Purl
Originally uploaded by The Woolley Farm.
Purl
Purl is one of our first Romneys that we ever bought. 3 years ago, as a first time mother, Brandon had to pull (sleep language for grabbing feet & pulling the baby out of the mother) a 17 pound ram lamb, which arrived dead. Ever since, Purl has had trouble lambing. Last year her water broke, and after 2 hours, she still hadn’t gone into labor. We had to call the vet and $300 later, the vet pulled out 2 babies (we could’ve done that if the vet had just told us but we thought there was something else wrong). That was the first internal exam I had ever done on a sheep. Actually, on anything!
The babies last year were fine, but poor Purl had very little milk so the babies had to be supplemented with bottles. Mac & Tosh (Boy & Girl) are still with us. Tosh carries the moorit gene and Mac will end up as either a fiber wether or lamb-chops.
This year Purl had 2 black babies. I posted about these earlier and we had thought that Troubadour was the father, but now we believe it to be Jet, the 5 month old black Romney out of Knit. So these little lambs can be registered as both Romneys and as Natural Colored, which is great (more money for us than cross-breeds). I have named them Mitt Romney and Obama
Again this year, Purl does not have enough milk so the babies looked hunched over, tails tucked between their legs, weaker, and you could see their backbones at 2 days old. Yesterday I started bottle supplementing them. By Sunday they should be strong enough to run & play with the others - right now, they eat, then huddle together in a corner.
