Nineteen lambs

One more week of lambing has resulted in only six more lambs. There are now 19 lambs.  During the past week, three ewes lambed.

Reba (#724), a six year old Katahdin ewe, had her first set of triplets:  two ewe lambs and a ram lamb. They are purebred Katahdins, sired by the new Katahdin ram, Phelps. One lamb is red.  Of course, it's a male. The colored ones are almost always male, especially the red ones.

Reba taking care of her triplets.

Reba's triplets are special to me. A few years ago, I came within fifteen minutes of having my brother shoot Reba, to put her out of her misery. She was suffering from some mysterious ailment and was wasting away to nothing. A little voice told me not to give up on her.  I didn't. Not long after, Reba began eating again and eventually retained her robust body. 

Sugar (#854), a five year old Katahdin ewe, give birth to a gigantic single Mule lamb. This fellow weighed a whopping 15 pounds. I think that is a record for my farm. Despite his size, I don't think the ewe had any difficulty delivering him, and he showed no signs of a difficult birth. He should grow like gangbusters. His mother is a good milker. She had triplets last year.

The fifteen pounder

A four year old Katahdin ewe I call Abby (#9114) gave birth to Spooner's first lambs, twin ewes. One is solid white. The other has the black markings and hooves common to the dam and her sire (Lincoln).  These will be nice ewe lambs to keep or sell, as the dam is an excellent milker and has a double-A hair coat.

If it was up to me, all of Spooner's offspring would be female and most of B-ear's would be male.  A 50-50 mix of Katahdins would suit.

Twin Katahdin ram lamb

Today, I re-arranged the barn a bit, to get more of the ewes and lambs into mixing pens. The lambs can't wait to get into a larger pen so they can run and play and make new friends. Of course, they also quickly learn that the other ewes will butt them, so it's a little scary at first for them.