Ode To Joy

Lambs!!

Something veerryyy exciting has happened!! Take a wild guess. (The title probably gave it away)

YESSSSS!!!  You are right!!

Two of our four ewes just had lambs!!!

Just so you don’t get confused—here’s a short little introduction to our “sheep farm”….

So we have four mama sheep (ewes) that we called Blacky, Speckle, Leader, and White. (We actually even assigned certain older girls (the eldest four of our family of eight children) to be sort of ‘in charge of’ each of the mama sheep…)

So I got Speckle, Tiffany (my eldest sis) got Blacky, and so on.

On April 22,  Blacky gave birth to a pure black little lamb!! That was unexpected, since they are rare in this particular breed. It was just amazing!! Sadly, we didn’t get to watch the birth of Lieutenant (that’s what we called him), but his cuteness just about chased all disappointment away!! Here he is…

And then. Drum-roll, please.  My dear little Speckle had two—TWO!!!—little lambs, one boy, one girl, the day after!! On April 23.  It was, as my sisters said, “my dream come true’. How much better could it get?!!

This time, we got to watch the whole process. She had a quick and what looked like an easy birth: thank God for that!!

If you don’t have a queasy stomach, take a look at the following photo:)

Sometimes lambs would be twisted inside the mama’s stomach, unable to ever see the light of day. It was quite a blessing to be able to have all three lambs without birth complications of that sort!!!

The funny thing was, as Speckle was licking Willow over and over and over, we somehow got the idea that she was done having babies. So we tried to get Willow to latch on and have her first drink of milk, but no. her mama kept moving away, even when we had to hold her down. We let her go—something seemed strange at this point—and she promptly walked to the side, lay down, and plopped out Willow’s brother, Kentucky!!!

Were we surprised!!  Delighted!!!

After the motherly licking like the one she gave her little girl, we got all three of them into the barn, where they are now. We had quite a struggle!!! Too bad our neighbors were out just then; if they simply would have looked across the wire fence separating our properties, they would have been watching something special!! I think not a lot of people have actually attended a lamb’s birth personally—but once you watch that tiny, new life being presented to the world, it’s…. it’s just humbling to think of how the Son of God was portrayed as the Lamb. Helpless, dependent, innocent.

Thank God for the unspotted Lamb of God.

I really wish y’all could come over and take a look at the precious little rams and ewe, and maybe even get to hold one!!(I never had a real, human baby, so I don’t know what mothers feel when they hold their new born son or daughter for the first time, but I think the feelings are similar, only stronger when they are your own. Just a random thought. 🙂

It was a heart-stopping or heart-racing experience, depending on how you look at it. Yes, parts of the birth were disgusting, but they are just that—parts of the process.

This has been our second lambing season so far, and we still have one ewe that has not lambed yet—the last one might not even be pregnant… 🙁

we’re not sure:)

Hope you’d enjoyed this post!!

(Keep coming back to this post once in a while, because I might be able to upload a video of the birth!!!  Exciting, isn’t that?:)

The photos are taken by my talented mother. 🙂