Surprise!

As some of you may know, our Girls are involved in the Market Lamb project this year for 4H.  What this means is that they must have a bred ewe (sheep), and then the sheep will have a baby, and they'll sell the lamb.  This is the first year that our club is doing this project, and I also happen to be the leader for this project, which is really quite hilarious, since I know not a thing about sheep.  I should rephrase that....I knew not a thing about sheep.  I do know a few things now, and it's been fun to learn alongside The Girls.

We got our sheep about a month ago, and we were told that they would lamb at the end of February.  We also had a sheep rancher come out on Sunday and talk to our 4H kids about lambing, which was super interesting.  I've also been doing a bunch of reading, hoping to kinda figure out what the heck we're supposed to do.  It's a good thing the 4H motto is "Learn to do by doing", because that's definitely what's been going on around these parts.

The other day, Hannah was reading in one of our sheep books, and she read a sentence out loud to me which went something like this: "When it comes time for lambing, talk to your local 4H sheep leader, who will surely be a wealth of information..."  Ha!  Not this leader...

Anyhow, I digress... Let's get on with the real story.  It goes something like this:  Last night, when we got home from AWANA, Hannah and Abby went to go and check in on their sheep.  Abby said that Hannah's sheep, Mary, was acting a bit funny, and she thought it was going to have it's lamb last night, and she wanted to put down a bit more straw.  We told her to go for it, but we didn't actually believe her, since she's prone to a little bit of, lets say, exaggerating/melodrama.... call it what you want.  Keeping on....

This morning, I hear the garage door open, and I know the girls are going to check on their sheep.  A few minutes later, I hear a little person, pounding up the stair to our room.  And I think, "Oh no.  Something's dead." (optimistic, I know!)  Abby comes running into our room, yelling, "Hannah's sheep had her lamb!  I don't know what to do!!"  We sit up in bed, start fumbling around for warm clothes, and remember to ask, "Is it alive?"   It was!!  Art and I get outside, and see this wee little lamb, all dry and cozy and drinking from his mama...

 

Good grief, this little boy is cute!

 

The Girls were over the moon....and thankfully, it was only about -15C last night - not too cold!

 

After the initial shock, we rushed around, stealing a heat lamp from the chicken house, putting up a piece of plywood to separate the 2 sheep so Abby's doesn't try and steal the new lamb...all the things that we had planned to do in the next few weeks, since we thought we had some time....  Anyhow, all's well, and little Lucky is doing great!  Abby is itching for her sheep to have it's baby, and she's hoping for twins.  Based on it's size, I think that's not too much of a stretch...