I have a special treat for you this morning, one I think you'll really enjoy!
Remember back when I mentioned that we had two more ewes that were pregnant which we found out from the surprise of Sunny's birth. Well after two long, and when I say long I really mean lllllloooooonnnnngggg months later we finally can say that we now have two lambs playing in our barn. Here's the story:
To say that I have been eagerly awaiting the births of the forthcoming lambs would be an understatement. After Sunny was born I read and reread and reread a third time all the information I could on sheep birthing and how to tell if your ewe is going into labor. Everyday I went up to the barn I could have sworn that that day was the day, that for sure they were going to lamb and Sunny would have some buddies to play with. But the next morning when I went up, still no lambs. Wiz kept telling me that I was crazy, and after about a month I began to think that maybe he was right. I was stressed, always thinking that when I went up there they'd have their babies and if I didn't make it up there in time then something bad was going to happen, and we'd lose one or something. After about six week Wiz started saying the unthinkable, that maybe they weren't pregnant. I vehemently disagreed with him, swearing up and down that they were, that I hadn't spent the last 6 plus weeks in stressed anticipation for nothing. After some calculations based on what our seller had told us we decided that they had until the beginning of May to lamb, if they hadn't by then well then obviously he'd be able to say that he was right, which is certainly not something I wanted to have to say.
Let me take a quick minute to tell you a little something about Wiz and I's relationship, it will help with the story trust me. I have know Wiz for about 10 years now, when my mom started dating him. Almost right away we discovered that we had the same sense of humor. From there our relationship has progressed to where it is now, we're best buddies. We love to pull pranks on each other, and generally joke around(remind me sometime to tell you why I call him Wiz). So this whole time we were waiting for the lambs, when he came home from work every once in a while I'd tell him that one or the other had had their lambs. Most of the time he'd believe me (I have an excellent poker face!) but eventually he started saying "Yeah right, sure they did."
So yesterday morning I went up to the barn with a jug of water, resigned to once again find only 5 sheep in the pen.We had had a pretty loud thunderstorm the night before and I was anxious over how they would fair with all the noise, especially Sunny who had only been in the back of the barn for a couple of days now. Right away though I could tell something was different. usually when I clang the chain for the gate they all start bellering and baaing for me, to which I generally call out a "Keep the wool on your backs, I'm coming". This morning however, they were mostly silent. So as I'm unlatching the chain I glance through the gate and notice a little body following one of the ewes around. I immediately stopped what I was doing (dropping the water jug) and ran for my grandparents house. Our two houses a basically right next to each other, ours is set further back from the road than theirs is, the barn is closer to their house than ours. So I run as fast as my early morning, no cups of coffee, legs could handle for their back yard and up onto their deck. Thankfully they were having breakfast and saw me coming, so all I had to do was toe off my barn boots and slip through the already open slider. My grandma had a concerned look on her face, and asked "Did they have their lambs?" They'd listened to me lament more than once about the fact that I wished they would just hurry up and have their lambs already. A big smile on my face I told her yes in fact there was a lamb out there. I picked up the phone and called my mom, who thankfully was home that day. I was worried that I would need help if the mom, like MaMa would have a hard time getting used to nursing. When I got Mom on the phone I was still out of breath from my sprint and she immediately asked what was wrong, when I told her, she quickly hung up and headed for the barn. I rushed back out there to check out the situation. The baby was walking around behind the others as if it had been hanging out with them for days, instead of hours. I checked butts to try and figure out which one had had the baby. The lucky mommy was Annabeth, our freckly eared yearling. We made sure the baby was nursing, and in the process discovered that it was a boy. Mom stayed for a little while but had errands to run and since Annabeth took to nursing like a champ she headed off. I stayed to make sure everything was ok. The baby was surprisingly strong for being only a couple of hours old, but he was making the others a little anxious so I pulled some skids into the pen and set-up a little makeshift pen for mom and baby. I didn't need to worry at all about him, Anna turned out to be an excellent mother. The whole time I kept thinking about how I was finally going to get to tell Wiz that we had another baby. But I knew he'd never believe me, since I had been saying for weeks that they had, had their babies. So I hatched a plan.....
At four o'clock when Wiz came home I followed him around the house telling him that I thought Anna was going to have her baby and would he please, please, please come up and check her with me. He kept saying over and over that she was fine, she probably wasn't even going to have a baby, in fact he was 99% sure that neither one of them was going to have a baby. Nonetheless I pressed on, "please Wiz will you come up and check her with me I really think she's going to have her baby tonight." He looked me dead in the eye and told me that I had one more time for him to come up and check them, I needed to stop stressing and he wasn't going to keep doing this with me. "Do you want this to be that one time, because that's it?" Heck yes I did. So into the truck we go and up to the barn. I let him go through the gate first all the while knowing what he'd see when he got close to the sheep pen. I think he started to say something like, "Well she has a little one in there..." But I screamed out, "I TOLD YOU SO" I swear they probably heard me in the next county. We both had a good laugh over my joke and decided the baby looked pretty good, for being born in the middle of a thunderstorm.
And so dear friends that is the story of Thunders birth. We have some pretty good adventures on The Rolling K Farm don't you think!
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