This week, we had 5 lambs born on the farm so helping the sheep give birth as well as caring for/ making sure the newborn lambs were healthy took lots of work and time.

The first pregnant sheep gave birth to triplets, and the birth was relatively easy other than the second lamb (who was larger than the other two), who ended up getting stuck. My dad and I had to help the sheep give birth by helping the lamb’s leg get unstuck (it was bent the wrong way so she was unable to get free). We also had to make sure they were all getting enough milk, and we bottle-fed them as well as observed them nursing to make sure this was happening. These are pictures of the triplets that I documented this week:

The second pregnant sheep is only a year old, so she had a set of twins that weighed a lot less than the previous mother’s lambs. One of them was very healthy and was able to nurse right away, but the other weighed only 4 pounds (the other lambs weigh around 7 or 8 pounds) and was born prematurely. He was born at 3 AM and was shivering and unable to stand up so we had to warm him up and feed him milk from a bottle. We then reintroduced him to his mom and he’s doing great! These are a couple photos of these two lambs which I documented: