Still coming......we are on a roll now!

Photos sometime. I promise.

I must check the spreadsheet to see what happened today. Before we get to the fun part of lambs....

I ended up cleaning the leans, liming, bedding and moving all the ewes from the jugs to the new pen. PANDEMONIUM ensued. Lambs and ewes acted blind and couldn't find each other in the large pen. As is typical, after a few moments everyone found who they needed and everyone nestled in.

Bright and early at 6am Owl Hill Pranilla (F1 Greyling) gave me a black krunet ram lamb out of Campaign Timothy. I went in to take a nap and when I returned there was a moorit ewe lamb out there as well. They both have 'dog coats' but following what Pranilla had last year for Susan, I have full confidence that these birth coats will shed and change to crimp. These lambs are 87.5% UK.

I've kept the yearlings in a separate paddock all winter. this included the BFL, crosses, mules and shetlands. This morning in that pen were two ewes with single lambs out of the Texel, Champ. The BFL mule had an 8 pound ewe lamb that is probably the cutest thing to have graced this earth. I am unbiased :) One of the Shetland-Cheviot girls gave me a 5 pound ram lamb. He was expired when I found him, so I'm not sure what happened. It doesn't look like he was alive when he was born, according to his position in the straw. He looked kind of preemie so not sure if she was really due today or not. A bummer, but I can't kick myself. I've been so diligent these past few weeks...er...months..of watching and waiting...things like this happen...or are bound to.

After moving the new lambs and moms to clean jugs, I saw that River Oaks Eliza had her water break. Moving her in to a waiting jug, she started to push. And push. And push. There were two legs and a nose. The lamb was BREATHING through the nose and was choking from all the fluid coming out of her vulva. She was not progressing and I ended up pulling a massive MASSIVE huge ram lamb. I haven't weighed him yet but guess he is over 10 pounds. He is also a Campaign Timothy lamb. Jet black. As has been typical of the Timothy lambs, they seem to also have this 'dog coat' that I hope sheds out. This ram has the largest horn buds of the year so far. He's been slow to get going, in part to the traumatic start he got. I've also found in cattle the largest calves have a harder time getting up on their feet and nursing. Eliza is being a constant eye and enabler.

After their evening meal, Justalit'l Chloe was acting 'fishy' and I jugged her and sat down. Sure enough, her water bag passed and she produced me a fawn moget-face ewe and a fawn katmoget ram. For those wondering 'moget-faced' means Ag Katmoget. Chloe was bred to her Grandfather, Shirehill Minder for a linebreeding. Their birth coats to me seem funky. I'm not sure how i feel about them. I had originally wanted to breed her to Orion, but since she is homozygous katmoget I would only get katmogets. This made sense to do a line breeding and since I have loved everything else she has produced I'm going to wait and see what these kids turn out like. I haven't had an Ag katmoget since my beloved Jasmine Phoenix and I told Chloe I wanted another moget face. I'm so glad she listened.

That's five today. I still have 9 ewes bred to AI that are due on or around April 5th. I have five 'close' ewes that could go from ground breedings at any time. That's 16 that are due for sure before the middle of next week, oh plus a few of the crosses. It looks as though I'll have 9-10 ewes that were caught by the clean up rams, due in two weeks. I'm tired thinking about it.

Happy Easter to those who celebrate. My day will be spent playing trumpet at church in the morning, lunch with the extended family and lots of lamb watch. I have several that look like they'll greet me in the morning with lambs :)