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A Baby Boy is Born!

Meet our new baby lamb, Cocoa!  We are so excited that he has come to our flock of American Black Belly sheep!  It's going to be hard to take these cuties to market!My son left to work for a few hours today, and we had no babies, and voila! when he came home, we had a very exciting new addition to the family!  We got these three sheep a couple of months ago for free.  Well, of course they cost money to feed, but they came pregnant.  We knew that they should be due in December, so we've been anxiously awaiting!

 The great thing about this breed, is that they need very little assistance lambing.  We had no idea it was going on.  You can see the happy family here.  Yes, I am aware that the dark sheep is fixing to have a birth soon!  She stopped while we were watching, so we'll be checking on them frequently.
 We decided on Cocoa for a name and we know he's a boy, because of where he was peeing from!  He is very tired, but that didn't stop us from oohing and ahing over him!
This breed of sheep are used for meat.  They have hair instead of wool, so are very low maintenance.

Mama, is very skittish (none of these sheep were handled.  The darker one will come up and sniff, but won't allow you to pet her.)  but she is doing a great job getting her baby up and nursing.  I have to say, this is my favorite picture, since I've nursed more than 14 years myself!  Makes me proud!

It's so exciting to have these little ones.  We feel very blessed.  Now to wean ourselves off them, so they can go to market next fall!  We need to recover our feed bills for sure! I'm up for any recipe ideas for lamb, by the way.  Mr. Right and I have never liked lamb before, so we need something that will be enjoyable for us.  We figured it was worth a try, since the sheep were free.
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  1. michele@Portlandia VintageDecember 27, 2013 at 3:59 PM

    I would suggest leaving the animals alone and just raise vegetables! Very creepy!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Prairie ScrapsDecember 29, 2013 at 8:42 AM

      We certainly wish that we could raise enough vegetables here, but on the prairie and a short growing season, we can't rely only on vegetables for sustaining ourselves. Add to that having 5 children, in which 4 of them enjoy meat, we do what we can to feed everyone.

      Delete

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