Tuesday 29 March 2016

The Babies are Arriving

Lambing kicked off early, thanks to Grumpy Ewe. I was just off to feed the horse before my evening shift at the pub, and I looked over into the sheep field and saw Grumpy ewe stood alone, pawing at the ground. And her water bag was already visible.

She has yet to deliver a lamb without help, so I called work and told them I was running late. I threw a waterproof suit over my work clothes and tried to help Grumpy deliver her lamb. She of course ran off, because, you know, we don't go though this every single year together. Mike lent a hand and we wrangled her into a pen.

Grumpy Ewe only ever has single lambs, and each one is always monstrous, both in size and temperament. I'm grateful she's only produced ram lambs, so at least I can eat them instead of perpetuating her crappy attitude in my flock. It only took a few minutes to help the lamb out, though Grumpy moaned and wailed the entire time. She should get an Oscar for her performances, (or whatever the sheep birthing award equivalent is.)

Meet Gigantor -

I shouldn't have watched a re-run of Night at the Museum over Easter

He's not even a whole day old in this photo. No wonder he came early. He was probably running out of space in there.

Gigantor is fine and I was only a half hour late for work. One down, eighteen to go,

Mike has his hands full with babies too. He found this last week -


The first pheasant egg of the season. Then, on Easter Sunday, we collected this -


Hatching season is already here. Get ready for lots of babies.

5 comments:

me said...

The lamb is beautiful and so are you!

Janice Bendixen said...

Jen, I'd say delivering a ram lamb in 20ish minutes makes both ewe and Her Grumpiness pros! Congratulations and you have 18 more excuses to keep your updates to a minimum. But please do keep us posted. We love photos of spring babies! And our favorite Shepherd, of course! Prayers for a safe, trouble-free lambing season - Janice of Alaska

Pam said...

Holy crap that is a gigantor lamb!! No wonder she has a bad attitude if this is what she has to look forward to birthing every year.
Apparently laying pheasant eggs is contagious-seems everyone jumped on the bandwagon after that first one...
I know blogs are supposedly waning, and I only follow a few now, but yours will be there till the bitter end. The best and the funniest and the most realistic. Well done. Please keep blogging! Wait...do you Instagram??

Jennifer Montero said...

Me - Both Gigantor and I thank you for the compliments!

Janice - I'm waiting for you to start a blog so I can see great photos of Alaska (and hubby's trapline!)

Pam - Grumpy's one saving grace is that she's a very good and protective mother.

That is really nice of you to say that I'm one of the few blogs you read. In fact comments like yours have inspired my next blog post. I don't do Instagram purely out of ignorance and time constraints but my sister bought me a GoPro for Christmas so there will be some vlogs in the future.

The Morrissey said...

I don't know much about lambs other than the cuteness factor but that one looks ginormous even to me! I love your posts even if I don't comment much!