Good News and Bad News

Good news first!  Barley lambed last night!  She had 2 healthy ram lambs, although one is much smaller than his brother.  It took her a few minutes to catch on that her job wasn't finished after she pushed them out, but now she's being a great first time mom. 

 The larger lamb is 8 lbs, and the smaller one is only 5 lbs.  When Barley and her sister were born, they had just about the same difference in size.  Bean was the little one, and she didn't stand for the first day, but luckily this little guy was up on his feet fairly quickly.

Lambs are pretty gangly when they're first born, but they fill out pretty quickly.

He's just too cute. 

These lambs are 3/4 Southdown and 1/4 Romney.  I'm a little surprised they're both natural colored (dark).  They'll lighten a bit as they get older, just like Bean and Barley did. 

Ok, on to the bad news.  Unfortunately Bean aborted her lambs last night.  I went out this morning and found them in the shelter.  It appears they were both early, and one was malformed and probably wouldn't have made it even if they'd made it to term.  I'm not sure what caused it, perhaps the malformed one died and caused the abortion.  I'm not quite sure, but this is the first time I've had it happen and I'm pretty bummed out about it.  The lambs were both rams, and the large one looked just like a Southdown (white with mousy points), and the malformed one was lighter colored with a bit of speckling.  It's neat to see the color difference between Bean's and Barley's lambs, since they are twin sisters were mothers and the same ram sired the lambs.  This is part of raising animals though, and even though it really stinks the lambs didn't make it, I'm just glad Bean is doing fine.

Now it's Darla's turn, and I'm really hoping for some ewe lambs since they'll be purebred Southdowns.  I'm crossing my fingers and toes.