Cappucino & Espresso

After work Friday night, I arrived to find 2 adorable brown lambs, already dry and standing up, staying very close to their doting mother Emma who was protecting them from all the other girls. I shuffled the other girls out and coaxed Emma into the lambing pen by carrying her lambs at her nose level. 2 nice big ram lambs from a mother who is looking pretty scrappy having lost a lot of her wool from her neck, shoulders and upper back. This is also her first set of twins, having had singles in her first 2 years. The darkest brown ram lamb is called Espresso, while we have named the light brown ram lamb Cappucino. This appears to be a breeding from the right ram, Two Bars. The lambs are very cute and are so content and calm. I let them out a day later and they stick to their mother like glue, following right by her side. They will frequently take to following Brianna or I as we move about the shed and yard.

More Surprise Lambs

Early Sunday morning, I woke to find 2 new lambs: a black ram lamb that was totally dry and sleeping peacefully in the corner guarded by his mom Tess, and a tiny black & white ewe lamb, still a bit wet with apparently no mother. I scrambled to check the other mothers to see who else may have given birth, but I couldn't see anything yet, so I shuffled to put Tess in a lambing pen with the 2 lambs to see how things would go. The black ram lamb was much bigger and was sleeping contentedly in a corner, but the wee little black and white Katmoget ewe lamb was up and trying to nurse from Tess, who was not overly interested. She kept knocking her down. I trapped all the other girls to examine them more thoroughly, because Tess was acting like she'd only given birth to 1 lamb, but I could find no other mother that could be this little ewe's mom. Tess had to be her mother. I went into the lambing pen and tried cornering Tess to nurse this crying lamb. She'd let her nurse when I was there. I came to the conclusion that Tess had the black ram lamb first and quite a while later, gave birth to the little ewe lamb, but since this was her first set of twins, she wasn't used to having 2, so she figured that's not mine. I kept them in the lambing pen for over 2 days and eventually, she realized that they are both hers and she'd better take care of them, because I can't have any bottle lambs this year. I've named the ram lamb Cee Lo and the ewe lamb Gwyneth...Glee fans will know what that's all about.

Other surprise is that, once again, that isn't a breeding from the expected ram. Although Tess was in with the ram and was never from what I can gather in with Felicity. They both appear to have been bred by one of my ram lambs from last year, and likely not the one that got Felicity. The ram mysteries deepen and I'm so confused as to how this may have happened and why I'm so unaware of it all.

Above is a picture of the first lamb enjoying the outdoors now. Brianna has renamed her. She is now called Ginger, because of her colouring and her cheeky personality. She's a sweetie and comes for petting.