Bottles!

Awake at 4:30 so I wrapped soap for a while and got the bottles ready for Joseph and Gabriel, Lilly's Christmas lambs.  I'm not fond of the idea of making bottles, like the marathon bottle season I had last year, but I'm confident my numbers will be small this year and more manageable.  Joseph, the monster of the twins, at 10 pounds plus, is showing signs of being a "Sh*thead," which is a lamb that figures out he can sneak milk from another mom by going in for the teat from behind.  If mom can't see that it's not her lamb, then he can get a drink before she notices and butts him away - just what I'm hoping will happen with the other nursing ewe in with Lilly and her lambs.  I didn't come up with that name, and don't know who did, but it's appropriate.  A similar sheep term, "jug," means the little pen a lamb and mother are confined in so junior can get at the milk source easily.   And so it goes.  It's 10 F. outside and 34 in the barn.  No frozen water.  I left the big pot of almost simmering water on the dye stove in the milk room to prevent freezing in there and found a kitty snuggled up against it on top of the range.  Joseph and Gabriel took their bottles well, a relief as I didn't get out there for a 2 am feeding as I planned.  They are strong lambs and should do fine going from 11 to 5 without bottles.   What I'll do from 8 to 4 when I'm at work is beyond me.  Haven't figured that out yet.  For now I'll enjoy sitting on the hay with a lamb in my lap, nuzzling his wooly head while he sucks on the Pritchard's Teat, taking in that lovely lamb aroma and forgetting my worries.  I found 4 duck eggs in the pen and will make myself some scrambled eggs, loaded with dill.  Yum.  It occurred to me that if I could figure out who is male I could let them go to fend for themselves around the barn and leave the females in  to pamper them and take their eggs.  The Pekins are so similar in size, and all white, that it's hard to tell.  I think my Swedish Blues are female and I know the single Rouen is a male.  Something else I'll figure out in time when I don't have a thousand other things to worry about.  I counted six roosters that escaped the Great Rooster Slaying of last weekend.  I could easily have grabbed two of them and wrung their necks this morning, but I just didn't have it in me.  Maybe tomorrow.   Life goes on for now.