A Little Bit of Trouble

This morning, my brown polled ewe Ida had her lambs: twin girls, one black and one white.

Then tonight, true to her habit of doing the unexpected, the infamous Trouble the Runaway Lamb, whose adventures I've recounted several times before on this blog, had her lamb---neither on the due date I figured based on when I saw her bred nor on the due date I figured as one cycle past that when she didn't lamb on her expected due date, but somewhere halfway in between.

Being Trouble, of course she needed assistance with the birth. She's a first time mom and the lamb was coming out with one leg back, so I was glad to be on hand to help. Of course, Trouble is completely NOT tame, so I had to hold her by the horn with one hand while trying to pull the lamb out of the other end of her with my other hand. Meanwhile, she was charging around the lambing pen, crashing through my lambing kit and trampling its contents into the bedding.

When the lamb came out, of course Trouble had to add one more twist by having a boldly spotted lamb even though she'd been bred to a solid ram. So now we know for sure that both Trouble and Tut carry the spotting gene.

The lamb is a ram, all white behind with a large chocolate-colored "hood" marking on his head and shoulders. He's got Leadersheep written all over him, from his long, fine bone structure to the classic Leadersheep spotting pattern. Certainly his mother is extremely leaderlike in her personality, but this lamb looks even more so than her. We'll have to see if he gets any of his father's good meat build as he fills out.

Either way, he's definitely going to be flashy when he grows up.