and the surprise was...

Triplets! The first set born on our farm, in fact.

We knew that Farrah was due today, and suspected that the stress of shearing might cause her to go into labor a day early. Sure enough, a few hours after we finished yesterday she was staring into the corner of the shed with a far away look in her eye. One of our frequent checks revealed a water sac hanging out and we knew that it was go time. The first lamb was a slightly complicated nose-first delivery (you want to see the front feet first with the nose resting on the legs, a la superman) but my LSH was a champ and managed to fish one front leg and then the rest of her out -- even with a sizeable audience watching. The pressure was definitely on.

As we tried to get her up and nursing, which took quite a while, my LSH moved over to the ewe to strip out the waxy plug in her teats to make it easier for the lamb to get her first drink. He was standing behind the ewe, and was promptly rewarded with a gush of amniotic fluid into his left boot. We looked at each other and knew that could only mean one thing (well, besides a wet and somewhat icky foot)... another lamb, which also needed a bit of help as he only had one leg instead of both in front of him. He was a bit smaller, so a little easier to get out, but as we were cleaning him off we noticed more hooves peeking out. At this point we were in shock but the ewe seemed to take it all in stride.

We and she managed to get them all out, cleaned off, and (eventually) nursing. Took a while, and we are still not out of the woods with regard to making sure that everyone is getting enough to eat. At least Farrah seems to understand that she has three and she is pretty even-handed with her attention; many ewes cannot count beyond two. We are grateful for her genius sheep arithmetic ability.

The grand total was one ewe and two rams, and the names seem to be Jasmine, Jet and Joker -- it's "J" year, in case you can't figure that out. Jasmine, on the bottom in the picture above, is the spitting image of her father as a lamb, with the exact same white ears, throat and belly. Joker, the lamb on the top, was the last one out, because the joke was definitely on us when we saw that third set of hooves.