Greenhill Farm: Well Done, Olive!

Yesterday evening, as the rain was coming on, I made my daily evening check on the pet sheep. Heather has been acting oddly and I was convinced she was going to lamb soon. But she was fine, and everybody else was fine... but Olive was conspicuously absent.

The bottom of the hill in the pets' field can't be seen from the gate - you have to walk halfway down before the bottom comes into view. Sure enough there was Olive in the distance with two little black things at her feet. I called Dad to get the tractor and went down to meet her. She had given birth to two tiny lambs all by herself and was licking them. They were perfectly fox-bite-sized, and either that or the cold rain would mean they would be gone by morning. I halter train all of my pets as lambs and it really comes in handy at times like that when you need to get hold of the sheep and for them not to panic. Dad arrived with the tractor and Olive and her babies were safely transported inside the shed.

This morning the lambs are doing very well - still tiny but thriving under Olive's surprisingly good care. Olive's grandmother was very old when she had her last pair of lambs which were a ewe and tip. One day when we were rounding up the flock for vaccinations the ewe lamb's hind leg got broken somehow. In time she healed but she was smaller than all the other lambs. Two years later she had Olive. But there was not mothering instinct there at all and no milk either, so Olive became a pet lamb. I assumed Olive would behave like her mother when it came to babies but I'm over the moon that she took after her grandmother.