Clearly not the case this time.

The response to not going for mom's boobs is to go synthetic.  Off to Farm and Fleet we go. 

I need lamb colostrum.  Pretty straight forward right, there it is right on the shelf.  Not so fast farmer boy, i run into the local farmer who got me started in sheep.

What are you doing she says

I answer, proud of my problem solving ability, 'getting colostrum, mom won't feed the young un' (that's baby animal/any species)

you don't want that stuff, she says

I look at the package, it clearly reads for lamb.  I point that out.

Yeah I know, that's better for kids (baby goats)

what do I want? a puzzled me asks.

Calf colostrum, much better for lambs, not real good for calves, keep it away from kids (goats, probably humans too). 

oh, silly me

got it home and it worked. 

I quickly devised plan B but it required a visit to Wal Mar, but I couldn't go right away.

I have a fairly unusual existance.  I wake up anywhere between 5 and 6:30 every morning.  It doesn't matter when I went to sleep the wake up time doesn't change.  I usually make coffee,I then proceed to feed the cats in three different spots in the house because our cats don't get along.  This, I swear, is punisment for my laughing out loud at a woman, during an important business dinner, while she described her visits to a cat psychologist.  I just couldn't believe anyone would put up with maladjusted animals.  Anyway, I then feed the dog.  These days I mix up colostrum for the lamb whose mom can't produce milk.  Head out, release the hens, feed the hens, break ice, fill up water, look for new lambs.

Feed bottle baby lamb, shove mom's nipple into new baby's mouth.  Look for Rufus, find rufus, remove road kill from his mouth and head up to the mansion for coffee. That's if nothing unusual happened.  Thank god I'm in between roaster batches.

Now I go to wal mart to supply plan B.  

Plan B is simply an overly pregnant mom tied to a sled being pulled behing my gator into shelter.

her's the new one, 4 hours old 

 here's the sled mom

 This is the four day old:

When we started doing this I was a little aprehensive.  No 4H experience.  My Cub Scout experiencwe was inner city Chicago.  We would do our Pow wow (Indian like camping trip)  in Humboldt park with the Latin Kings looking on.  A bunch of little Polacks dancing around in Indian costumes waving rubber tomahawks with a well armed group of gangbangers hanging out near by doesn't seem like the best training ground for sheep ranchers. When we first brought the ewe flock to the farm  my neighbor, the dairy farmer, stopped by to assess the situation.  I know that we amuse him with our jump in head first and figure it out as we go attitude.  He looked over the flock and said that he'd once raised a small flock.  Had em for a year, fed em a little too much grain and they died.  Yep all died.  My confidence was soaring.  He wished me luck, chuckled a bit and left.

It's not hard to get advice from people around here.  Most people are very free with their thoughts on your farming techniques and why they'll go wrong.  The vet says one thing, the feed guy has a completely different idea, the traveling shearer believes in an entirely different strategy, the local farmers wonder why you're not growing insect and weed resistant strains of corn or running antibiotic and hormone infused beef.  The Farm and Fleet guys just ask if you want fries with that.  Buy a book and trust your instincts is our strategy.

Three days ago we had our second delivery of this season.  A young lady to what was supposedly a good mom with momming experience.   Jackie found her during her brooder mucking chore.  Jackie loves to muck the brooder house.  If you don't know what that means, you'll have to ask her.  Apparently between Jackie's shovels of chicken sh.......manure. She noticed the lamb.  Rufus was out there too, any chore involving livestock sh.....manure is a favorite of his, kind of an unplanned snack time for him.  They went out and checked on the well being of the little girl.

Everything was going well.  I came out and Jackie and I got mom and lamb to the jug where there was fresh hay and water and a nice warm shelter.  Mom wasn't quite right and didn't finish cleaning and drying the little girl.  We reacted by bringing the little one into the house.  Jackie dried her off with the blow dryer and I prepared to bottle feed her.  This is the text book response to a cold newborn and a not right mom.

Day one, stayed up pretty much all night and fed the new girl every hour.  Day two, fed mom some medicine and kept bottle feeding. 

We're on day three now and the lamb has doubled in weight and is now suckling from mom.  She needs the bottle because her mom isn't producing much milk,  but she's going to live to be added to our ewes.  We'll see.

We have a lonely rooster on the farm.  Some of our ewes went on a visit to meet a ram on a neighboring farm for a few days.  Carnal knowledge was acheived succesfully, and they were being loaded to come back home when a rooster jumped in the trailer.  The trailer got here and he was unloaded with the ewes and deemed too much trouble to chase down so now he lives here.

He has tried and tried to encourage some of our hens to join his 'team' so to speak.  They seem perfectly willing until the house rooster shows up and well, he's not having any of that.  He even tried to encourage some of the roasters to, you know, date him.

His lonliness will be coming to an end because we're bringing on more layers for ths coming market season. 

We had our first set of lamb twins this morning.  At 5:30 today  the dog and I were out near the sheep pasture and heard the cries of new babies.  I looked at Rufus, Rufus looked at me, I headed for the sound, Rufus ran for the house.  The dog is absolutely no help in the morning.

They turned out ot be a couple of speckle faced little boys.  Not much of a future for you around here when that is your description.  Mom is a white face ewe and dad is a black faced ram.  The youngsters ended up speckle faced.  Wouldn't it be funny if that's how people turned out.  

 I think the little guys are doing okay.  I helped them find the warm milk spout and got it going for them.  One is not as active as the other and is lieing around a lot.  Not a good sign, especially considering how cold it's going to get tonight.  I broke the rules and put a heat lamp on him so he can get a warm nights sleep.  We'll see.

I'm torn about tail cropping.  My reading of traditional animal husbandry text recomends it for sanitary reasons.  The latest natural practice articles call it unnecessary and a purely religious ceremony with no real health benefit.  Or is that circumcision?  I better go reread that stuff. 

Tomorrow is the chicken wrangle.  The last batch of roasters is ready to go in for dressing/processing.  They are 7 1/2 weeks old and look like fluffy white bowling balls with chicken feet and chicken heads.  They run around all day flapping their wings and crashing into each other like little chicken sumo wrestlers.  We had a lot of trouble with predators with this batch.  I think the time of year lack of other food or something like that.... who knows.  Every night when I go down to check on them there are owls and hawks and fox standing in line with little plastic trays.  The electric fence was only good at keeping the dog away.  Rufus got bit by the fence again and is now afraid of chickens.  The dog needs to go visit Dr. Phil.

Based on the looks of about half of our ewes we'll be lambing pretty soon.  I think that maybe five of the girls are carrying precious little bundles of lamb chops.  I have to go to Farm and Fleet for fence panels.  I'm putting together a couple of little areas where the girls can have a safe and relatively warm spot to take care of their new borns. I've never done this alone and I'm a little nervous but we'll see what happens.