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Here it is, now 12 days since the last lamb was born! So much catching up to do…on the farm, in the wool-room, in all aspects of our lives…and on our neglected blog. This post is something of a photo gallery, but only a smattering of the photos taken…more to come.

All the ewes and lambs are out in the winter pen (the pastures still haven’t grown enough for grazing), and there are wild lamb races morning and evening. Sweet mothers, so attached to their lambs at this stage, worrying about them, calling to them. We stand and watch spellbound; chores take much longer than usual these days!

Our eyes are always drawn to Hope’s little katmoget fellow, who is right in there with the larger lambs, running and playing. He was the tiniest of her triplets (born weighing 2#13oz), but is one of the most rowdy lambs we have. Hope is such a good mother; this is a typical scene…she gathers her two ramlings up, and puts them down in an out-of-the-way place for naps.

Raven is raising the third lamb, a beautiful little musket ewe….photos soon.

Sheltering Pines Plein Jeu gave birth to the darkest katmoget we have ever seen, but this is our first kat from UK genetics; we don’t have a standard of comparison. So far our katmogets have been from Dailley lines (this year, Hope’s kat ram and two others are of this breeding). Photos of Vega’s ewe-lamb (by Cedar Haven Maximillian) and Sylva’s ram-lamb (by our Willym) later in another post.

Jeu’s girl is a Maximillian daughter; her fleece is lovely, but her ears are still a bit rumpled…she was a very big girl and Jeu had no room to spare:

Sula’s lambs are exquisite (as usual), with more luster than we have ever seen. They are visible from across the paddock, even in a large group of lambs; they positively glow! What a perfect cross with Constantine…sadly not to be repeated as Sula is retiring this year.

A bit of comic relief: Runa (one of Constantine & Towhee’s girls) isn’t the first lamb who has ever climbed on Amelia’s back (she does truly love the lambs). But this went on for nearly 10 minutes, lots of jumping and pawing….much too much for even the kindest soul. Amelia ultimately rolled over and suggested that Runa leave!

Leah’s ewe-lambs are growing fast and her musket gulmoget girl is changing color almost daily. She is indeed spotted, but soon her musket-self will dominant…and she will turn light all over. Such fun that she will still carry the gulmoget pattern, and can pass it on (plus her gorgeous fleece) to her lambs one day.

No post would be complete without a photo of Grace. So sedate and MUCH too grown up to play with the other lambs, but she has made friends with Leah’s quiet little girls.

More sweetness: I found Sheltering Pines Viole Conique’s and Maximillian’s little twins all cuddled together one day in the nursery….so beautiful!

Last but not least: The lambs seem to know that the tiny blades of grass just outside the fence are important to them….heads through the fence every day, but no-one gets caught. Thank goodness we used the little brass lamb-tags this year!

I love the rear view!

Spring is here (more or less)…the other day, we had 4 inches of new snow, but by afternoon it was gone again. Thank goodness! I love snow; I love winter, but for goodness sake, it is April. The sheep should be grazing soon; we need bright sun and maybe a bit of warm rain.

The good news is that all our lambs have been born now! The week of April 3 began with 5 lambs on the ground, but over the next 8 mostly sleepless days and nights, 23 more lambs came into our lives in fairly rapid succession. At one point, we had 10 lambing jugs (pens) filled with moms and babes.

But now, the jug panels have been removed except for one housing Plein Jeu and her little katmoget ewe-lamb. Tomorrow they will join the few ewes and lambs left in the nursery area; the others will go outside to become part of the melee of lost lambs and anxious mothers…

Outside, Poppy and Amelia are such good guardiennes, and always come over to greet their new charges….Amelia (in particular) loves the little lambs and often lets them climb on her.

All of the lambs have nice uniform fleeces and good conformation…some really truly exceptional ones in this group. It is going to be so hard to create a lamb sales list!

Lambing stats this year:

28 lambs, 17 ewes, 11 rams
9 sets of twins, 1 set of triplets, 7 singles
9 gulmoget ewes (6 black, 2 moorit, 1 musket)
1 gulmoget ram (black)
2 katmoget ewes
2 katmoget rams
8 solids/ blacks or moorits
4 Ag/ greys or muskets

And now to sleep, dreaming of….lambs!!

I tried to write a post on Saturday, but never finished it. Lambs have been coming too fast. That morning, we found a ewe in labor….not Sula, not Bess, not Eva.

It was Leah, who hadn’t even been on my short list of ewes due now! Leah seemed disturbed by the other sheep being out, likely because a lamb that she had focused on in her mother-mind had gone from the barn. She baa-ed and fretted, and labor was stuttering. But eventually she gave birth to a BIG strong ewe-lamb. She weighed just under 8 pounds, but looks even bigger than that!

What a beauty! She is Constantine’s daughter, and so is gulmoget, but her fleece is multi-hued. I think that she will prove to be a musket like her mother. We can’t tell yet if the light and dark patches are spotting (Leah does carry spots).

An hour later, after we had settled her and her single lamb in the jug, Leah surprised us with another lamb…a nice size moorit ewe!

