Friday, April 08, 2011

Spring on the farm

I saw a sheep in labour today – and no, this isn’t the beginning of some strange joke. Miya and I were at the Experimental Farm this morning. It’s already one of our favourite haunts in Ottawa, but it’s an even more exciting place to visit in the spring. There was one little lamb only 4 days old, some piglets just recently born, young calves – and a labouring sheep.

We were told that most of the sheep and goats in the Small Animal Barn are expected to deliver babies in the next few weeks. And there will be bunnies for Easter. We’ll definitely be back often.

I was really hoping we could actually watch little lambs being born – and was curious to know what M would think of the whole thing. We kept checking in on the mama sheep throughout the morning to see how she was coming along. She was quite calm, mostly just laying down and looking around. I was told that sheep usually deliver unassisted and quite quickly. Now that sounds familiar...

It was a beautiful day to be at the farm – one of the first really warm days of the year where the sun was warm on our faces, birds were flitting about and the sky was a bright, cheerful blue. M is a big fan of the horses and was happy to see that they were in an outdoor enclosure. We parked ourselves on the bench and she watched them do their thing – which was mostly a lot of standing around, but she still seemed to find it quite interesting. When they were led back into the barn, she wanted to follow them in and check on them in their stalls, greeting each of them by name.

We also stopped by to say hello to the cows – a young, beautiful Brown Swiss licked M’s hand with her strange purple tongue. We checked in on the rabbits and the pigs, dropped in at the snack area during craft time where M got to make a little bunny.

This is truly one of the perks of being a parent – spending hours discovering and exploring things that as adults we tend to forget about.

1 comment:

  1. Ever read some books by James Harriot? A little over the top folksy, but he has a few fun stories about birthing lambs in there. Recommended.

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