Spoiled Lamb

We have had about 8 inches of snow here today in Michigan for the dawning of a new year. Yesterday another sheep had a lamb on our farm and the poor little thing was having a hard time following Mom in the snow. They will soon have a track from the run in barn to the fence where we feed them and it will be easier. I did take some hay to the barn but I don’t know if mom stayed inside with him. We don’t baby these Barbados sheep and they lamb all year in all kinds of weather. I have one more due but I think it will be a few more weeks.

Ok, I said we didn’t baby them but one lamb is sure a baby, the one I brought inside before Christmas as mom abandoned him. Taco is a brat right now. The dogs are pretty used to him and he runs around the house when we are home, which has been a lot the last 2 weeks. He and Buddy, our youngest dog, a Jack Russell Yorky mix male just under a year old, are best buds. Best buds who destroy the house together with wild romps up and over furniture, back and forth all through the house. Taco is taller and helps by pulling things off tables so he and Buddy can chew them up.

He won’t let me sit a glass down, he has to see and taste what’s in it. I can’t read a magazine or book without him trying to eat one end of it. We have brought in hay and grain for him to nibble but so far he likes dog food and animal cookies best. He is on his second $20.00 bag of replacement milk formula and eats more like a horse than a lamb. He is now taller than all our dogs, all legs.

Our daughter in law brought a cousin who had just come home from Iraq with her for Christmas dinner. He probably thought we were nuts with a lamb running through the house. Taco was a little scared of the strangers at first but he was soon showing off for them. Buddy however went outside and hid. I keep threatening to give him away and maybe he thought that was why everyone was here.

My granddaughters fed him his bottle and giggled over the butt washing the dogs give him. We never have to worry about lamb poop hitting the floor, the dogs think its candy. They fight over who gets it. Now if that don’t reveal our redneck side I guess nothing will, dogs who clean up after a lamb who isn’t housebroken.
All in our house at Christmas, but my son and his family are used to it. I’m sure glad we don’t have carpet though, as he pees where ever he wants.

I told my husband that if we could have a lamb this big in the house why not a miniature horse. He thought I was serious at first. Seriously I need to find Taco a home because I don’t think I can eat his little lamb chops now. If the weather was nicer I could leave him outside with his “wild” brother and cousins to play, but he is used to inside conditions and I don’t want to go out there to feed him.

By the end of January though, he will need to find some new place. The puppies will be running around and that is another problem. They are the same age as Taco, born the day before, but much less mobile. We are trying to decide whether to breed the cocker. She is in heat and it is soon or never. I don’t know if I want another cocker litter, the pups are so big and she always has a big litter.
Steve wants some, he loves the cockers and he will be the main caretaker so she may get to visit Bubba.

Why not visit my garden site to see the new things I have written. I ahave articles on Christmas cactus , manzanita, African Violets, and much more. You get there by going to
www.gardenandhearth.com/Plant-Guides.htm

I hope everyone reading this has a Happy, healthy, peaceful and prosperous 2008.