Surprise Lamb!

Yesterday morning I went out and did a thorough head count of our livestock due to flooding on our property. I wanted to verify everyone was accounted for. Well, I was missing an ewe! I looked and looked and finally found her hidden in a corner of one of the older shelters with a lamb!

The ewe is one we bought in December. We knew she was a 2017 lamb, but they weren't sure how old she was. They did tell us she had been out to pasture with all the other 2017 lambs and could potentially be bred, but didn't think it was likely. Upon closer inspection she birthed two lambs, but one was still born. Both babies were extremely small. Not sure if it was because their mom was so young or they were premature, but I was immediately concerned about the remaining baby. The mama had not been handled at her previous home so she is not tame. Whenever we tried to approach she would leave, so we watched from a distance. It's hard to tell in the picture, but the baby was too short to reach the mom's udders to nurse and mom was so in shock and inexperienced that she didn't try to help her baby. In fact, whenever the baby would get to the right area of her body she would move. We observed them for 3 hours and saw the tiny baby get weaker and weaker. We made the call to pull the baby and bottle feed him.

This is the smallest lamb I've ever seen. I will try to get better pictures later today. In the picture above my 8 year old is holding him, so that should give you a better estimate on size. We can't believe how tiny this little guy is! My 11 year old has "adopted" the lamb and is taking very good care of him. Hopefully he continues to pull through.

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