Stall Change

Yesterday I slipped into the barn unnoticed by the ewes and their lambs.  Usually, when I enter the barn, my presence creates a lot of welcome cries from hungry sheep, goats or whatever else is in the barn wanting my attention.  However, the door was already open so I slipped in quietly and headed over to Stilts stall where he shared it with his mother and sister (who has been renamed Bonnie).  I keep a dog pen in the stall so that Stilts can escape to somewhere safe if he felt it needed and also where I keep his bottle out of reach of his mother.  I was pleasantly surprised to find him cuddling in a part of the stall outside of his pen next to his sister and mother.  The trio had finally bonded.  Not that she had gone so far as to allow him to nurse, but at last she was accepting his presence.  So I decided to make the next big move.  All three of them would join the nursing pen.  Mom and sister had already been to the nursing pen but after Bonnie's accident, they have spent the past week in Stilts stall, which was great cause they were finally given the chance to reconnect.  But we needed the stall and since Bonnie looked healed enough and Stilts was strong enough and clever enough, I felt it was safe to send them all to the nursing pen.

Of course Stilts' pen came with him but other than drinking from his bottle, he rarely used it all day.  And at bedtime, he found a quiet spot outside the pen in the stall to bed down for the night.  I'd say everything is going smoothly now but we noticed one of our ewe lambs named Celine has been crying a lot for the past two days and today I noticed a drop in weight.  I watched her and her mom for a while and her mother hadn't rejected her but she wasn't allowing her to drink neither.  But, that said, I barely noticed any of the lambs nursing.  I wondered if the ewe wasn't getting enough milk but mom looks plenty full to me but for safe measures I brought her out a bottle which she gulped down happily.  I may just have two bottle lambs after all.

Which is okay because this little girl is very small.  This is Celine next to Annie who is only a week older than her.

Annie on the left, Celine on the right.

But Annie has been a big lamb ever since she was born.  But again, I don't mind, I love bottle lambs.  They are super friendly.  Anyway, the reason we needed Stilts' stall was because we thought it was high time Blossom came in from the pasture.

She still hadn't gotten use to us humans and trying to catch her was becoming an issue.  So we are enforcing close confinement.  We'll have that filly loving us in no time!