Bekah and Molasses and her first lamb!
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I was one of the recipients of a natural colored ewe lamb in 2000. Since I received a ewe lamb in April of 2000, my flock has come a long way!
The donor of my lamb was Candace Gebhart. She donated Molasses, black with white spots, a Rambouillet, CVM (California Variegated Mutant), Corriedale, Merino cross ewe lamb. I also bought Petunia, a silver CVM, Merino cross ewe lamb, to keep her company. For the summer of 2000, I played with my two lambs, showed them at our county fair, and had a great time with them. Dave Robertson donated a very nice sheep blanket for Molasses to wear.
In the fall of 2000, Candace had to move. I took 11 of her ewes, as well as Himself, a white Rambouillet ram. I experienced my first lambing in the spring of 2001, and couldn't wait for the next one. I had SO much fun playing with the lambs! We were studying Ancient Rome at the time, so they all had Roman names. I saved two of the ewe lambs, Flavia and Portia. Candace came back in the summer of 2001, so her girlies were returned.
In the meantime, I had bought a CVM ram, and two CVM ewes from Two Sisters Sheep in Wyoming. We picked them up at Estes Park Wool Market that summer. I showed the Wyoming sheep, as well as two fleeces, and got 2nd in every event we entered! We then went to Platte Valley Livestock Show in late July, and showed the Wyoming sheep there as well. While we were at Platte Valley, we took a side trip up to Wellington, CO, to see Elsie Braum's flock of CVM crosses. She was selling all of her sheep. I looked over them all, and really liked Thea, a brown ewe, and Peaches, a silver/gray ewe. I went home and talked to Dad and Mom about them, emailed Elsie, and told her that I wanted to buy the two.
She had gotten the girls ultra-sounded, and emailed me back the results. She also made a special deal for me to take the whole flock! After working it out, Kelly Calkins took one of the ewes, Candace Gebhart took a few, and I took the rest (minus the rams, as I had already bought a ram). So that fall, we had 21 ewes lamb, a total of 29 lambs! Whew! One of the ewes developed milk fever, was very sick, and we had the vet out 4 times for her. We moved the girls a month before they were due to lamb. Because of the altitude and temperature change, we had quite a few full term, premature lambs. Most of the lambs survived however. I had four ewes lamb in the spring of 2002. We had two sets of twins, and two singles. I bred the fall lambing ewes in the spring, but only 6 were actually going to lamb. We had those ewes lamb this fall. The rest of the flock is due to lamb in January. They are bred to Himself, so we should have some pretty tall lambs again.
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