Love at First Sight?

Not even close. Saturday evening we put the new ram in with our Rambouillet ewes. Let's just say the girls were not amused, not even a little bit. I'm not sure if they thought he was a bear, or the creature from the black lagoon, but either way, they were not impressed. They took off running to the other side of the lot and then back again. When I came in from doing the chores, the ewes were standing together wide-eyed in the corner watching this new creature that was blocking their escape route.

On Sunday afternoon, I went out to the pasture to see how things were going. Here's the ram with three of the Rambouillets. At least they were standing still now.

Here the ewes look like they're discussing which would be the best course of action to avoid The Thing...

And now they've decided...RUN!!!!

A few minutes later, though, things calmed down a bit again. He's a little closer to them anyway.

Well, at least that's progress.

We have a couple of Rambouillet ram lambs we raised on the bottle this spring that we decided to try with the Suffolk ewes. (They are related to some of the Rambouillets.) We thought we'd leave them in for about a month or so to give them a chance to see what they could do, and then put the Shetland ram in instead in case they missed anybody. They may be a little too young yet, though. They haven't really acted very interested so far. May have to rethink that idea and put the Shetland in sooner. That is, if the other ewes haven't given him some sort of complex by then. :)