Bottle Soay Sheep lambs - status update

The orphaned bottle lambs we took on two weeks ago are thriving. It was a blessing in disguise to get 3 at once, as they have become great chums. We did not have any of our own flock lambs at that time, and without their mothers around to hang out with, I think a single bottle baby would have been very lonely. We keep all 3 bottle lambs in with the ewe flock, and to my relief all 3 are remaining pretty skittish EXCEPT at feeding time. Once they are done, they are off like a shot and cannot be caught (unless you corner them with the infamous salmon net, of course). I don't want the problematic tame bottle-baby ram issue when the two ram lambs grow up.
Here is a photo of the three of them a couple days ago. They are, left to right, Champ -r, Sadie - e, and Jack - r. (Click photo to enlarge)

We have now had two lambs born at Woodland Creek Farm so far this year. They are very late this year for some reason (well, the reason is obvious - they were bred late. I mean the reason for that is unclear...) Here is our first-born 2007 lamb, Woodland Creek Cherokee '07 - r.

Here's a photo of Cherokee standing. He is heterozygous for white spotting (a 'carrier'), but therefore does not exhibit any white.

Our second lamb was from a 'wild' or 'mouflon' pattern ewe, but with a self-colored black sire (Thor) the lamb has to be heterozgous for agouti self-colored (that is, she is a 'carrier'). Here is Woodland Creek Arikara. Dam is Massena's Rosita, sire is Deer Park Hjemstad's Thor.


Very nice to have enough lambs to play with each other on the scrap hay pile.