Titch and Iris Go Outside!

Our old one-eyed ewe Iris died last year but her legacy lives on. One of her daughters had twin ewe lambs on 22nd February, but only the milk for one, so the Suffolk lamb became a pet. I called her Iris after her grandmother. She was a very sickly, quiet lamb at first but these days she's a bundle of energy!

I took these photos early in March when Iris and her friend Titch went outside the laming shed for the first time. Iris did a lot of running around!

A couple of days after Iris, on 24th February, Titch made his dramatic entrance into the world. He had a severely swollen head from getting stuck in the birth canal. So bad, in fact, that we assumed brain damage of some kind. We left him with his mother for the afternoon and when we returned he still wasn't standing. We thought he wasn't going to make it so his mother was given another lamb that needed a mother.

Meanwhile Titch was just lying there, but he had a strong voice. I held him upright until, to my surprise and delight, he got his legs under him. He was wobbly but he was standing. I offered him a bottle and he was very greedy too. He lived in the kitchen for over a week while the swelling of his head came down. He got very rattly lungs as the fluid from his swollen head collected there. But he was always hungry, always in good spirits. He's a good boy.

Meeting Blue Belle.

Titch and Iris had a lot of fun exploring.

See? Greedy! He's always looking for a bottle.