Liquid in... Liquid out....

Ugh! The only downfall with having bottle fed lambs is that they have runny poo. It wouldn't be that big of a deal if they weren't in the house!!! I rotate their indoor housing between an older style playpen (they are bigger than the newer pack-n-play models), and my laundry room. My laundry room floor is linoleum. Linoleum and hooves don't mix! If you have ever seen Bambi on ice, you will understand... To solve my problem and prevent broken lamb parts I lay down black rubber mats for traction. And to make clean up easier I cover the mats with bed sheets. I use the play pen to give them a different venue (hey! I would get bored looking at the same old walls & washer and dryer every day!) lol. No just kidding! I put them in the playpen when I have to clean the laundry room floor and wash their bedding.

Anyway, back to the poo...(sorry, no pictures LOL) I have modern artists for sheep! They love to paint butt murals all over the front of the washing machine, the dryer, the walls, and not to mention- THEMSELVES! Good grief!

Today was wash the lambs day. I had about enough when I looked at the one and it looked as if someone shot him in the butt with a case of yellow paint balls. And no thanks to that one- he backed into his brother and made him look like a bumble bee! Needless to say, Picasso butt received some "scour guard" for his overly loose poop.

Washing baby sheep can be a challenge in itself. (not to mention I have a toddler too!) So I stuck the boy in the high chair with his favorite snack/TV show. I then grabbed a "liquid lamb" and off to the tub we went! I have to mat the bottom of the tub or I can expect brand new dance moves out of them (it's that Bambi on ice thing again.).

How to make your soap go a long way- Pour it on a lamb! Oh my! Putting soap on a woolly lamb is like putting laundry soap in a hot tub with the jets on! The saying "A little goes a long way" is an understatement when it comes to washing sheep. And when you are done washing them, you dust about 4 dry bath sized towels per 6lb lamb. Where the hell they seem to store all that water is beyond me. And why don't sheep shrink when you wash them?? Wool sweaters do! :)

The first two lambs are here!

Here are my first 2 lambs of the season!

Both are ram lambs out of my registered black ewe "Brownie". They are currently being raised in the house (which I knew ahead of time they would be) Brownie has a blockage in one of her teats which does not allow the milk to come out. Most shepherds would cull (kill) a ewe like that, but I really like her and she gives me nice lambs. For three years I have been doing it this way with her.




As soon as the lambs are born they are taken from her and brought into the house. The lambs are dried off with towels and started on milk re placer with colostrum. I also tend to the ewe to make sure all is hunky dory with her (and give her snacks for a job well done!). Then starts the process of drying her up and medicating her if need be.


Bottle feeding lambs can be very demanding. During their first few days of life they get a smidgen of formula in a bottle every couple hours. As they get older, the amount increases and the frequency decreases.

After a week they are started on solid food (grass hay) as well as bottles, and when they have that task mastered they get started on a grain concentrate (in addition to formula). These lambs will be on milk re placer for roughly 8wks. In that time they will be castrated, have their tails banded with an elastrator band (rubber band that cuts off the circulation to the tail to remove it), they will have their ears tagged for identification, and have their first round of vaccinations.

(OH BOY! I BET PETA WILL *LOVE* READING THIS!)

Oh well, these animals are food- Not pets!

These pics were taken right after their birth, hence the dangling umbilical cords and misc. straw pieces stuck on them :)

January Swimming Anyone???

Here's my view from my living room window last week. The flooding you see is my horse pasture. Believe it or not there is a steel I beam bridge covered in double oak planks that is over the creek under all that water! At the deepest point the water is roughly 4ft deep. I'm used to this field flooding in the early Spring, but NOT in January! By early summer the pasture and creek bed are bone dry.

The nice thing is, it really doesn't matter how much the field floods out. Our barn, and house are up on a hill (as you can see when you look at the flooding: where you see grass then nothing is where it drops off). So unless we get a Tsunami and over 10 ft of water- it doesn't harm anything but the field.

I was going to be a "smarty pants" and put on my chest waders walk out there and post a huge sign that says "NO Swimming" just for giggles.