triplets!

I was hoping against hope that my best ewe, Bella, would give me twin ewe lambs this year, but she went one better on me and had triplets -- and all girls to boot! The black one is Ellen, the bigger white one (in front) is Agnes, and the little white one in the back is Martha. (If anyone is wondering, our lamb names this year are from the book Pillars of the Earth, which The Map Man and I both recently read. Well, except for Reggie, who is just too goofy to share a name with any of the characters in the book. We use a theme every year, the year Bella, Alice and Rosalie, moms of our current lambs, were born, it was Twilight, and last year was King Arthur -- our Gwenywyfar should lamb in another month or two.)

I'm beyond excited. All babies are doing well -- triplets can be worrisome, because sheep only have two teats, but Bella is a wonderful mother, and if any ewe can successfully raise triplets, it's her! She takes very good care of her babies.

Plan is to keep all the girls, assuming they turn out! (These three, plus Aliena, who is Alice's daughter.) The boys are already spoken for (in fact, I'm going to be way short on lambs to sell this year, even for my repeat customers). Gwen should give us single lamb at some point (generally ewes have only one on their first lambing when bred as a lamb themselves), so we'll see what that turns out to be. Although Bella surprised us with twins at her first lambing, so you never know! And we're going to have to let Rosalie go this year, since she only singled. No sense in keeping the less productive sheep, especially when we've got tripling genetics we can build on by keeping Bella's babies.

So it looks like spring out there, even though it doesn't feel like it! One of these days it'll warm up....