altivo

Gary went out to feed horses and sheep this evening while I started making supper and he came back in to say "We've got a lamb!" I think my jaw hit the kitchen countertop before I recovered. I was sure that we weren't having any more lambs. After all, our old ram died over two years ago, and all the remaining males were neutered ("wethered" in shepherd's jargon) and couldn't sire lambs. I thought.

Do it yourself neutering is the rule with lambs, and I thought I'd gotten it right, but this winter I kept thinking one or two of the ewes looked just too fat and if I didn't know better I'd say they were pregnant. Seems I didn't know better.

Here is our newborn, a little black ram, who couldn't have been more than 20 minutes old when Gary found him. He was still wet, hadn't tried to stand up yet, and was panting from the exertions of birth. Mom was alternately licking him dry and gobbling hay as if nothing had happened at all. The afterbirth wasn't delivered until I had arrived on the scene with the camera and the little guy had managed to stand up and start walking.

Here he is wobbling to his feet. He stood like this for half a minute or more before trying to walk on those spindly little legs. Mom was keeping an eye on him, but letting him figure it out.

And here are baby's first steps. He didn't fall down, and even managed to step into and out of that rubber feed tub. All this when he was not yet an hour old.

Moving mom and baby into private quarters for a few days wasn't hard in terms of getting them to cooperate, but there was no room at the inn until we evicted Gary's last remaining duck from the lambing jug. He's been living in there for protection from the neighborhood fox ever since she killed his mate back in February. Now he had to go back to his duck house and be confined. Tomorrow I guess we'll be putting up a fox-proof fence for him. Meantime, mom and baby are doing fine, and will be safe because the lambing jug has a welded wire cover tied down with bungee cords.