Seeing Triple

I skipped over the last half of lambing as far as blog posts. The last post stopped with lamb numbers in the mid-50s. We finished March 19 with 90 lambs. I’ll work on some more lambing stories but they won’t be in the order than I like.

I just looked back at my lambing stats and see that there were two years with eight sets of triplets! I had thought that this year seven sets set a record.

The first triplets were Meridian Rambler x Meridian Jasmine with two ewes and a ram. Then came Betty with an unfortunate, but not uncommon triplet story—one dead and one rejected after being on the wrong side of a fence. Those were sired by Ruby Peak Tamarisk. That story was in this blog post.

Next was Raquel (Meridian Rambler x Meridian Raquel)

I set up a heat lamb in this pen because one of these lambs seemed thin and cold and shivery. They all liked it and created a Lamb-pile in the corner.

Honey was next and I told the story of her lamb with the need for physical therapy in the March 12 lamb post, linked at the top of this post.

Alice had three BFL-cross lambs, sired by Peyton.

The sixth set of triplets was Hillside Gabby’s Barrett x Meridian Soprano. Two ewes and a ram.

The last lambs of the season were Eilwen’s (Hillside Gabby’s Barrett x Sweetgrass Eilwen). Notice the flock names for these sheep—that means that they are unrelated to almost all of the other sheep here. That makes these three ram lambs potentially valuable as far as a future sire here or for matching up unrelated ewes with a ram for this year’s buyers.

Do you see the similarity in these lambs and in the photo above? These are Soprano’s lambs after she cleaned them up a bit. Both sets are sired by Barrett who has a distinctive facial pattern. You can see him on this page.

Here is one of those triplets after they were turned out with everyone else.

Moms and babies hang out together. This is Honey, who’s lamb with the bent leg is doing fine now.

You might not be able to tell from the perspective in this photo, but that lamb at the top is standing on mom (Honey) and licking her horn.

Sheep have only 2 teats and the lambs have to somehow take turns, although you can’t tell that from this photo of Jasmine.

Raquel and her lambs.

In this photo of Soprano you can see the distinctive look of Barrett’s lambs, although not all of his lambs carried that facial pattern.