My Bottle Lamb Is Smarter Than...

Currently my favorite picture of Lila. In two weeks when I'm having to make that collar larger, I will be able to look back...



Okay, not to be bragging...wait, well of course I'm going brag about this. Somehow Lila decided that when she needs to peepee and she's in the house, she runs into her crate, pees, runs back to whatever she was doing. Seriously. Picture to prove it.

To take this one step further, this evening when we were up at the barn feeding, she was playing around in the barn aisle, stopped, ran into the only open stall, peed, ran back out. I am not making this up. Does that just not beat all?!?



Then, tonight when I was fixing dinner (yes, it occasionally happens) I locked her out on the back porch with Iris and Weaslie. She played around for a little while, didn't get into any trouble and then I found her sleeping in the condo. I'm beginning to think Keebler might have been a little tiny bit of a brat. Possibly ;-).



We spent most of the afternoon up at the wool house working on Boudreaux's messy fleece. Luckily she was able to find some friends to hang out with.

"Hey, it looks like your mom made you take vitamins too!"

Aren't those sheep planters awesome? Alice found them at Home Goods. Great find!



I was able to salvage both of Boudreaux's sides - in good order. His back? Yeah, um... This is one of my favorite fleeces though and one of our favorite sheep too. Lila and I spent several hours snipping off sunbleached tips and shaking out VM.

The worst of it is just going to have to find it's way into some bird nests, but we made a pretty good dent in saving a decent amount. We have some major barn renovations planned for this summer so this won't happen again.



So, then Dad gets home.

Who is the one who makes all the ba-ba's? And feeds her every two hours? Who slept on the kitchen floor next to her the first night? And again when it started to storm at 3:00 a.m. last night and she (and the dogs) were scared?

Yeah, it wasn't Saint Tim.

Who does she follow around if she has a choice?

Kids...

To answer some questions:

Lila was a triplet from the same farm Keebs came from. She was a little oxygen deprived at birth and was having trouble connecting all the nursing dots. Kathy worked with her for two days and got her sucking (bottle and momma), but couldn't get her to figure out how to do it herself. The green stripe was so she could easily find her among the other 163 white lambs she has running around right now.

She's not bred anywhere near the same as Keebler and I'm not sure where the spots came from. I believe her mother was a Rambouillet cross and her father is a Texel ram, but don't quote me on that. Not sure how her fleece will turn out. She's just here for entertainment and to make sure she gets a good start in a hopefully long and happy life.

Her name just popped into my head as soon as I put her in the car. Sometimes that happens. Occasionally. Usually Tim comes up with the clever names. I think as cute as the Mud Ranch lambs are, I'd have fun trying to come up with 60 names :-).