Wow! I can't believe that three weeks have blown by here at the little ol homestead. April has been such a beautiful month and the activity has not let up for blink of the eye. Lambing was the biggest happening of the early part of the month. My dear little Merriwether, who is the smallest of the ewes FINALLY birthed on the 14th of the month. This was three weeks later than expected. She must have mated in a different cycle than the other girls. She IS a shy one! Sadly her sole lamb did not make it. Despite monitoring her almost constrantly, she went into labor and delivered in between hourly checks on a Monday morning. I found her dazed hovering over her beautiful white lamb. I don't know what happened but it was not breathing and beyond help when we found it. It was a huge baby--11 pounds--and I am grateful that Meri was ok other than being dazed and confused. She kept trying to wake it up, poor thing.
Meanwhile, my little semi orphan lamb from Elaine was still struggling. After a few hours of bottle feeding because Elaine was so actively rejecting her, Randall, a more experienced farm friend suggested force feeding him on mama. We decided that we had to do it,because of course , I was heading up to NJ for a hearing related to my divorce. So during that week while i was away, Randall, Lavone, and neighbors Bill, Chriss and Glenn took care of orphan Hansel and all the other mama ewes! When I got back from NJ and Meriwether lost her lamb, we decided to try to see if she would accept Hansel who was still having a hard time with his mama. Well, it just added to the confusion a little but I think it was a turning point for Elaine, who now was missing Hansel. (Are you following all this!). Finally, Hansel stayed with Elaine and Meriwether went into a depression for a few days but after a week or so everyone seemed happy and settled in their new rolls.
All in all, I now have seven new lambs out of 6 ewes: Black twins, Ricardo and Lucy in the Sky, Blinkin and Nod who have white pateches on mostly black, Black twins, Prince Charming and Princess Buttercup (Thank you, whoever left that suggestion on the survey), and Hansel the Orphan. They are all healthy and running like a pack of black ants across the barnyard. All friendly and sweet and adorable. Five are rams and I will have to eventually decide what to do with them but for now, I am just enjoying them. I feel like a proud gramma (meemaw as they say here!).
