I had to go home at lunch to take a bag of dog food home, and of course while I was there, was compelled to feed the bottle lambs; DH was still in bed, and although he doesn't until tomorrow, he thought he started night shift tonight :)
How cute is this? This is (now) George; as in "I will love him, and hug him, and squeeze him and call him George!" And for some strange reason, Jari named the tunis 'Paco'. They are of a size now, even though George weighed 7 lbs more than Paco did when they were born. And though Paco, since his first bottle, has nursed with gusto, Geoge couldnt seem to get used to this manner of eating; this is due to George's inability to accept that he was no longer going to get to nurse a ewe. This problem kept him from taking total advantage of a bottle because every time we would try to feed him, he would try to get to the closest ewe. It was amusing... for a minute. The unfortunate ewe would buck, jump, spin and otherwise try to disengage the tenacious little tyke, but when he latches on, he ain't lettin' go! Hence the fact that he and his bottle partner are still living it up in the garage. If I were to put him in community right now, every ewe in there would be so jumpy, not even their own lambs would get a break. In fact, he is a bit confused about the fact that those hangy-downy things on Paco don't seem to yield any food. He is doing much better now, drinking between 12 and 16 oz per feeding. They both nibble on hay and grain pellets, and chew cud.This is our first time attempting to graft a bummer, it didn't go too awful well, but I think we will try it again if the right situation presents itself.
5 comments:
Good looking bottle babies! They don't appear to have missed any meals. About my babies their problems could be as easy as a selenium deficiancy or as I just found out yesterday there is a genetic disorder that has the same symptoms. This could be bad! or not.
Definite cuties!
George is a good sheep name. We also have a George who has non-acceptance issues. Our George thinks he's a llama.
Is George a keeper? When I graft lambs, or try to defeat scent processes on any of the sheep, I resort to good ole Vick Vaporub. If it was good enough during forensic autopsies, it's good enough for the sheep! LOL! I put some on the ewe's nose to screw up her sensing ability. But I will say I never had much luck with older bottle lambs - seems once they got used to the bottle, that's what they wanted. At least this guy still wants the real thing!
He is, I am keeping his as a wool wether and companion for my rams.
He was the one that we tried to graft to a ewe that had lambs the day after he was born. She took him on for almost a week, but it was a degenerative relationship. She started by just kind of half heartedly moving away to finally resorting to butting him away.
Post a Comment