Bring on the Babies!

Purl is due to lamb on the 13th which is right around the corner. It snuck up fast this year, and I didn't quite feel prepared. I do now though! It has been so nasty outside lately, the ground is saturated and we're supposed to get more snow later this week. I didn't want to take a chance on her lambing out in the wet cold, so David and I built a pen in the barn. Last year we had several blizzards, and I had to bring the girls into the barn, but we didn't have a good pen built, so they had almost free access to everything. This year will be much better.

Here's the pen in the far corner. We built it out of pallets we already had, reinforced with some t-posts.


We deconstructed a pallet and built the gate. The gate is smooth on the inside so no animals can stand on any part of it (because the hinges aren't heavy duty enough for that!). Right now I have a simple hook and eye closure, but I may have to change that depending on how crafty the animals are!


Here's a view from the inside of the pen looking towards the gate. Excuse the dust particles in the picture!



And here's a view standing in the front of the pen looking to the back wall of the barn.


It's a good sized pen that everyone could fit in if there was an emergency (like another 2' blizzard or something), but for now I'm only going to bring Purl and June in since they're the heavy bred ones. June is due March 14th.

And eventually I'd like to put a door through that back wall of the barn because the small "bachelor" pen backs right up to the barn. It would be great to let the animals access the inside of the barn when they're in that pen.

I'm excited about lambs now. Now I'm going to go give Purl a big squeeze around the middle. ;-)