Friday, April 6, 2012

Ups and Downs of Lambing :) :(

    Well the up today was that my ewe Sunshine had twin lambs; one female moorit with white on her head and one male all moorit in color.  Both are very nice looking and the female, that we named Holly, is staying here.  Her brother, Kola, will be up for sale.  He has some significant horn buds that is genetic from his dam's side but his sire is Titus who is button polled.  
      The down side is that when I found them this morning they were on one side of the pasture while their mother was on the other side.  We had rain last night so I think that she lost their scent and was not able to form an attachment.  So I dried them off and made a jug to put them in.  I took care of the babies and tried to get them to nurse from their mother. She is not overly friendly so you can image the task I had.  I was able to position her into a corner while trying to help the babies find their dinner plate. 
     So I've ended up using some 'Save-A-Lamb' milk replacer and powdered colostrum to give them a bottle every 3-4 hours today.  I've kept her with them and they have been able to nurse at times when I've held her still otherwise she would move away from them or kick them out of the way.  I can see it's going to be a long weekend and even longer next few weeks.  Please keep us in your prayers that these lambies make it and I can see this through for them. 

3 comments:

  1. I would say that your ram lamb inherited two horned-ram genes and will be fully horned. How are they doing now? (Trying to catch up on my blog reading.)

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  2. Voni,
    How are the lambs doing and how did the weekend go?

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  3. The lambs did great over the weekend. My mom and dad offered to take them to her house to care for them since I work 12hr shifts during the week and my husband has other things on his 'plate' that I did not want to burden him more. So my mom/dad's 'grand' lambs are doing great. I'll probably get them over the weekend for a couple of days, then have to take them back to my parents.
    Michelle--yes he inherited the horn gene and with him being bottle fed I'll probably wether him. The little girl is a darling and I'll be keeping her. Probably will be selling their dam to someone that just wants a fiber pet. I don't want to go through this again with her.

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