This sleepy, fairly small lamb was born first. She cleaned and cleaned and cleaned on him. He ate and ate and ate. And no second lamb came. I knew by the size of her belly and the size of her udder that she should have at least one more lamb.
I finally got nervous enough that I checked her. I could feel two feet and a head, so I knew it was positioned correctly, but bigger, so helped her get him delivered. If he'd been small as well, I'd have known there was a third. With his size it was possible she just was just going to have twins.
Nope, out popped a third, sort of. A tiny little lamb she maybe didn't even know she'd had. Or halfway had. I saw her lying down...but cleaning on the second lamb. That was odd because lying down, she should have been having a lamb. If she was just cleaning the second, she should have been standing up.
I rushed over and saw the front half of a lamb, still in the intact water bag (!). I climbed over the gate, she jumped up and the rest of the lamb whooshed out. I broke the sack and got her nose and mouth cleared as fast as I could, but I was worried she'd already drowned.
Nope, that little pipsqueak coughed and sneezed and shook her head, coughed and sneezed some more and even made a little cry to let everyone know She Was Here. Whew!!!
She actually got nursing before the big second lamb did. And she nursed and nursed and nursed. To the point that both boys were full and sleeping and she was Still Eating. It was almost like as the tiniest lamb in the "litter", she'd been getting the short end of the stick all along and was now making up for all those lost lunches.
The big boy.
Here's a short video. If you are reading via email, apparently the embedded video doesn't show up. You'll need (an want ;-) to go to the actual blog to watch it.
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