The past few months have been so fun on our farm because we finally have lambs! We’ve been waiting for this for a few years now. We thought that we would end up with about 3 lambs this year… instead we ended up with 7!
On April 1st, around 5:00 pm, Porter came running into the house saying that Greta had lambs! I totally didn’t believe him and thought that he was trying to play an April Fools joke on me. I didn’t believe him because Greta wasn’t even pregnant… or so we thought. haha. When we put the rams with the ewes back in November, we intentionally put Greta in a different pasture with the wethers because she wasn’t even a year old yet and we didn’t want to breed her yet because breeding too young has higher risks of the pregnancy/birth having complications and the ewe not being as good of a mother to her lambs.
Well, it turns out that one of our rams (most likely Hans) probably jumped 2 the electric fences across two pastures, bred Greta, and then jumped back into his pasture, all without us ever knowing it. Porter wasn’t joking. Greta really did have lambs. And they were soooo adorable! They were on the smaller side but perfectly healthy and Greta has been a great mom and took really good care of them. She had a little badger face ewe lamb first. We named her Ester (after my great grandmother’s sister). And she had a little piebald ram lamb second. We named him Enoch (after my great grandmother’s brother). We absolutely loved cuddling with them that first evening. Lambs are incredibly adorable and sweet and soft.
The next morning (April 2nd), we came outside to check on Greta and her lambs. After doing that, I looked around in the pasture and noticed that Cecelia had given birth to a little white (who had a brown tint to her wool) lamb! I was pretty sure that she would have at least one more so we all just hung out quietly in the pasture, watching and waiting. Around 7:30 am, as the sun was coming up, Cecelia gave birth to a little black lamb. It was such a special experience to witness the lambing. After closer inspection, I discovered that the white lamb was a ewe. We named her Wilhelmina (Mina for short), after my great-great-great grandmother. The little black lamb was a ram. We named him Anker, after my great-great-great-great grandfather’s middle name.
For about the next week, we loved spending a lot of time in the sheep shelter cuddling the lambs. I just couldn’t get enough of them. Having lambs born on our farm made me feel like an official shepherdess. I was so grateful that the births had gone well and the ewes hadn’t needed any assistance from me. Although I was prepared with supplies, just in case. I was also grateful that Greta and Cecelia had plenty of milk and were nursing their little lambs well. I was especially pleasantly surprised that Greta was doing so well since she was a really young first time mom. She had just barely turned 1 year old a couple weeks before she gave birth.
We were about to leave on a trip to Hawaii and were really hoping that Thilda would hurry up already and give birth! … but she didn’t. I just hoped and prayed that everything would go well with her lambing since we would be out of town and my friend would be watching over our farm. I set up a camera in the shelter just so I could keep an eye on her. … a couple days after we got to Hawaii, I was about to go to bed and decided to check the shelter camera. I saw a little lamb walking around in Thilda’s stall… at first I thought it was one of Greta or Cecelia’s lambs that had escaped through the gate because it hadn’t been closed tightly enough (that had happened before). I was worried that this little lamb would have to go all night without being with it’s mom, until my friend would wake up the next morning and go check on them. … but then I saw that all 4 lambs were already in the stall with Greta and Cecelia. So that could only mean one thing… Thilda had given birth! After watching the camera footage I saw that she had triplets! There appeared to be a badgerface lamb, black lamb, and white lamb. The white lamb didn’t look like it was doing as well. It just seemed to be less active and energetic than the other two. I was worried about it so I texted my friend, even though I knew that she was asleep because it was the middle of the night in Kansas. The lambs had been born around 10 pm Kansas time (April 11th), and I wasn’t even seeing this video footage until a few hours after that. I just asked my friend if she could go over a little bit earlier the next morning than she usually did to check on them and see how they were doing. Then I went to bed. Around 2 am Hawaii time, I woke up and was wondering how the lambs were doing. I picked up my phone to check the camera but before I could even get to the camera app, my phone started ringing! It was my friend. I couldn’t answer because I didn’t want to wake up Crosby since he was sleeping in the same room as us so I just texted her instead. She told me that it didn’t look like Thilda was interested in feeding much them and the little white one wasn’t eating and was very weak. I asked her if she would try feeding the white one a bottle with the powdered colostrum that I had in the lambing supplies bin. We chatted back and forth throughout the day and things improved. Thilda became more patient and willing for the lambs to nurse. The black and badgerface ones nursed pretty well and my friend continued to feed bottles to the white one. Over the next few days she was able to back off on the bottles more and more as the white one got the hang of nursing as well. I was so grateful that all three survived and except for the close call there at the beginning, they have thrived and Thilda has been a great first time mom. I was completely surprised that she had triplets though. Usually first timers have a singleton, or sometimes twins.
Thilda had 2 ewe lambs (black and white) and 1 ram lamb (badgerface). We named the little black one Emmy (after one of my great great parent’s (Swen and Thilda) daughters). We named the white one Kjerstin (after Swen’s mother, my great great great grandmother). We named the badgerface one Swenson (because he is Swen, the ram’s, son, and my great great grandparents’ last name was Swenson.) He also takes after Swen the ram because they are both badgerface in their coloring.
I was glad that I had set up the camera in the shelter so I could keep an eye on the lambs while we were gone and my friend sent me a few photos and video clips as well.
When we got back from Hawaii we were soooo tired from traveling, but we immediately ran out to the pasture to see the lambs! It was so fun to see the triplets in real life and we were amazed by how much the other lambs had grown in the time that we were gone.
7 lambs for 7 Lopezes. Haha.
