The last lamb.

Lambing has come to a close here at Crosswinds farm. Guinivere delivered a single ag/grey ewe lamb last evening at about 8:30 pm, and happily everything went well for her first lambing. Happily for me, baby was up and nursing quickly and Guinivere seemed to have a pretty good grip on what her new roll in life was, so I joyfully relinquished control to her and was able to crash into bed at the very reasonable hour of 10:30 pm! Now, if I can just get myself out of the habit of waking up in the middle of the night to check on sheep, there is a good chance that I may regain some of my sanity....stop laughing!
I am planning on keeping Guinivere and her lamb in the lambing jug for an extra day or two. Guin is not a very friendly ewe and I have found that it is much easier to get a lamb with a skittish mom to be tame, and friendly, if you can handle them in the jug for a couple of days, otherwise if you turn them out they tend to follow mama's lead and it is much harder to build trust with them.

We have been trying to let the pastures rest and get off to a good start before we let the critters out on them, so the rest of the ewes with lambs have been lustfully gazing over the fences wondering when they would be allowed to munch on the green goodness on the other side. It has been a slow spring and has taken an inordinate amount of time for the grass to take off this year, but during the past week we have gotten some warmer temps and more than our share of rain so things are finally looking more like spring. Over the weekend, we started letting the sheep spend a little time each day on the grass to let them acclimate to their new diet. I get such a kick from watching the lambs in the fresh, green grass.


Cassiopeia, "Cassie", just relaxing in the sun...I never noticed until I looked at this picture....what is up with the beard????

Cassie's twin ram (no name yet).

I decided to name this ewe, Crosswinds Lunar Eclipse....kind of a mouthful, so she will be "Luna"...didn't mean to steal your name, Claire!

Below is Crosswinds Titan (10 weeks minus how many days, Connor?).
Below is Edrea's super friendly ram lamb. It is so hard to resist the urge to love up on the ram lambs, some of them are so cute and friendly, but handling them too much as a lamb just invites trouble as they mature...makes me want to wether them all so that I can play with them!Lilly's ewe lamb checking out the dandelion that Gary held for her.
And Jordan is just worn out from watching those little lambs play all day.

Ok, you are probably all on sheepie overload, so my next post I will try to keep ovine free.