The Only Thing Sweeter Than New Spring Life...

is watching these little ones hold and care for it.

Now for something cute to look at...

Part of why we moved to a rural town was so that our children would have the opportunity to raise animals. Last year, we experienced raising chickens. Some of them are still alive, so we decided it was time to up the ante.


We are trying our hand at raising lambs this spring/summer. Clint found two local sheep farmers with bum lambs they needed help with. When a ewe births three sheep, she will only care for two of them. The third lamb has to be bottle-fed, and is called a bum lamb (or a bummer.) Because sheep are social creatures, we decided to get a pair of bum lambs. The farmers will pay our children for their work at the end of the summer, at which time they will collect the lambs for eventual breeding.

Last Saturday, Clint took Autumn & Micah to go pick up the lambs. Unfortunately, one of them was sick (and not showing symptoms at the time.) He never ate much at all for us, and Clint had to bury him on Wednesday evening (after the lamb stopped breathing right in front of Clint & Autumn.) This prompted a lot of discussion about the resurrection, but the children handled it amazingly well!



Anyhow, we picked up a replacement lamb yesterday (the children had fun bleating back to her all the way home, while she complained about being stowed away in a kennel in the back of our car.) Oreo (the replacement lamb) and Cookie/a.k.a. Lambie (the surviving original lamb) are doing very well. It's fun to watch the kids play with them. Jonah spent 30 minutes in a game of hide-and-seek with Cookie on Thursday (she was feeling pretty lonely). Who knew that lambs could play that game...she was actually good at it, and would attack Jonah with lamb kisses each time she found him. And it's sweet to see them feeding a bottle to them. Gabriel chased Oreo around for 5 minutes last night, trying to get her to take his bottle. He was scolding her for not cooperating ("No! NO!") and had a stern look on his face that would have intimidated me into obeying.


So, wish us luck on our newest adventure. And, if you get an urge to bottle-feed a lamb, stop in. Feeding times are 7 A.M. and 6:30 P.M.