Friday Dose of Cute: Black Babes for Black Beauty

BB (aka Black Beauty) and Her Newborn Twin Girls Very Early this Morning

During the winter our sheep eat organic homegrown hay supplemented with natural grains—usually oats and alfalfa pellets tossed with some dried molasses (yes, that would be livestock candy), along with kelp, a calcium mineral mix, garlic and onion powder, and diatomaceous earth which is a natural wormer.

It's especially important for pregnant ewes to have grain during the last six weeks of their five month gestation period because as the growing babies inside them become bigger, the ewes' four stomachs become smaller, and it's physically impossible for them to ingest all the calories they need from hay alone.

We feed grain in the late afternoon or early evening because I once read that will promote daylight births. So far this year it isn't working. For the second night in a row, I went down to the barn at 2am to do a preg check and found a new set of twins, this time BB's. I didn't get back to sleep until around 5:30, but mother and those stylish black babies are doing just fine.

Current lamb count: 9. Number of ewe lambs: 7 (!)

© 2009 FarmgirlFare.com, the back in black foodie farm blog where we're always grateful when a ewe gives birth to twins all by herself without any problems, but we still can't help wondering why they don't have them at one in the afternoon instead of one in the morning.