Pups 4 weeks old: The girls

It was the turn of the 5 girls in this litter to have their pictures taken.
Some pups are just easier to take good pictures of, because they sit still,

or react nicely to my squeaky sounds.

Sometimes they have good days and other day's, well
they also have bad hair days.

The fun thing is that the individual characters are now starting to show.

All the girls in a barrow,

Yellow girl

Brown girl

Yellow and brown

Miss Pink, she is one of the biggest girls.
Looking at her head, she reminds me of the boy pup 4.
Similar, expression.

Orange Lass

Beige girl,
anytime a pup is perched up high on a bale means, she would not sit still for a picture. to keep her in a spot, I place them on something high, that tends to slow them down long enough to take a picture.

Or, I use my sheep smelly shoes to hold their attention.
Beige was all over the place during this photo session.

All together.

Beige

nom nom nom
trying out some mutton

the door of the whelping area is now open, so the pups can come and go as they please.
They love the extra space to explore.
As they have started eating solid food, it is also the ideal moment for them to have the door open so they can learn to do their "business" outside of their sleeping area.

Although a really poor picture,
this gives an overview of this part of the barn area.
 The whelping box is to the left of the red pump house,
the panels separates the puppy area from the rest of the barn.
Just to give you some scale, our barn is 300 feet long, 80 wide and 24 high)
( I do not want the pups wondering around the whole barn, or risk being run over by a tractor).
The ewes and lambs are on housed next to the pups.
The pups can see and observe and sniff the sheep all day.
As the pups get older, and bigger, then they are allowed into the area with the sheep to mingle.

We always bed the pups on straw and their whelping box still has a heat lamp for the pups.
As they get older, we can remove the heat lamp, however at 4 weeks, in an Alberta winter,
it can still be too cold.