A belated welcome to the new kid, Tucker!

Tucker!

Tallulah kidded while I was at work on Tuesday, April 10th.  I came home to find this little bundle of joy, soaking wet and shivering outside the barn.  I quickly toweled him off and grabbed an old thrift store sweater and cut the sleeve off to make a little sweater for the kid, since all my usual coats were too big for him.  He was pretty tiny.  Of course, I carefully put my scale away so I could find it at lambing/kidding time and couldn’t find it to weigh him, but I think he was in the 5-6 lb range.   I didn’t know if he had nursed or not, but when I tried to get him to latch on to Tallulah he was clueless, and had no sucking instinct at all.  First I thought it was because Tallulah hadn’t been sheared and so there was too much fleece down there.  I called my neighbor Lisa (shown holding him above), and she came over to help me wrangle Tallulah so I could trim her udder and teat area so the little guy could find the teat.  That didn’t help, he still wouldn’t suckle.