Tuesday, March 10, 2009

No baby yet, but more lamb pictures!



Top: Willa and Willow
Middle: Willow
Bottom: Eli and Ebony

With 6 lambs total born this spring it has been our least stressful lambing season ever, despite the cold weather and fact that we had no idea they were due in early February! All 6 lambs are getting quite large and have tons of fun now that they are all together and can play. We have one lamb named Willa who looks more like a Holstein cow than a lamb, who absolutely adores us for some unknown reason! She loves a little scratch under her chin, and will come running up to us when we come to the barn. This is really truly amazing behavior for a lamb who is not bottle fed and has a mother who wants nothing to do with us. Much to the dismay of many other shepherds we have decided to not dock their tails this year as an experiment. We feel that it causes much stress and distrust between us and the lambs, and since we shear late and will take extra precaution to shear their buttocks if needed throughout the summer to prevent fly stike, which in all reality is more of a management issue with dirty living conditions. We hope this goes well and don't foresee a problem.

1 comment:

Amanda May said...

They are adorable! Good for you on the tail decision, it seems like such a horrid thing to deprive an animal of its tail. We kept them on ours a couple years and never had a problem.