My Icelandic SheepFreya Giving Birth

This is my Icelandic ewe giving birth this past spring to her second ram lamb. Freya is a good and fiercely protective mama. You can see the first born lamb standing next to her as she gives birth to his twin brother.
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Just Call Me The 'Midwife'

 Look at this sweet little newborn lamb leaning into her mama  under the lamp in their stall. If I hadn't played midwife this morning she would most likely not be alive, and her mama would be in sore distress.

I went out this morning to discover TWO ewes licking one newborn lamb clean of afterbirth. Before I could get close enough to check things out the lamb wobbled  from one ewe ( female sheep) to the other, trying to nurse. Both ewes seemed confused , but when Tovah, the sheep in the picture, turned around to lick the lamb some more, things became very clear to me. Tovah had two tiny lamb's feet sticking out of her rear parts  . The other sheep ( Gudrid) had after-birth coming out of hers. Clearly the lamb being so carefully cleaned and tended by both ewes belonged to Gudrid who is a first time mama. Poor Tovah, probably thinking after so much labor and straining must have felt she had certainly already given birth and why was Gudrid helping out with her lamb ?

Now I had a problem. I was by myself, no near-by neighbors to help , and that lamb HAD to be pulled out of Tovah. Desperate times called for this desperate shepherdess to act quickly. How do you restrain an unwilling ewe and at the same time pull out a lamb from her nether parts by yourself ? The only way I could. I grabbed her by the horns and held on with my left hand, pushed her up against the stall wall, leaned against her to hold her there and reached inside her with my right hand to feel out the situation. Aha, the lamb's head and shoulders were pretty big and the lamb was in the right position for a normal birth but too big to come out without assistance. I slipped the lamb's head back a bit inside, then pulled the legs out further, maneuvered the head back out and with my right hand holding tightly to the legs I pulled some more. After gently maneuvering further I got a better grip on the lamb's head & legs and pulled hard. You have no idea how hard it can be pulling a lamb out of a tight spot inside it's mama, sometimes it seems the womb is trying to suck the baby back in, and this was one of those times. But I pulled even harder ( it is always a wonder to me the head doesn't pop off when I have to pull so hard ) and with a loud BWAAAAAAAAAA from the mama her little lamb slid out making a big sucking sound as I plopped her on the straw. A healthy ewe lamb with head still intact !

The minute Tovah turned and saw the lamb all confusion was gone. She went right to work cleaning her lamb. I checked Tovah , Gudrid, and their lambs a little while ago and am happy to say both mamas and their lambs are fine & dandy. Just call me the midwife !

Join me and many others on The Home Acre Blog Hop*. There are so many interesting home-steading topics shared there every Thursday, you won't be bored, and might find yourself surprisingly educated and entertained.

Spot-On Weekend~

This was one wonderful weekend. We all need a few of these in our years don't we? A weekend of just doing things that are NORMAL, and accomplishing something good, and just plain nice. Here is my husband mowing the lawn with his John Deer ( Deer John?) after working to get it mowing again. He did it! The mower is running along doing what it is supposed to do, and because it is a special Deer John it has a cup holder to hold a bottle of root beer for my husband to satiate his thirst on a hot day in March in Washington. Yes, we reached a high temperature of 60 degrees! The little building behind my husband is his new honey house. Not yet completed inside, but almost. Finally, my husband's supplies and bee-keeping equipment will have a place of their own, not having to be searched for high and low in the furnace room, the garage, the closets, and another shed. A whole little building that will house our water pump and the bee-keeping stuff! Now I can clean out my pantry and store the shelves of honey jars in a proper place, the honey house ~ where my Honey will hum happily whilst working with his bees and what they produce. He will give you a little photo tour of his honey house on his blog* when he has finished it.( the honey house)

The ducks rejoiced in the warm weather too. Baths , and swimming, and courting, and then sunning themselves on the lawn for long happy naps.

