KitKat, Poppy.... and their lambs!

A comment on a recent post asked whether KitKat had lambed. Oh my goodness! I have been remiss!! Not only did I miss blogging about KitKat's lambs, I also didn't blog about Poppy's lamb. Despite my heartache over Bramble, it is only right to give all my lambs their place in the blog! So this post is about dear KitKat and Poppy and their beautiful babies.

First, I must give credit. Those beautiful photographs of the fawn from my previous post were in fact taken by my father, and not by me. I should have said so in the post, but got so caught up in my recounting of the fawn's story that I forgot. My Dad is a wonderful photographer and has always had an eye for capturing life with the lens. Many thanks to him for those great shots!

KitKat, our moorit Icelandic sheep, had been enormous, as some of you will remember from earlier posts. The shearer was sure she would have triplets, but Lorraine of Hedge Apple Farm said that KitKat had been enormous the previous year, and had only had twins, so she suspected the same would happen. Sure enough, Lorraine was right. On May 2, right on target, KitKat gave birth to two beautiful moorit ram lambs.

I wasn't there for the birth - she must have lambed very early in the morning. By the time I went out to the pasture at 7:30 or so, they were there to greet me. They were active and playful, and HUGE! While I didn't actually weigh them, they were certainly bigger than Sven when he was born, and he was over 8 pounds, so I would say they were probably 9 plus pounds. They were also very "advanced" in their behavior. Even though they were still wet from birth, they were running and jumping with the rest of the lambs already. None of our other lambs had been so precocious from the start. I was amazed at their agility just hours from birth.
They are both moorit, but one of them has the "sugar lips" coloring (it looks like he dipped his lips in sugar because there is grey/white fur around his mouth) which indicates he will carry the grey trait like his mother, which makes their coat a little lighter colored. The other one appears to be solid moorit and doesn't appear to carry the grey trait. In the picture below, the front one is the solid moorit, and the back one is the grey carrier.
We named them Wellington and Napoleon. They have done very well so far and are growing strong and healthy.

Poppy is our dear little Suffolk-Dorset-Rambouillet cross ewe. She is such a friendly and interactive sheep, and she loves head and neck rubs. She is a first time mom this spring and gave birth to an adorable little ewe lamb sired by our Icelandic ram, Blizzard. Here is Poppy with her lamb laying down to the left.
Little Cream Puff is a 4-way cross, born earlier this week! What a fleece she will have! Her fleece appears to be quite long already so she definitely got some fleece genes from Blizzard! She has such long legs that she looks a little bit too tall right now, but she will grow into her leg length with time!

Poppy is mostly grey with some areas darker and some areas lighter...
... but little Cream Puff is all white except for some black around her nose and eyes, and she has the most adorable ears, ever!!
It looks like both ears were dipped in milk chocolate, but only part way up!
I find this genetically fascinating. Both ears match perfectly, and the line where the brown ends is so well defined. The interesting thing is that neither Blizzard nor Poppy show any of that light brown colour at all, except Poppy shows a little brown on her back legs, but it's quite dark brown. This suggests that Blizzard might carry the Icelandic "spotting" trait, I think. Maybe some Icelandic experts will hop in and confirm or eliminate that thought.

Cream Puff is already making friends with the other lambs!

As the sun sets here on Whispering Acres, I am thankful for all the little lives we have shared this spring, even those who were with us only briefly. What a wonderful first lambing season we have had!