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Every year in my organization of lambing supplies, I include a bag of milk replacer. We almost never use it, or if we do, only for a supplemental bottle to a newborn whose mother’s milk is slow coming in.

In 10 years of shepherding, we have never had a bottle lamb! Until now…and unfortunately, the lamb is a little ram. More unfortunately, he now knows that I am the source of the milk!

He is a 3 weeks old fellow who apparently was nursing only on one side, and that functional teat became plugged, and can’t be kept open. We found him looking hunched up and weak a couple of nights ago at evening chores, caught up the mother and lamb, and gave him a bottle. He inhaled it! He was obviously hungry, and dehydrated..by today, he is feeling very chipper.

Although there is no evidence of masitis, we are treating her for it, and keeping the pair confined until we can either resolve the issue, or be sure that the lamb is focused on the bottle for his nourishment. Perhaps we can get him nursing from a bucket, but we don’t dare leave it hanging for long on these near-100º days.

The ewe is a first-timer who is such a good mother (no one is cuddling in these hot temperatures), and she is very important to our flock genetics. AND this lamb was line-bred as a grand-daughter to grandfather pairing for their especially fine soft fleeces…darn!

I doubt that even ToughLove can save a bottle-boy from wetherdom. But we will take it a day at a time…maybe this will be a temporary situation.

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It is haying time!!! After weeks of dry weather, we have hay cut and baled….and no surprise, the clouds moved in! Yesterday afternoon, we could see rain and lightening flashes in the mountains. But it didn’t rain here…and Brook has been bringing in load after load of sweet smelling hay with the bale wagon. And for the first time, we are stacking it under cover in the new hay barn…no more leaky hay tarps!

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On to NEW LOVES:

Last week Brook drove to meet Mona Lisa Pettersson who brought our new sheep from Sheltering Pines. These beauties are sheep that Stephen just recently came to terms with selling (it wasn’t easy for him, I am sure). Last fall, I had made him promise that if he EVER decided to sell his lovely moorit gulmoget ram, Constantine, he would sell him to us.

Constantine now graces our pastures…and leapt into my heart!
What a sweet soul…

He is sharing a pasture now with the other sheep we “stole” from Stephen:

This is Plein Jeu, a yearling spotted katmoget ewe. When I first heard that someone had bred a spotted katmoget, I scoffed and wondered what was the point of that??? BUT Plein Jeu demonstrates the point perfectly…all that genetics (spots, kat pattern, & horns) wrapped up into one beautiful ewe.

The second yearling who came home last week is the fulfillment of a dream….I fell in love with a photo that Stephen posted last July…and kept it, although at the time, I didn’t know why:

And when Stephen offered this ewe to us, I was thrilled to find that it was Viole Conique herself…that same little lamb:

As a last blessing, the regal Moonstruck has come to spend the rest of her life with us…she will be bred only once or twice more, and then live the pampered life of an older Auntie:

Hmmm…what was that about “flock reduction”?

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