I usually sleep in on the weekends and John gets up to feed the animals. But this morning they were noisy at 7:30. I could hear rain on the roof and I knew they were out there wondering when breakfast would be served. So I put on boots and coat and wandered over. All the sheep were standing outside the stall, under cover. Melissa was in the stall with two newly born lambs.
The lambs seemed relatively dry and good sized. It was easy to get Melissa into the lambing pen, which had been set up with fresh straw and water yesterday after Clarissa and her lamb were released. Once in the pen, I checked the lambs, dipped their navels in iodine, and weighed them, The boy weighed 10 lb 12 oz, and the girl 9 lb 11 oz. They are a peaceful trio.
Later in the day: It has been raining steadily, but most of the sheep went up the hill to graze anyway. When I looked into the barn, the mothers and their lambs were resting in the stall, keeping Melissa and her babies company in the pen nearby. Ruth, who seems likely to be the next to deliver, was the only other sheep in the barn. We wonder if there will be any colored lambs this year. Last year all had white wool, leading us to think perhaps Robert does not have a recessive gene for color that could combine with Ruth and Raven’s color genes to produce dark lambs. Stay tuned….