Sometimes you win and sometimes you lose, and sometimes you do both.

Today was a _____ day on the farm. I don't know how to describe it. there was highs there was lows. It seems that every emotion I thought I knew and ones that I didn't know at all were present.

Today as I had asked for we had more lambs. Around 7:30 I fed the pregnant ewes and Stella did not eat. I thought that she looked close so I was not concerned. I thought that I should walk the dog, put her in the house and then come back out to see if I should call work to let them know that I would be late. When I came to check cell phone in hand there were Stella AND Tail in labour. Great. I called and said I would be late. I sat with the girls as they pushed and out came a little spotty ram lamb from Tail. She looked really big so I was surprised that she did not get right back to business and start pushing again. I was worried about her because she had so much trouble with Maple. Stella kept pushing and pushing and pushing. Finally I took a look and there was a little nose sticking out. Dang. There should be some legs with that. Lets just say that I had to tie her up, go in, find a leg and pull out a big beautiful chocolate brown ram lamb. His tongue was a bit swollen but he seemed fine. Tail at this point had started eating so I thought it was over, a little disappointed by the homely little guy but at least she seemed to be letting him drink so that was all I could ask for. I put them into their own lambing pens, got the babes dried off better etc and thought I was just about ready to go to work. then I see that Tail has started to push again (This is over an hour later). She pushed a few times, then I checked and there was some feet sticking out. Oh there is the other one I had been expecting. Then I thought that I better just check things out and it turned out that it was the back legs not the front. I was starting to panic. It had been in there way too long and it is coming out backwards. I managed to free the lamb but it was too late for him. There was nothing that I could do to make him come alive. All I could think was poor Tail. I should have checked her after the first when I thought it was weird that there didn't seem to be another.

So in the end we have to healthy ram lambs. Tail and Stella are doing great with them. I am sad about the loss of the third but I guess sometimes you have to learn lessons the hard way. I will not be making that mistake again if I can help it. I am just glad that I was able to be there for both of them or else I think we would have lost 5 sheep today.

We are officially half way through lambing. We now have 2 ewe lambs and 3 ram lambs. 4 more girls to go and hopefully it goes a lot smoother than today.

Here are some pictures of the new boys. Boots (White) and Tip (Brown).

Oh yeah I did take Maple's 1st birthday photo. Here she is yelling at me for not taking it yesterday. ps. Boots is her full blood brother!