Our wooly friends have arrived

We moved L.'s lambs Minette and Symphony to their temporary home in our backyard on Sunday. They'll be living with us until mid-October unless L. has her way and keeps them until November 1. She has some crazy idea that she is going to include them in her Halloween costume plans. I have yet to be convinced this is a good idea (that's another blog topic for later).

The lambs arrived via dog crate. The ride was a little tight for them but it was only a 10 minute ride from their farm home to our backyard and they seemed no worse for the wear in the close quarters.

They did make a quick exit once the door was opened though.

There isn't much grass in their pen at our place so we'll have to rely on purchasing more hay than most of L.'s other 4H sheep-raising friends. L. will be taking her lambs for walks around our yard and letting them graze wearing their halters but that won't supplement their diet much at all. I'm curious to compare the costs of taking care of the sheep versus the pigs this year once L. finishes her record sheets in the fall.

The lamb's arrival was fairly uneventful until L. decided to take the lambs for a walk in our open field area. She put a halter on each of the lambs and I walked Symphony while she walked Minette.

(Guess which one walks better on a halter? It would not be the one I was given.)

So while we were in the field Symphony decided to do the roll over and refuse to walk thing. I finally coaxed her to stand up (via a manual lift back on to her legs again) and then gave a small tug.

Big mistake.

Symphony managed to slip out of the brand new (hence slippery rope) halter with that one not-very-strong tug. Luckily I reacted a half of second faster than the lamb did because I managed to get a hold of her wooly back before she bolted.

My neighbor (the fox chaser) saw the lambs in the yard and came over to meet them with his wife just after I grabbed Symphony. It was such wonderful timing as I was carrying a lamb across the field to get her in the pen because the halter just wasn't feeling secure when I tried to put it on her again.

There is a special sort of feeling when you know you don't know what you're doing and you have an audience to see that first-hand.

So off I waddled to the enclosed pen with my arms around the lamb's forelegs while it's hind legs dangled down the front of my body chatting with my chuckling neighbors.

G. was (thankfully) nowhere around with the camera to capture the moment.

But we did manage to catch a few pictures of the lambs in their new pen. The pig pen is nearby and they've been checking each other out the past couple of days.

L. will be attending a 4H workshop at the fairgrounds this weekend to learn about showing sheep. We have quite a learning curve but I'm sure L., although nervous, will get it all figured out.

At the moment I'll just focus on how cute the lambs are. I'm not going to think about how we're going to transport them to sheep shows at the fairs this summer or how to do any of the 101 things that need to be done to get them ready for one.

No, I'm just going to enjoy their little "baaaahs" and "maaaahs" sounds right now and think about how darn cute they are.