Lamb number two - Stolen

Some time during the night our second lamb was born. By all appearances Sophie, the sheep in the top picture here with the black head was the mother. We like to separate the new lambs and their mommas for a few hours just to let them do their thing without interference from the rest of the adults. So we put Sophie and the new baby in the shelter and blocked the entrance.

Sophie the diligent mother she is was busy cleaning the baby and looking after him. Another boy by the way. But, Tess the brown sheep in the picture below kept fussing and running around the shelter trying to get inside.

Everyone noticed that as Tess ran around baaing she wasn't as wide as she was the day before. And Sophie, she was just as wide as ever. Actually in the picture below Tess is still wide. I believe it was taken yesterday.

So we switched the ewes around removing Sophie and putting Tess with the new lamb. But, then Sophie was distressed running around trying to get in. Things were a little confusing. We kept second guessing ourselves wondering if we made the right decision.
Here in the next two shots is Tess alone with baby and looking after him without interference from baby stealer Sophie.

We did additional investigation to make sure we were right. Tess had traces of blood and fluid on her hind end from the birthing. Sophie is dry. The appearances of their hind ends are different also. Sophie's is plump all the around the opening and Tess' is not. Hers now has a depression on the bottom, between the opening and the udder. Plus we checked for milk which Tess has and Sophie does not.

Tess produced Shadow one of twins last year. She rejected him so we were concerned she was not being a good mother to this one which is also black. He's all black except for a little white patch on top of his head. But, when she is alone with him without Sophie pushing her out she's good with him. So we left them like this and just let them be for awhile letting them get reacquainted.

The next two pictures are of lamb number one. He's up and running around with Pixy his mom and both have rejoined the herd.

Another bit of news is that we have a batch of our own chicks hatched out in our new incubator. Actually we didn't do it ourselves. We loaned the incubator and eggs to the Lutheran school were our friends kids go to and they hatched them out as a class project. 25 out 40 eggs hatched. And 22 chicks survived. Several died probably from being over handled by the kids. But, it was a great experience for them. Each child put their name on an egg and they got to see "their" chick hatch out.

Baby thief strikes again!

As I am in the process of making this post the kids informed me that Sophie broke in and took the lamb again. So we went out and this time removed Tess and her baby from the yard altogether.

We carried over one of our chicken pens and put them in there.

Hopefully this will do it for awhile unless Sophie figures a way to break out of where she is at. We're hoping she has her own lamb soon and forgets about this little guy!

Until Next Time