Adorables

Having waited and waited for our own bottle reared lamb (who is now 2) to have her lambs, we are suddenly over-run with them.

Shouty managed to have 2 beautiful little girls lambs all by herself last weekend. I like to think she waited for me to be there as she had them on my afternoon off work. I had just been up to feed all the sheep and goats as usual, but after she'd waddled over for a feed I kept an eye on her as she was hanging out amongst the trees.

She had been spending more time lying down lately because she is just so huge, but the longer I watched I realised the day had come at last.

So wonderful to be able to watch all the stages come - and finally see a jet black headed lamb shake its ears and within 5 minutes be up and toddling around looking for food.  Shouty cleaned her lamb and put it safely in some shelter, then got on with having the other twin. Both so strong - what a relief!  I have been reading and re-reading 'A manual of lambing techniques' by Agnes Withers & Cecily Hill, but some of the mis-presentations and awful complications explained in there are just plain scarey.  At one point I did wonder whether Shouty had been in labour for longer than I had been watching, so tried to lend a hand, but to be honest I think I just put her off her stride. She got up and walked away so was obviously ok and within 10 minutes she was straining from the contractions and doing everything herself just fine.

Then the next day this lot arrived:

Our friendly school bus driver Peter had developed an orphan situation where 6 lambs were feeding off 2 Ewes. As sheep only have 2 teets, this was clearly not sustainable. But knowing that we are always keen to take on bottle feeding lambs, he gave us 4 - 3 boys and 1 girl - and we have partitioned the polytunnel to accomodate them. This way if anyone else wants to offer us more orphans we can just add them into the pile!

 I have to say I am completely smitten with them and I'm getting to know which is which now too.

We have numbered our home born lambs, to match their mothers numbering. Then the orphans are 'O' and a number to identify them:
O1 is the girl, she is a blackface and even though she is the smallest she drinks the quickest and sticks up for herself when they're jostling for sleeping positions.

O2 was my first love - he was the most alive at first, trying to feed from our armpits and jumped up at us in excitement.  He was the first to start the sniffing...!

O3 is the biggest and slowest and on day 4 he has only just learnt how to suck from the bottle. But finally he is keen to sniff...

O4 is the smallest boy but like O1 he is cheeky and sprightly.

The blackfaces (1,2 & 4) have such little black triangular heads, with a big forehead and little black nose.
They have first experienced the world through smell and taste with little tiny licks and nibbles. To be set upon by a 4 headed sniffing machine is quite an experience, the boys have taken to calling them Hydra!

Today at last O3 has come to life a bit and is joining in the sensationing - the crofters here say Cheviot lambs are 'lazy' - he has definitely been slower than the others and he is a Cheviot/Blackface cross so there must be some truth in it.  The sniffing was like a craze that they have all gone through, getting to know us and becoming confident we are friends.

Their sight doesn't seem to have developed completely yet, which is all quite like human babies when they first are born.

I don't thinking giving them numbers instead of names has helped to de-humanise them though, I am still smitten.  From the 4 orphans we had last time, only Shouty is still alive, so I know they have a habit of dropping dead for no reason - I guess this is why they are orphans, nature selected them to be rejected.
But while we have them they are adorable, so we'll just make the most of that.