Our ewes are due to lamb any day now, and Easter seems to me to be the perfect day for lambs to enter the world. But so far today-no lambs. And while, in theory, this would be super cute, it is also a cold snowy day here, so I would be ok with them waiting until slightly warmer weather!
So the waiting game continues. This is one of the hardest parts of breeding animals-you can't talk to them! You don't know how they are feeling or if they are in pain. I just watch and listen and hope to be there when they need me.
Another hard part is figuring out if they are pregnant. Yes, you can buy pregnancy tests for a stupid amount of money and if you just wait, it should be obvious pretty quickly! But still, sometimes it's not.
Take our goats Frannie and Snowy. I already told the tale of Frannie being very obviously in heat, while if Snowy was, she was covert about it. It seems fitting that their pregnancies are similar. Frannie is SO obviously pregnant. She is so short and so wide and has been just getting wider every day and her little teats are getting bigger-this girl is kidding this year! Then there's Snowy. She's always been a little chub and most of the time, to me at least, she doesn't look pregnant at all. When she lays down, yes, I do think she is prego...but maybe not.
But while Snowy is not physically showing, her behavior has changed. Both the girls refused to spend the night in a stall with the evil Cupid months ago-I took this as them instinctively protecting their bellies-smart girls. And Snowy has always been one to jump up on everyone-she hasn't done that in months. She has always been super affectionate, but now she is ever more so, which I really didn't think was possible. When I'm out in the pasture, she is on me like velcro. When I sit down out in the pasture, this 130 lb goat does everything in her power to sit on my lap with her head on my shoulder. And I just hold her. I don't know what else to do. I wonder how she feels, how can we know what being pregnant feels like to an animal? It's both Frannie and Snowy's first time expecting and Frannie seems just fine about whatever is going on in her body, Snowy just doesn't. So I'll hold her. I guess long story short, I do think Snowy is going to kid this year.
Then there are our sheep: Coco, Lulu, and Ginger. Holy smokes, these girls are giant. They are like stuffed sausages walking around on tiny legs that look like they are going to pop at any moment. I had a scary moment a few days ago when I looked outside and saw Coco on her back with all 4 legs stiffly pointing towards the sky-I thought she was dead. I hadn't been outside for about a half hour-had she been like that the whole time? I ran out the pasture with my bucket of birthing supplies, not knowing what to expect. She wasn't dead, she wasn't in labor, I think she just couldn't get up because she is so huge. I rolled her over and helped her get on her legs again. As soon as she was up, she made walked straight to the hay and stared chowing-she was fine! But I was spooked and have been stalking them like crazy since.
The order in which I think these pregos will pop: Ginger, Coco, Lulu, then Frannie and Snowy-and from what I've heard, whatever you think is going to happen will be the last thing that actually happens-so we'll see!
The only baby animals that we have right now are a new batch of chicks. They are now in their awkward, goofy looking, kinda feathery stage, but still they are pretty cute. They're starting to fly a little, so I need to make the walls of their space in the garage a little higher. They still have a few weeks until they join the rest of the flock.
I don't think we'll be delivering any lambs tonight, but I could be wrong! Hope everyone is having a nice Easter!
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