Baby Lambs! by, Emily

Last Friday, me and Aunt Nadine, who was staying with us, went out and milked together at around nine o'clock. (We milked late) After putting Belle back into the pen, I quickly shone my flashlight out into the sheep yard.... not expecting anything, but I did for some reason. The beams fell onto a white blob of something small laying out there with a ewe! I immediately started hollering to Aunty, and overcoming my fear of our gigantic and mean ram, I hopped over the fence, ran right past him, and in a few bounds was in the yard with Nettie, a first time mom, and twin lambs! Aunty was right behind me, and she took one of the lambs, while I took the other. We brought them back, but Nettie, being a pretty skittish ewe, and being it's her first time, was too scared to follow us, so I pulled and Aunty pushed, and we got her into a lambing pen. At this point I raced up to the house, dashed in, and hollered "LAMBS!" and was back out in the barn in the shake of a lambs tail! :)

The lambs, who turned out to both be girls, were really chilled, although they were both dried off well. But after some help nursing, they were doing great. The larger one had an adorable black spot on her leg.... so cute! She weighed barely six pounds, while her little sister (and I mean LITTLE sister!) was four and a half pounds!!!!!!!! The smallest lamb we have ever had! And she is small! We named the one with the black spot on her leg Nay-Nay, because she's the one that Aunty carried in, and Aunty's nick-name is Nay-Nay! :) (Aunty also has black hair, which goes well with the lambs black spot :)) Then we figured we'd better name the other one after Mom (being Aunty's sister) ... so we named it, instead of Mindy, Nindy.... so it's Nay-Nay and Nindy..... and the Mom is Nettie! :) They are doing GREAT now! They love to run around the pen, jumping around and doing all sorts of hilarious antics! :)

Friday night we also put Nancy, (who is the Grandma of Nay-Nay and Nindy) in a separate pen, because her udder was swelling up considerably, and she was absolutely GIGANTIC! I was sure she must have four babies! The next day I checked on her about every half-hour at least, because I was SURE she was laboring. That night around ten o'clock, me and Dad went out to check one her one last time before I went to bed. As I walked over to the pen, I saw that she was licking a LAMB!!! I yelled, "She's got a lamb!" Then raced up to the house to get everyone, coming back with Aunty on the back of my four wheeler. But we were about 30 seconds too late.... number two had arrived in a timely fashion! The first one was a girl, and the second one was a boy. After a LONG time of laboring, and what seemed to be a hard time, Nancy delivered another boy. She licked him off, and promptly began pushing AGAIN! This one was obviously breech, and Nancy did not push it all the way out, so when she stood up, Dad gently pulled it out. But SADLY it was not alive. The little guy was full term, but the birth of the third one really took a long time, and it was breech, so it probably had a pinched umbilical cord. We were wondering what to name them, and I suggested names of gems or something of the like, since Nancy's middle name is Pearl. So, we came up with some different, but cute names. The girl is Amethyst, the first boy is Topaz (we had to get pretty creative for the boys!) and the last one is Emerald.:)

Nancy had mastitis last year, though, and only has half an udder to feed three hungry lambs. After a couple days of observation we realized that they were obviously really hungry and not getting enough, so I got out a bottle and warmed up some goats milk. Going out to the barn I started with Amethyst. To my amazement, she latched right on and drank half the bottle!!! (About two cups). Her brother, Topaz, drank almost as much as she did, but Emerald did not drink much. He was a lot weaker than the rest of them and had scours. But after careful feeding and care, he's doing great now, like the rest of them, and I'm enjoying bottling them all. :)

Milly is due today, and is looking really big, so I'm sure ya'll will be hearing about that soon. Oh, and by the way, the kittens are doing great and there is four girls and one boy!!! (The boy is one of the orange ones.) :)