We have lambs! We had six, but tragically lost one this very morning. A ram lamb, from our only set of twins, jumped in the water pail. In the fifteen years of sheep farming that I had done in the past, I had never had this happen. I followed all the rules and used a tall sided pail with the bedding much below the lip of the pail, but on the farm you can never prevent all accidents. Hopefully this will give his twin sister a leg up. She (the other lamb of the set of twins) was in need of rescue herself. Being the only set of twins in our small flock, our yearling ewe was having a difficult time caring for both lambs. The ewe ended up abandoning her ewe lamb in favor of caring for the ram lamb, which left the ewe lamb quite hungry. I tried an old trick that we had used in the past and rubbed the placenta on the ewe lamb and placed all three, the ewe and her twins, in a jug. All looked well, until this morning.
However, the rest of the flock is doing quite well. All the lambs look fat already; and at only a week old! The only bad news there is that we have (barring the little twin ewe) an entire ram lamb crop. Which makes growing our flock through our breeding a little difficult. No matter, the sale of these ram lambs should help us buy some more purebred ewes.
Speaking of purebreds, Rush's lamb has been named Robb after George RR Martin's character from his book series "A Song of Ice and Fire". He is our only white lamb. It appears our "Bucky" throws his black color, which is very exciting.
Charlie has been helping me herd our small flock and I am working on getting him to respond to commands to move around the fence perimeter. However, he is also the cause of my delayed shearing. He got a little overexcited "herding" our ram and took chase. Upon my calling him to me, he ignored the command. So, I then began the chase for my dog. All of this chasing ended abruptly as I stepped around the corner of a building and my shin had an untimely meeting with Bucky's head. This encounter resulted in me going to the clinic for x-rays. No broken bones were discovered, but I have a nice goose-egg and one heck of a bruise to show for my efforts.

This lambing season has been eventful, to say the least. Still, we are five healthy lambs to the positive, with a pasture full of green grass. Who cannot be optimistic.

Joe