Another Sheep Surprise

Just when we thought we were settled in for the rest of the winter, as far as the sheep are concerned... I wound up flat on my back in the middle of the ewe flock.

I have a love/hate relationship with one of our ewes. She doesn't have a name, because at least half the days, I would rather eat her than keep her. She's big, beautiful, athletic, smart and has great survival instincts. I grudgingly admit the flock is probably better off with her in it. No canine can enter the pasture without her noticing and stomping like she's gonna eat their lunch. Unfortunately, no human can enter the paddock either without her moving rapidly in the other direction. She's been a bit of a "character" since the day we got her. We call her 53/56 because even getting an ear tag in her when she arrived turned into something of a wrestling match, so she ended up with one number on the front of her ear and a different one on the back of her ear. I once opened the gate to let the flock out, where a single overhead hotwire connected both sides of the electric fence. The whole flock ran through, but 53/56 jumped OVER the wire instead (did I mention she's athletic?).

Franny says "Mom, why are you on the ground?"

I've been feeding a small amount of alfalfa pellets inside a small holding area for weeks prior to getting our geocollars, so when the time came to put them on, it would be easy to confine the small flock. It took her a MONTH before she would come into the enclosure. Fortunately we were able to get a geocollar on her (after which she promptly jumped out of the pen). When I woke up two days ago, I checked the NoFence app that shows the location of each sheep in the pasture, as I usually do in the first minutes of the day. I noticed 53/56 was in the barn, alone, and the rest of the flock was at the other end of the cover crop field. Hmmmm, is it possible we had another lamb on the ground? Sure enough, when I went out for morning chores, there was a latte-colored fuzzball in the paddock beside her.

With our other unplanned lambing last week, the ewe "bagged up" for a couple weeks before lambing, and was obviously pregnant. I'd been worried there might be one or two others that could be bred, but none had shown similar signs. Granted, it's not easy to get close enough to 53/56 to get a good view of her private regions, but even after she lambed, I couldn't see enough to assure me she was providing milk for her new baby. So today, I spent a long time sitting quietly with the ewes, thankful it was in the 40s and not raining. Hoping to get a look at 53/56's udder, and compare it to others, I decided to lay flat on my back, for the worm's eye view. I got close enough to see she had a very small udder, but enough larger than the unbred ewes to give me some comfort. About that time, the ram decided her postpartum smell was interesting and distracted her sufficiently that I was able to go pick up the new lamb, learn it was a little ewe and also feel that it had a full tummy. All appears to be well!