When sheep have babies

The day we had all anticipated finally arrived, when on a Friday afternoon a little wobbly legged lamb was born. We didn't actually get to see him being born but felt pretty certain he hadn't been out long.  Obviously the girls were all running around screaming and I'm pretty sure the neighbours would have heard the squeals too.  It became apparent that the mummy sheep didn't like the idea of lamby having any milk.  She would kick her leg anytime the lamb would try and suckle.  With this being our first time seeing any of this process weren't exactly sure what to expect but had a feeling things weren't quite right.  We did however have it on good advice to not intervene for at least 24 -48 hours to let him and his mum figure things out.  On Saturday night it rained all night and although it was desperately needed for the land, I couldn't stop thinking about the little lamb outside.  Anyway he survived the night and through Saturday we kept checking on him and he seemed so weak and skinny and as far as we could see mum still wouldn't let him feed.  Unfortunately we don't have any kind of hard fencing set up yet  (only the electric net fencing) and that meant we couldn't try and get mum and him and put them somewhere on their own or try to put the lamb on the mum to feed.  After a day of no improvement and seeing how frail the little lamb was we knew we had to intervene. 
 So everyone, meet Buddy.

The new baby of the family.

This was the moment he fed for the first time.

Little Lasky saying hello.

He is now 11 days old and thinks he is one of us.  For the first 7 days he slept in a little pen inside with us at night so it was easy for us to get up and feed him.  That however had a short lifespan because between the cat, who hunts cheeky mice at night, and Alaska who still doesn't sleep through and Buddy bleating at anything that moved....well we had issues.  I have now (with the help of my Aunty) made a secure pen for him outdoors underneath the trampoline and he had his first night out there on Sunday night.  We give him his last feed at 10pm and we all sleep a bit better now.  I have put him back in the big paddock with the other sheep a few times but each time he has ended up tangled in the fencing! We have a few concerns about his vision and think he may be partially blind- obviously we can't know for sure but we have since had another lamb (who is feeding beautifully off mum) and this one seems very different to Buddy.  Anyway he is ours to love and look after now and when he seems a lot stronger and we get a second opinion on his vision, we will try re integrate him with his other sheepy friends.  Headcount so far is 2 lambs (one boy and one girl) with a few more to come we think!

Cuddles with Missy.

Alaska loves his soft ears.

Watching Tv with a lamb...as you do.

He likes to nibble.