The Six-O'Clock Dinner Club showed up just as we were finishing frying up some lamb chops (what else!?). As we were setting up the feed line a faint but unmistakable noise could be heard coming from the back of the house. "Did I just hear a LAMB in the Bathroom?" Well, it is that time of year again! With the new lambs always comes at least one BUM. The cute kind of Bum. This one happened to be a little all black ewe lamb, now named "Pretty" by Miss Chloe. The kids had a day off of school and so did their cousin from across the Wyoming border. We had a sleep over and a lunch on the town with others in the family. We stayed as long as we could stand, surrounded by seven small children, and then headed home. The first thing we noticed when we got home was Dad washing dishes in his coveralls. Upon further inspection we noticed that it wasn't dishes in the sink. Dad had brought home the first bummed lamb of the season. When a momma ewe can't or won't take care of their lambs we say the lamb has been Bummed, hence calling the lambs bums, or bummers. The boys were on such a mission to hit the sled slopes again that they didn't even notice until the second time thru the kitchen! The girls were a different story. They had grabbed a chair and were right there under foot lending all the moral support one could ask for. "Pretty", as she is now known, was born only a few hours earlier. For whatever reason her momma didn't tend to her. She had been cleaned off but not suckled and she was COLD. Half frozen to be exact. Which brings me to why she was in the sink. Albert got to her just in time to see that she wasn't being tended to and wasn't doing well. He brought her home to be given a warm bath to bring her body temperature up and to try to get some warm milk in her.  After about 20 minutes of rubbing in the warm water and re-warming the water several times she was dried off and placed in the kid's bathroom with a heater to dry off and stay warm. Albert then went back down to finish feeding and check the rest of the lambs. He milked some colostrum from the momma to bottle feed to the baby (colostrum is the pre-milk that is thick and rich in vitamins and protein to give new-born babies a good start). It only took a minute for the baby to figure out how to work the bottle and after a warm bath, warm food in her tummy and LOTS of excitement in her first few hours she slept like...well... a baby! Now if we could just contain the girls' enthusiasm to help feed her EVERY 5 Minutes! Today "Pretty" got a new neighbor (I think they named the new one "Baby") and we have two bum lambs in the tub. It won't be long and they will both get stronger and demand more space. Hopefully we can get them back out to another ewe soon! Too bad we started lambing so soon, the in-laws usually have a goat or two that has kidded and can help out with feeding bums! But, that is a story for another time! So until then...

I'll be Baa-ck!
Lola Wooly