Last Lambs of March

Hooray!  Leslie finally had her lambs yesterday - Friday morning.  I didn't have time to post about them yesterday but I'm catching up now.  She had two beautiful lambs - a white ram lamb and a black ewe lamb.

Each lamb weighed 10.5 lbs, which is a good, solid weight compared to a couple of the earlier lambs.  I was really pleased to see them both up and around when I went into the barn yesterday.  Once again though, there was one lamb inside the pen, and another lamb outside the pen.  More levitation?  Who knows?!

I think that the lambs squeezed out that separation I showed in Thursday's post, but I am still surprised by that.  Why they would want to leave Leslie's side is beyond me - she has the biggest udder ever!  Here's the little ram lamb trying to find it...what a long tail he has!  We need to dock tails soon.

Leslie's udder has actually posed a bit of a problem.  You see, such a large udder with such large teats is a challenge for lambs with small mouths.  Not only that, but the teats are very low to the ground, so the lambs have to lower themselves onto their "knees" to be able to nurse.  Kelly didn't have to work  yesterday, so he kept an eye on them all day, and not once did he see them nursing.  He saw them nosing around her udder along the sides, and doing the classic "head butt" that lambs do to their mothers' udders, but they simply weren't finding the teats.  When I came home from work, I helped put them on the teats while he held Leslie, but even so, the lambs did not stay on for long because it was such an awkward angle.

Enter the Udderly EZ Milker!  I don't usually do "product endorsements" on this blog, but I have to say that this tool is a really useful and convenient addition to my little bag of farm tricks.  I would recommend it to anyone who may need to milk a sheep or goat on a regular basis, but who doesn't want the hefty price tag of a full milking system.  The hand-held pump just slips over the teat, the user pumps with a lever a few times, and a vacuum is created.  The milk begins to flow into an attached bottle and when the flow subsides, one just pumps another time or two.  It's incredibly easy as long as the animal will stay still, or is being held.

Once I had milked out Leslie, her udder was smaller and the teats were higher up, enabling the lambs to nurse more easily.  I hope they will get the idea now, so that even if her udder fills heavily, they know where to find the milk.  We did feed the lambs the milked out portion because it shouldn't go to waste, and they eagerly took it from a bottle.

Oooh look!  A one-headed, two-bodied lamb!  Haha!

I do believe that Leslie's ewe lamb has some silvering on her back.  Perhaps you can see it in the picture below?  Since I am still new to the blue-faced Leicester breed, I'm not sure how that will look as she gets older, but I'm hoping it will make a lovely fleece for spinning.

In other very positive news, the little tiny lamb is doing very well indeed.  She has gone from 4 lb 11 oz (Tuesday) to 6 lb 1 oz (Friday night) and instead of her tiny, tentative steps that she had for the first couple of days, she now is able to run and prance!  She's not as active as the larger house-lamb yet, but she is making great strides.  I am so pleased with her progress.