Wanna bottle feed a lamb? Hurry – before they’re all grown up!
Two years ago, we had 18 lambs born which included 3 sets of triplets, one set of twins, and one single. When all of them decided to go outside the fence to explore, it just about drove Lilly the llama crazy because her job is to be their shepherd. Normally when a lamb goes outside the fence, Lilly alerts their mom, who in turn calls for them and they instinctively know the sound of her call.
When 15 lambs at a time would go under the fence, Lilly didn’t know what to do and we joke and say she filed for worker’s comp and retired. They got into all the gardens and exhausted all of us trying to chase them back in. We ended up selling most of the sheep in pods (mother/daughters) to sheep farmers who were looking to expand their farms. Thankfully, we found a home for all the boys at a rescue farm in Illinois that needed grass eaters, so it all had a happy ending.
However, this spring we found ourselves missing lambs which usually come in the spring, so we reached out to one of the farmers who bought some of our sheep last fall. Since he had so many sheep lambing this spring, we asked if he had any lambs that may have been rejected and needed to be bottle fed. We were so excited when he said yes, so we bought the 2 females and named them Two Bits & Pepper. These adorable babies will need to be bottle fed until mid-to late August so that means our guests get to help if they want to!
We also have 2 grown wethers (neutered males) named Buster & Bucky that were bottle fed as babies and are our welcome wagon ambassadors. They love to be brushed and welcome visitors so even when Two Bits & Pepper are weaned, there are up close experiences to enjoy when you visit.
