A Week Full of Lambs

  If you follow me on Instagram or Facebook, you can see how busy last week became for us.  For those of you who do not know, our family is very involved in 4-H.  Our kids have shown everything from Poultry, Swine, Dogs, Sheep, and Horses, not to mention all the non-animal projects.  (I hope one day to have a post on how influential 4-H has been in our lives.)  Over the past year, we have made a few changes to our little homestead farm.  We gave all of our chickens away to my best friend and we sent all of our pigs to market.  We've decided to concentrate on the sheep, horses, and dogs.  We currently had 3 ewes (female sheep) left from previous 4-H projects and we bought 1 more ewe and a ram off my other best friend earlier in the year.  We had high hopes of breeding all our own 4-H projects this year!

  I grew up on a sheep farm and felt pretty confident in what I was doing and could teach the kids all about sheep.  I have found, I was gravely mistaken!  My father knew what he was doing and I just participated, evidently.  I have youtubed, googled and read many books, not to mention constantly texted our dear friends and the vet trying to find answers for things I have either forgotten or Daddy had just taken care of on his own.  

  I had a feeling that one ewe was going to lamb early, but I had no idea 3 of them were.  Ronnie and I had worked in the barn the week before last prepping all the pens to be ready to lamb, putting down fresh straw and closing up any holes in the walls and putting some windows in for natural light.  The girls and I went out early last Wednesday morning and fed and watered everything and then headed back inside to start school.  We hadn't even been inside an hour when the excitement started.  Ronnie called and said, "Hurry out here, we've got lambs on the ground!"  So we all came running out and sure enough, our first ewe had twins.  

Then, the next evening the next ewe had another set of twins!  It was quite cold that night so Ronnie immediately got the salamander heater going and a heat lamp hung for them.  

Leah holding one of her lambs, Oliver

  Then on Saturday we had my mom's side of the family Christmas here at our house.  We had a wonderful time visiting with family from Ohio.  It was a busy day and just when everyone was settling in for the evening and getting ready for bed...…...we had another set of twins!!  This time it was a first time "mother" and I was afraid of how she would care for them.  It was super cold again this night and she didn't clean them very well.  The next morning, one of the lambs seemed to be fine walking around but the other was very weak and couldn't seem to stand on its own.  I nutridrenched both of them, hoping that would help, but by evening time I was pretty worried about the weak lamb.  This ewe was Derek's and I really hated to see him lose a lamb this soon.  So I decided to try a bottle.  We gave it a little colostrum and it took the bottle right away, like it was starving.  

Derek and his ewe lamb, Juniper

  The next morning his ears were a little perkier, so I decided to try another bottle and hope it would eventually latch on to its mama.  I kept putting it over to the ewe and it kept trying but just would not latch like its twin.  It downed the bottle again.  Each feeding we would try to latch him on and each time, he just turned away.  So now.....we have a bottle lamb too.  Derek has been doing an amazing job making bottles and making sure he feeds on time and now the lamb has fell in love with Derek.  

Lindsay with her ewe lamb, Pearl

Bottle feeding Grover

  We are now waiting on our last ewe to lamb and hoping for twins out of her as well.  So far we've ended up with 4 ram lambs and 2 ewe lambs.  We had some pretty unfortunate issues with our lambs last year, so we're hoping this year is better.  Overall, we have been very blessed with this lambing season and all the learning we have been doing.  This has been a whole family affair, which is what we strive to do in most everything.  It truly brings me great joy to watch my children with these lambs.  The excitement in their eyes when they see the lambs for the first time is absolutely priceless.

  I know there are some out there that think I'm strange or crazy, and that's ok.  I've made it my life goal to find some kind of blessing in every day.  I'm realizing more and more that life is ever so precious and short.  I pray that one day our children will look back on this season of raising sheep and realize that something so small brought memories that were incredibly great!    

  In having all these lambs during the Christmas season, I am reminded of a few scriptures.  There is something so simplistic of raising sheep.  I wouldn't really call our family shepherds, but I guess we really are.  When you put it in that perspective, it becomes very overwhelming that a family like ours could have been some of those out on that hillside!

Luke 2:8-14 ~

⁸ Now there were in the same country shepherds living out in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. ⁹ And ^[cbehold, an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were greatly afraid. ¹⁰ Then the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy which will be to all people. ¹¹ For there is born to you this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. ¹² And this will be the sign to you: You will find a Babe wrapped in swaddling cloths, lying in a ^[d]manger.”

¹³ And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying:

¹⁴ “Glory to God in the highest,
And on earth peace, goodwill^[e] toward men!”