  I called Sandy DeMaster aboutt his and Sandy said that she had had some of these lambs with straight hair born before and eventually it just fell out and they had good wool afterward.  And that is exactly what happened!

In this photo, you can see the good wool starting to come in on the black lamb on the far right up by his shoulders and that the weird "dog hair" type coat is still on his butt area.  The lambs are 6 days old in this photo.  (This brown lamb is a lighter brown than the brown ewe lamb that I got this year and Kahvi, my brown ram born a few years ago.)

So that is all of the lambs we got this year.  Fourteen healthy surviving lambs, 2 stillborn and one weak one that I could not save.
More lamb photos to come...