Keeping An Elephant In My Backyard

I've always imagined that elephants were loud. In fact, whenever I'm making a racket in my bedroom, the kitchen or front porch, my mom asks me to stop "acting like an elephant". But I have just realized that however loud elephants may or may not be, my lambs can make quite the ruckus. Today my sister and I did the most awful, cruel, and insensitive thing, well, according to our market lambs that is. Yeah, that's right, today we weaned our breeding ewe's babies. Well, Begonia had them pretty much weaned as it was, we just finished up by moving Begonia to the next pen. Yes, we separated the lambs from their mother. They now reside a whole foot away in the pen next door, with our other three market lambs. Of course, though this sounds simple and routine to you or me, to the lambs, it is a cataclysmic event. Therefore, when stepping outside my front door, I was bombarded with a cacophony of lamb-type cries. Oreo and Ryan (our ewe's babies) are crying for their mother, Begonia, is crying for her babies, and the other three lambs have decided to join the party also. It is times like these when I realize how lucky I am to have such tolerant neighbors. Because you never know, someday I might just want to keep an elephant in my backyard.



Oreo and Ryan as [happy] newborns with their mother, our family breeding ewe, Begonia.