Good News Bad News

With the good comes the bad. After a freaky night, not getting to sleep with this throbbing finger infection I have (who knows what got under my fingernail...I have been blasting it with antibiotics, soaking in everything I can think of, etc.) and Matt leaving at 3, and watching the news in my sleep, I made my way to the barn. The white boys were loose last night and shredded the bag of dirty kitty litter I had on the stoop. I was either too tired or too scared to walk it down the dark lane to the dumpster. It was all over the steps. Then I hear the calling of the bottle brigade. I have taken Forrest, Denzel, Manny, Moe and Joe off their bottles. They are not happy campers...but they are two months old and I can't keep buying a $50 bag of milk replacer every week. Matt was getting it for me in NJ, as I couldn't find the Land O' Lakes my vet recommended here. That leaves Tonya, Bridie and Brendan on bottles, along with my little tiny Velvet who is on kid milk replacer. She takes a few sips at a time, so bottle feeding her is a time consuming process. Three lambs on bottles is much more manageable, and I don't have all those sharp hoofs clawing at my bruised chin. Anyway, I enter the barn and take my slow steady walk through. You never run or walk quickly through a barn. It panics everybody. And there is was...a beautiful black ewe lamb lying dead on the hay. She still had some placenta over her face. I moan in anguish, berating myself as I always do, for being too lazy to come back to the barn in the middle of the night, spending too much time saying goodbye to Matt instead, etc. And there they were - Moira and a sweet little white ewe lamb, all mothered up, enjoying each other's company. I guess Moira could only manage one, or something happened to steer her away from the twin and she forgot it - I'll never know. I have to tell myself how fortunate I am that Moira and one lamb came through it okay. Remember last year and the dead twin stuck inside her, or the year before that when the vet pulled two dead twins out of her with chains. (Matt was there for that and said he was positively overcome by it). This ewe twin is wonderful, already nursing, and Moira is happy - so I am happy.