The sheep have been really nice and have been waiting for me to get home from work. The Shetlands will probably be brats though and go when I'm gone. Thankfully it is warmer now and they don't usually have problems.
Cynthia lambed last night. She gave us twin rams. The first one is nothing special, but #2 is amazing! He's built really well and he has the prettiest silvery gray fleece just like his mom. This was an experimental breeding. Cynthia was bred to her 1/2 brother, Sebastian. Cynthia is silver and Sebastian is steel gray and we were hoping to lock in that silver color. It worked AND with #2, some of Cynthia's faults (little head and ears and short neck) were corrected.
There is nothing wrong with #1, he just doesn't have that wow! factor that his brother does. He's really thick.
#520 Technetium (Techno, front) and #521 Ruthenium (Ru, back)
Our last Border Leicester ewe lambed this morning. She had a nice black ewe lamb. The bummer is that the lamb has excessive white markings which means that she most likely will not be registered.
#522 Rhodium
Shetlands are up next! My guess is 6-8 Shetland lambs from the 4 ewes. Another 3 ewes due in June. It will be fun to have new babies born when the others are all older.
Lambs are exactly 50/50 boys/girls right now. Even including the two that we lost.
Sad day today. My old Shetland ewe, Ingrid went into labor. After a long time passed and she wasn't making any progress, i checked her. Her cervix wasn't very dilated. I gave her some more time and checked again, still no progress. I spent about an hour massaging her cervix, trying to get it to open up. My sister talked to the vet and he basically told us to do what we had already been doing. He said to give her some calcium and keep working on her cervix. If after an hour, she still wasn't dilating, she most likely wouldn't. We gave her the calcium and about 30 minutes later we decided she was done. She was exhausted and was giving up.
We made the decision to put her down rather than pay big bucks to have a vet come out a Saturday. My dad shot her and I quickly cut her open and removed the lambs. The 1st was dead and was the cause of the problem. He was malpresented and at some point, his sack had ruptured leaving him really dry. #2 was alive, also a boy.
I'm not prepared to say that he will make it either. I don't know what kind of trauma he may have suffered while still in the womb. I got him out really quickly (under 15 seconds to get both out) and had his face clear before he took his first breath. He's really slow right now, he just wants to sleep and I'm having trouble getting him to eat. It doesn't help that he's only 3.9lbs (compare that to the average 10lb BL lamb). I've never had a bottle Shetland before so I really don't know how much he should be getting and the nipple is a little big for him.