Lambs and Flu

Well, all the lambs are born. And here's my report.

Freckles had triplets, 3 ewes
Dolly had triplets, 1 ram and 2 ewes
Sweetpea had twins, 2 ewes
Rambo is just fat...no lambs
Four had twins, 2 ewes

We lost 2 to white muscle disease caused by a shortage of selenium and now we have procured a bottle and the shortage seems to be over so that won't happen again. Next year I'll give my ewes a booster before lambing and we shouldn't have a repeat of the problem. I assisted with only one delivery because Dolly's first lamb presented breech, her second was head and no feet showing so we had to snag those to deliver the lambs shoulders, and her third came naturally and quickly. All the lambs except for Sweetpea's twins are black or brown faced and spotted to some degree because their father is a suffolk ram. You can tell he's got really good genes and the premium Suffolk stockyness because the lambs already have nice rounded bums and hind ends...nice meaty type lambs. I can see why Marc would spend so much money on getting a ram from an embryo all the way from England.

Steve has been sick in bed for 2 weeks now with the flu and for those of you who know him well, you know he's got to be really sick to stay in bed. He's basically been delirious and sleeping for 23 hours a day the whole time, poor guy. We made the trek into Kentville to see a Dr at the hospital but they're so overrun with flu patients that they just send you home and tell you to take lots of tylenol to take down your fever if you can. Not very helpful as we had been doing that for over a week already. But Steve actually slept through the night yesterday and this morning he's able to stay awake for longer stretches, so I'm happy. His fever is down but his cough is worse so hopefully he's clearing all that nasty stuff out of his chest and he'll be up and at 'em soon. I was really worried there for a while so I'm glad he's looking better and able to eat a little now too. Happy day!

I'm off to the barn. We moved our bottle fed babies out there the day before yesterday and they are doing just fine mingling with the other lambs and drinking from their bucket with the nipples on it.  My job now is to keep the bucket full of milk :)