Whitetop1

Day

Day 1...Sat...September 28, 2003

Sometime in the early morning hours two baby lambs were born to Earless, our excited Barbado sheep. She loved the one that looked like her named Earfull but she didn't love the other one with a white patch on its head. It's name is White Top. She wouldn't feed White Top from her milk teets. She would butt her away with head butts. White Top was very sad and very hungry.

Day One...Jim and Zephyr feeding White Top

We had to do something. We decided to milk the mother sheep. When a mother first has babies she has a special milk that helps the baby grow strong. The special milk is colostrum. It's very important for the baby to get this first milk. The problem was Earless was afraid of people. Someone had clipped her ears off when she was a baby and she had never been handled after that. We bought her from a man selling sheep on the side of the highway from his pickup truck.

We carried some of her favorite food pellets into a small corral. She went in with her baby to get her alfalfa pellets. We closed the door behind her. Zephyr and I calmly held her while Alex milked her tiny teets. Alex was careful so Earless wouldn't kick the milk container. Mission accomplished.