Still lambing

Yep, still trucking along.  Only 5 more ewes to go. 

The jugs have been quite active.

Wool yearling with ewe lamb

Ella has a new bottle baby, and she couldn't be happier.

Mama Ella

A ram lamb escaped his jug overnight and the ewe wouldn't take him back.  She only had eyes for the ewe lamb.  So I tried grafting him onto the newest mother who only had a single.  I rubbed her placenta on him, held her while he nursed, even smeared some molasses on him to encourage her to lick him.  But no...she was not to be fooled.  Original mom was almost sold on the molasses, but she still very much favored the other twin.  Bring on the bottle.

Only enough love for one baby

Ella has plenty of love to go around, but sometimes she her emotions are a bit conflicted.  She mothers the lamb and makes the other dogs go away, she plays with the lamb, and sometimes she works the lamb.

So much love

And yes, Rogue keeps getting out.  Let's compare:

Good lamb (Rogue's brother)

Bad lamb

I tried putting her in an x-pen in the barn, but she freaked out so much that she was open-mouth breathing...and I was bleeding.  Then we moved on to hobbles fashioned out of baling twine (all that I could scrounge up at the time):

Angry Rogue on the right, her twin on the left. 

Look how fat she is compared to him!

That worked for the day, but then she came in limping, so I decided to take them off.  Of course she showed no lameness or any signs of slowing when I tried to catch her.  I patched up a spot I saw her duck under the fence, thought I had the problem solved...came home the next day to find her out.  Clearly I have some more fencework to do.