Today, Emma's a grandmother!

Emma's only ewe lamb (before the one born last Sunday) just had her first baby this afternoon - a little ram lamb. Only one, but that's good for a first-timer.

Mom's name is Dorothy, and her little lamb is almost completely white, except for some black around his nose and mouth. I didn't see him being born, but I went to put some spare honey out for my bees and there he was. I didn't have my glasses on so at first I couldn't tell what the white thing was laying in the grass. He's our least colored sheep yet!

Since I mentioned them - my bees are going nuts over the warm weather we're having. I put a gallon of sugar syrup out for them on Saturday afternoon and my Tuesday afternoon it was all gone. And they're a little aggressive right now - especially if you are consuming or recently consumed something sweet. This afternoon at least a hundred bees were buzzing around the chicken feed. It's mostly ground corn and the bees are after the corn sugar. So I had some old honey hanging around and took it out to them as a bribe to leave the chicken feed alone!

Emma had twins!

Just before 2:00 this afternoon, Emma, our very first sheep, gave birth to twins! She's really very cooperative and this is the second year we were able to watch her giving birth. Usually it happens first thing in the morning, or when we're not home. Plus she waited until we had a pretty, warm, sunny day.

She had one boy - the one that's mostly black - amd one ewe lamb - the one that's got more white bits. No name for the little girl, but I'll update when we have it.

I put Emma and her lambs into the barn stall so they can bond, rest and gain strength. I love watching them in the first hour after birth when Mom gets everyone cleaned up and fed. It's hard to explain, but she makes these reassuring little grunts for the lambs. The babies are learning how to stand - and stay standing while their mother is nudging them around to get cleaned up.

Just when it's all going smoothly

With animals, it's always hard to tell what they're thinking. One of our ewes, Cathy Gale, gave birth to twins on Tuesday (March 30), one ram lamb and one ewe lamb. At first she didn't want anything to do with either one of them, but eventually she allowed the ram lamb to eat. Cathy has completely, violently rejected her ewe lamb, so now I have two babies to bottle feed. Cathy and her ram lamb are living in the barn so I can milk her twice a day to feed the ewe lamb. Now that the lambs are four days old, I can start cutting the sheep milk with lamb milk replacement formula, but I will probably keep milking Cathy for another week to get a good supply. Then I will put Cathy and her ram lamb back out in the field with the rest of the sheep; the ewe lamb will be bottle fed for about 6 weeks, until I am sure she's eating grass and sweet feed.
Cathy had a dead lamb the first year we owned her - it weighed in at 14 lbs, and was too big to survive being born. Then last year she had a set of twins with no problems at all. So I don't know happened that this sweet little ewe lamb was abandoned by her mother. But we've had good success with our first bottle lamb, Emma Piel, who is still doing a terrific job raising triplets all on her own!

Triplets again!

Sunday morning, we received another set of triplets but this time in the sheep flock. Emma Piel, our first ewe that we raised with a bottle, produced her first set of triplets. Two ram lambs and a ewe lamb.
It was also my first time to see one born. We'd gone down to check on Emma at about 10:45 am, because she was acting strange at 8:30am. Sheep can develop pregnancy ketosis, where they lose the ability to metabolise carbohydrates, and they can die without treatment. At 10:45 am, Emma had started labor, so we left her alone to plant three boysenberry bushes up the lane. At 11:00 we went back to the sheep field because I'd left my gloves on top of their shelter.
By then Emma had one baby, and we could see the second one coming. She was completely professional, three pushes lying down and then she stood up for gravity to help. We left to pick up Ashley from town. At about 1:00pm we walked down so Ashley could see the twins, and to our surprise, Emma had three babies! The weather yesterday was really unpleasant - rainy, windy and cold - so I worried all night about those three little lambs. But this morning everyone was in really good shape.