The V girls

Our yearling ewe Lydia somehow acquired a side abdominal hernia during her pregnancy, making her whole side sag down low to the ground and causing her to have difficulty walking.
This means she needed help delivering her lambs, but all things considered, it was a success, giving us two lovely ewe lambs. The first one was the long legged black mouflon girl, and after checking for another lamb, we thought she was the only one. We went into the house, changed out of dirty lambing clothes, and relaxed with a glass of wine, happy to have a healthy lamb, and the tense time over with. Mark checked on the pair a half hour later and shouted to me Lydia's got another one! The little white girl with the black mask was on her way, and after some more adjustments we found her front leg and got her out.
If you have seen the movie The Incredibles, the daughter Violet, has super powers giving her the abilty to dissapear, and she wears a black mask. We thought this little girl, who seemed to be invisible when we first looked for her, should be named Violet as well, and her sister is now called Veronica, for no apparant reason (but I do have one named Betty) .

A Long Hard Journey

Saturday afternoon, first time mom, Eva, went into her labor about 1 PM. I had been waiting anxiously for her to lamb, praying that all would go smoothly for her first venture into motherhood.
She labored for about an hour, with nothing much happening, so I went in for a check to see if there was a tangled up baby or two. What I found was a very large lamb, in the right position to be born, but the ewes cervix opening was so small she could not make any progress.
Mark and I work on her for what seemed like forever, with much pulling, and what we hoped were soothing and encouraging words for a distressed mom. I called a fellow shepherd for advice, and with those words of wisdom and a little more work, we finally got her out into the world!
Mom and baby are both doing fine.
She is a gorgeous black, badger face, 10lb ewe. We will call her Athena, for the goddess of wisdom, who is also described as "bright eyed, or with gleaming eyes". I think it suits her well!

New Babies are arriving!

Well, the first lambs arrived Tuesday 3/31, and they are triplets! What a treat to discover! All gorgeous in their own special colors. ! A black gray ewe, a black mouflon ewe and a beautiful black mouflon spotted ram. He has big white legs, reminding us of a Clydesdale, so he has been nicknamed Clyde.
This picture is not good, more to come...
We also had 2 nice big twin ram lambs on Thursday night, then Saturday morning brought another set of twins, a white ewe and black ram.
8 more girls to go!