Darla is Awesome

So today I got home and went out to feed the animals but I didn't see Darla. I wondered if she was ok, and thought perhaps she was in the shelter trying to keep cool (it's 80* here today). I went around to look in the shelter and saw Darla with 2 lambs!

I wasn't expecting her to lamb until around the first week of May. She didn't lamb early though. I had her in with my Romney ram lamb this fall and thought he wasn't getting the job done since I saw her go into at least 2 heats. I took Darla to the neighbor's house on December 15th to be bred by her Border Leicester ram (same as last year). Well, I took one look at her lambs and knew they weren't Border Leicester crosses (they didn't have the ears like last year's lamb-check out the last picture here). They definitely looked Romney to me!! Darla must have been bred right around Thanksgiving, which is way too early to have been the Border Leicester ram.



I am so excited....she had 2 ewe lambs! And they're natural colored!! I was really hoping Purl would lamb with at least 1 natural ewe lamb this year, so I was kind of disappointed when she had 2 white rams. Darla more than made up for it! These ewe lambs should have really nice fleeces, since Romneys and Southdowns have pretty nice fleece.



One of the ewe lambs is pretty big, but the other is pretty small. The small one wouldn't stand or nurse, so I tubed her and gave her some colostrum. I'm hoping it's just the heat that's wiping her out, and hopefully later this evening she'll be able to stand and nurse.



Darla is a little overwhelmed by 2 babies though. She doesn't quite know which one to lick when. :-) I'll probably keep the big girl. She's going to be pretty special since I can't breed Purl again, and her father was the very sweet ram lamb I was fond of. Now I need to think of some names!