It’s a Girl!
April 30th, 2014 · 1 Comment · Posted in farming
With an udder bright pink and swollen almost to bursting, the ewe we call Hannah on Monday looked more than a little pregnant. I’ll bet she gives birth soon, I told my wife. She was so big, I was convinced she was carrying twins.
The next morning, this is what I found inside the pen in the walk-in shelter: Hannah with a big, healthy, bouncing ewe lamb. She must have some recessive genes in her background, because she’s black as night, while mom and dad are pure white. We’re calling her Grace.
Even from a distance, as I was walking feed to the paddock, I could see Grace–something dark–bobbing up and down in the pen. Apparently, the birth was trouble-free. The little lamb was all cleaned up, on her feet and nursing. Mom, meanwhile, was making low, guttural sounds in the lamb’s direction–apparently expressing approval, disapproval or reassurance. Or maybe she was just concerned, constantly nudging and licking her little girl.
We haven’t had to do much of anything to care for the new lamb, other than wash the area around her navel with iodine solution. Soon we’ll be applying a rubber ring to dock–or shorten–her tail.
What a difference from the experience just a few days earlier with the ewe Salina giving birth to sickly and underweight twins–the first stillborn, the second alive barely 45 minutes. I haven’t weighed the newest lamb, but I’m guessing she’s twice the size as the ones that died. Methinks this is more than just a nutrition issue, since both mothers were eating exactly the same hay all winter and grazing off the same pastures this spring.
Hannah and the third pregnant ewe–Charlotte–are on a ration of two pounds daily their mix of corn, oats and soy, with an extra boost of pure soy meal for added protein. Needless to say, they go wild when they see the feed bowls coming.
I’d say Charlotte is still some weeks away from lambing. Hopefully she’ll do just as well as her cousin Hannah.
It concerns me that you don’t know how to spell Selena.. Salina? really?