Saturday afternoon, Eva gave us ram/ewe twins, sired by Nicolas.

Then dear Sula finally settled down to lamb…

She faded a bit and her labor was not strong, but she got through it all with lots of support from CMPK and TLC from us. This will be her last lambing….but at 11 and after giving us many exceptional lambs over the years, she deserves to retire. Sula ended her career with two typically beautiful lambs…an 8 pound black ram-lamb and a 7 1/2 pound black gulmoget ewe-lamb. There weren’t any others in there…just these two…looking three weeks old!!!

Sunday morning, Raven had a black gully ewe lamb. (Photos later.)

A few hours after that, Hope lambed too. To my eye, she had looked as though she might have twins this year.

She had triplets, sired by Willym. A fawn katmoget ram-lamb, a moorit ram-lamb and a moorit ewe-lamb. The little ewe was the most vigorous of the group, so we put her with Raven in the next jug. Hope didn’t notice that she had only two lambs left, and Raven adopted the ewe-lamb immediately. Hope thinks that her “twins” are beautiful….and Raven and her two ewe-lambs are a study in mother-love.

Here I sit awake in the middle the night (early Monday morning). Dolce just had the first of Maximilian’s lambs. She is a first time mom, but morphed quickly into a focused, fiercely protective mother. Her lamb was up and nursing in no time. I only had 45 minutes in the barn…arranging a jug, things are crowded, getting her electrolyte water and hay, and reorganizing sheep to keep others out of the nursery (where Bess is supposed to be getting on with it)!

SHE, not Dolce, was the one I was listening for on the intercom. I am still listening…Bess is baa-ing, baa-ing, and Sylva doesn’t look that far away from lambs. So bed is likely not a possibility!

The most likely candidates: Bess and Eva….and Sula (yes, Sula we ARE still waiting!) She has hardly been able to walk for days now, lambs have dropped, and she chews her cud. Egads! How big will these lambs be when they are born?

On the other hand, lambing has moved along in the past few days…so far 1/3 of the ewes have lambed (10 lambs..4 sets of twins and 2 singles. 7 ewe-lambs and 3 ram-lambs (THIS, by the way, is too good to be true…the statistics will catch up with us). The three youngest lambs were born in the past 24 hours….last night, Maude gave us a little moorit son by Nicolas. And this morning, Prima (aka Premonition) had two gorgeous Nickel ewe-lambs. (Photos later…seems I am always at least two ewes behind).

I guess that Willym’s and Maximillian’s ewes are still waiting for “real” spring weather (it has been cold and windy lots of nights lately). But so far, 3 of Constantine’s ewes have lambed (5 more to go). Each of them has had a gulmoget ewe-lamb, and 2 of these little gully girls have had a moorit twin.

Grace, of course, needed no twin to celebrate her birth! SHE herself was enough…or so she believes!

The barnyard report: Ursula and her twins have gone out with the other sheep…her little ram-lamb wants desperately to play with SOMEONE…anyone. It won’t be long until there will be lots of playmates!

His little sister is much lighter than Grace; I am wondering if she is a modified gulmoget…Ursula is shaela, so there is a chance….

In the larger inside pen, soon to go out are Towhee and her little twin ewes…I couldn’t get great photos indoors, but here is a preliminary one:

Note that Towhee is consoling herself with hay…she had a rough morning. When the others went outside, (although her lambs were only a little over a day old), Towhee decided that she had had enough jug-time…she wanted OUT, and tried to crawl out between the boards of the barn dividers (read: old milking stanchions). If only I had had the camera! Needless to say, she didn’t fit, and has deigned to stay in with her lambs for one more day….(the shepherdess says two more).

I will post more photos soon…the date on this note is 4/5/08, but as I write, it is still Friday night. Oh well, in lambing season, I seldom know what time it is anyway!

Grace was born just over 2 weeks ago, and since no one else has lambed in this time, Grace (the Princess) has been the only lamb in the flock…she has grown so fast:

Pavane, her mother, is protective and indulgent, and Grace has become very self-confident, and quite full of herself!

Then last week, Moonstruck and Nicolas gave us twins with the fleeces that we were hoping for from that cross. Because of Moonstruck’s history of being ultra-protective of her lambs, the trio came out of the jug and went into a cordoned off part of the lambing barn for a few days. Recently they joined the other sheep outside. Moonstruck is so very happy and behaving perfectly…she keeps her lambs with her and doesn’t worry about anything else:

We have a handsome musket ram-lamb:

And a beautiful grey ewe-lamb:

There are splashes of white on their heads, but of the sort that will almost certainly go away as they grow. But they do carry spots, and with fleeces like that, we are well pleased…spots or not.

And in the barnyard social scene: Now Ursula’s lambs are outside too (photos of them next time), and Grace is fascinated. But when Moonstruck’s lambs wanted to play with her, Grace ran the other way! She has no “lamb” files…doesn’t know what those little bouncy things are!

THAT won’t last long….

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More later…off to see if Sula is lambing now. Today must be the day!