Orphans no more and how I became a sheep keeper

I was on the way home from the Saturday Farmers Market, this was last May, Memorial weekend. The pasture with the lambing ewes is located about 1/4 mile from our land. The ranchers were in the field working with the newborns. I chatted with them, as I have done numerous times during the lambing season. Early in the spring they brought 690 ewes and each had between 2 -3 babies. It was an exceptionally cold spring, rain, hail, many moms and baby lambs did not make it. I was going over there often, several times a week to help out. This rancher has (as I found out later) a common attitude towards life stock- it is a commodity.
That last Saturday of the cold and went May the guys carried three bummer lambs from the field towards the road. They put them down at my feet- Hey Lida these are for you. I resisted and asked the guys what are they going to do with them. Not saying much, they silently looked at each other. They knew very well how upset I was with all the lost moms and babies. And I knew, the lambs will be left in the field to fetch for themselves.

I took them home in the back of my Subaru, the ranchers gave me a half a bag of milk replacer and a bottle. I put them with the chickens, brought extra hay under one of the chicken coops and made them a nice small shelter to stay out of the cold rain. One was a half day old the other two, brother and sister, were about two days old. Next day we build them a little shelter in the woodshed, a couple of days later a friend drove over here from Lenore and did her vet procedures. The same day I drove back with her to pick up penicillin, looked like one of the lambs had a slight pneumonia, she also gave me several gallons of goat milk. I spend over four weeks feeding them every 4 hours, including nights, giving the sick one penicillin shots, spending countless nights in the woodshed keeping them warm on my lap wrapped in old jackets.

They thrived and as the weather warmed up and new grass started popping up they learned grazing and drinking water from the watering can. Now they have their own sheep shed, their own fenced large pen, but they still prefer to hang out in the open, play with the chickens and munch on their feed.

They are a wonderful addition to all our creatures. Everybody loves them and of course I love them the most.

A picture are worth a thousand words, check out the greeting cards I made out of the thousands of images I took and still taking. Enjoy.