first lambs of the season

I know, I'm horribly behind on posting about the stuff we've been doing this week. But before I even think about that, I just need to share what greeted us in the sheep tent this morning. Our first lambs of the season! That's Dana on the left and Melissa on the right. It's tradition for us to use the characters from whatever show we're really "into " at the time we lamb -- last year it was Battlestar Galactica, the year before it was LOST. We recently purchased all 9 episodes of one of our favorite shows of all-time -- The X-Files -- so that'll be our theme this year. (Dana Scully is one of the main characters, and her sister is Melissa.)

For those of you who are just tuning in, these are Katahdin sheep -- a breed of "hair sheep", which means they do not grow wool. The mother is a ewe we call "Ugly Betty", named after the TV character with that name, because she's, well, ugly. Here's a photo of the mom with her babies so you can see for yourself:


You see what I mean? She's just not attractive. But she's a really good, experienced ewe, about 8 yrs old, and I expect to get nice lambs out of her for the next couple of years. We bought her last summer to bring in some unrelated genetics.

The really exciting part of this is that we didn't have lambs due until the end of March/early April. Our ram, Apollo, had died suddenly and unexpectedly at the end of September, we thought before breeding any of the ewes, but apparently Ugly Betty cycled earlier than the rest and Apollo managed to breed her before he died. We are thrilled with this surprise (although we could tell for the past couple of days that she was going to lamb at any minute, so already had figured out that we were getting some Apollo babies). Both lambs look a lot like their Dad, which is absolutely wonderful! (He was GORGEOUS!) The rest of our lambs will be fathered by Mars, the black ram we brought in after Apollo died.

One more photo of the happy family for you to enjoy.

We're having a snowstorm today (of course), and I plan to read the book "Snow Lambs" to the boys before we bundle them up to head out and greet the new babies.

I tell ya, cute little lambs certainly make dealing with a March snowstorm much more enjoyable!