Sarah Jane Humke

Yesterday I lost a ewe.  It was Abigail, my lead ewe.  It was unexpected and horrible to come home to.  I hadn’t lost a sheep in over a year and to lose one so abruptly was a shock.  Abigail wasn’t my finest ewe, but she was one of my favorites.  She was always the first to tell me that something was up and she would do it loudly with a bah that sounded like the voice of the woman sitting at the end of the bar who has smoked two packs a day for the past twenty years and belts back a couple of Johnnie Walkers neat every night.  It was a deep and scratchy bah that was always a surprise coming from such a petite Shetland ewe.  This is a photo from the first summer I had my flock.

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If you have been reading this blog the past few weeks, you might remember that Abigail had twins, a little ewe and ram.  I now have my first bottle babies.  Thankfully they both took to the bottle fine, it was just catching them in order to introduce them to the bottle that was the trick.  They are over three weeks old and are past the very hardest parts of survival.  The twins have had three weeks of mama’s milk, including the essential colostrum, so have gotten the best start I could hope for.   This pair have already been noted for their independence (not a surprise given who their mama was) and are often seen wandering about together outside the pen.  I’m not worried that they will make it, but it still breaks my heart that I have to say that…