Plenty of Babies

It is easier to get a ewe to follow if you walk ahead of her holding her lamb. This mama was a little reluctant to follow and had to keep being reminded that we had her lamb but she made it up the hill to join everyone else eventually.

We are now up to six kids and three lambs with more on the way. We are locking them in the stable at night but letting them spend the day in a pasture. We laugh at the way they segregate themselves in the pasture with the sheep on one end and the goats on the other. The babies will run around everywhere to play but when it is naptime they all seem to crash on their "appropriate" sides.

We are treating one little buck kid for pneumonia. His mother is not producing enough milk to feed him well so we've been supplementing with a bottle. He sounded a little rattly yesterday so I did start him on meds. He's done fine with his first injections and only has four more to go. He was perkier this morning.

I did have to laugh at myself last night. We had been out with friends and when we got home my goal was to race to the stable, bottle the little guy and get myself to bed. I came in with a bottle, picked up the little white kid and curled it in my lap. I held the bottle out and the kid turned its head. I gently opened its mouth and put the nipple in. The kid spit it out. I was confused as the little fellow had learned so quickly to take a bottle and had been doing nicely for two or three days now. I tried one more time, the kid hollered and mother ran over. It was the wrong mother! Well, it was actually the right mother for this kid - I was the one holding the wrong kid. I searched around, found my bottle baby curled up in the corner, gave him his bottle with ease and went back in the house. I really should not expect to function well after dark.