HannaMae Saved the Lamb

About a month ago, we had a surprise lamb in late May.  He came from a yearling ewe that we had previously thought had lost her lamb.  Just like her mother, Penny gave no signs of being pregnant and dropped her first lamb with nothing more than the bleat of a baby to announce it's own arrival.

The afternoon that Penny dropped her lamb, Jason moved the sheep, as planned, into a pasture that encompassed a section of the creek running through the farm.  We have a small bridge spanning the creek but as the creek is not very wide, it is common for the sheep to simply hop the creek to get where they're going.

Being a first-time mom, Penny had yet to learn what her baby could and could not yet do.  While Penny had no problem hopping the creek, her toddling lamb still wasn't quite strong enough and ended up hopping into the creek instead.

HannaMae watched Penny's lamb try to follow it's mother and when she saw the lamb fall into the creek, she ran to her Papa who she knew could save the lamb.  After a moment of translating "the lamb is bubbling!" into "the lamb is in the creek!"  Jason took off for the creek.  He threw himself on the ground and pulled the lamb from the water.  a moment of inspection determined the lamb to be fine and he gently tossed the lamb across he creek to his mother.

The lamb had indeed been bubbling, being able to only get his nose above the water about half of his jumps.  Being spring the water in the creek easily runs several feet deep and had HannaMae not seen the lamb, he may have very well been lost.

Three cheers for HannaMae!  Who still will begin telling you some version of how she saved the lamb whenever she gets the chance!

Lambs 2011

Hooray!  Our first two lambs arrived this weekend!  We don't know which of our two rams are the sire this year because life got a little too crazy last fall and we didn't do separate breeding pastures.  So any that I wish to register with the JSBA this year can't be any higher than FF (Foundation Flock).  Not a terrible loss since the ones we bought last spring are all there anyways.  Next year we will do some more testing as far as what the ram's genes look like, Abe especially.

But, so far it looks like we've got good genes on at least the ewe's side!

#1 comes from one of our newly-bought ewes.  Her four horns are gorgeously set and she's nicely spotted.  Her little ram lamb is also.  He also has 3-4 horn buds as far as I can tell as yet.


 #2 came from a Khatadin-Jacob crossed ewe lamb.    Except for the eye split in one of his left eyes, he's also very nice looking as far as the Jacob genes are concerned.  In fact, the only reason I might know him to be 1/4 Khatadin would be if he was polled!  I'm not sure where the gene causing the eye split came from: mama, grandma, Abe or Tierny.  My most likely suspect I think may be from his mother's dam but I don't know who that is anymore.  No matter what, he sure is cute!

Well, I expect to post more lamb updates this week!  I'll be going to go check on them again later tonight because there was one yearling who was showing signs of labor earlier. 

So Far, so good!  *knock on wood!*