Sassafras decided ( I am sure they can choose when to lamb and usually it is in the early a.m. when the weather is freezing and wet) this was a perfect day to have her lamb. She followed the sun and just soaked it up while the rest of the flock was eating. I just know when a healthy and very pregnant ewe refuses to eat and separates herself from the flock that her time to lamb is near. Sure enough, she had a beautiful little girl lamb shortly after I took this picture.I watched the lamb literally climb out of the birth opening by herself and then my husband and I watched the tiny and very wet lamb immediately stand and begin to search in the right place for her first milk. Is THAT not a miracle? And looky here, Ruth also decided to lamb and she too gave us a very tiny, but very perfect little girl lamb ( ewe) too!This little lamb just seemed to appear with her mother, it was that quick. I looked at my flock and there was a teensy, tiny lamb running with the flock as if she had been here for weeks . Isn't that amazing? Just born and running and nursing... All in all, this was the type of weekend anyone would and should love and appreciate. Time with each other at home, time to observe and marvel at our flocks,time with our daughter and her family (our family), and who doesn't love to cuddle their own grandchildren? Time with special friends ( thank-you David and Kathleen), time to enjoy all God has blessed us with and hopefully the ability to remember and appreciate His loving kindness.

Excessively Tidy Momma

~This little ram lamb has a momma who is excessively, compulsively, tidy, and that can lead to some serious problems for little boys of all species...it has not been a good thing for this little guy. Isn't he cute? ~But look at his tail......it is hard to see, but his momma has cleaned the flesh right off his little tail and there are at least 2 inches of bare bloody bone showing. The poor momma keeps cleaning off the dripping blood so compulsively that she creates more blood which needs more cleaning which takes off more flesh which...you get the picture! ( note the yearling ram in background. He has battered down the boards that are kitty-wampus) ~It all started this afternoon. It was a beautiful sunny day and I was skirting wool ( sorting through sheared fleeces and picking out debris and clumps, etc., before washing) and I heard the unmistakable bleating of a new lamb. Yay! I could tell Sassafras was going to lamb so had been keeping watch. I was pleasantly surprised to see twins! Twin ram ( boy ) lambs. Sassafras was doing a good job of cleaning and mothering. She was a good momma last year and is fiercely protective of her lambs. I was not worried and went back to skirting wool. ~I checked up on the lambs every 20 minutes or so and ..hmmmm.....there is a bit more blood than I am used to seeing on new born lambs, but they were up and about and seemed fine. They were trying to nurse and Sassafras was squatting to accommodate them. O. K. I'll get more work done. ~Then I saw the bone showing at the end of both lambs tails. Uh oh! So, I brought them into the house and Hubby and I banded the tails, that is, we put very tight rubber bands made especially for lambs tail and testicles, on the tails just 3 inches down from the spine. This would stop the bleeding and eventually the tail will fall off. I normally don't do this til the lambs are 3 days old, but this little guy would continue bleeding all night and that can't be a good thing. I dipped the tails ends into a strong iodine solution and gave the little lambs a squirt of nutritional supplement and let them rest in a basket in our laundry room for awhile. ~It is dark out, the chickens are sleeping on their roosts. I take the lambs back out to Sassafras who is screaming and battering the gate to her pen, trying to get to her lambs.

~Here she is, checking out the new addition to her lambs' tails. She is also licking the tail. ~Sassafras, STOP THAT !~

~"Are you talking to me ? " ~

~The bleeding seems to have stopped, the boys are bedding down. This Momma has even cleaned up all the birth matter. Most of my sheep leave it for me to clean up. ~I have had momma dogs excessively clean their newborns and start in on little legs....I stopped it and it never led to maiming or death, but sheep are not carnivores. So eating the flesh is a bit of extreme cleaning. Lanny had a case of such excessive lamb cleaning that they ended up with 2 little special needs lambs. ~Miss Marple is supervising the activity in the lambing shed. All is well for now. She has vermin and spiders to catch. It is time for me to go inside, and I'll be back out later to check in on Sassafras and her boys. Good thing they're sheep, or they'd end up in therapy groups later on, blaming all their problems on their excessively tidy mom. Blessings: lambs, a peaceful evening in the lambing shed