Forgive me, I don’t usually put up photos of the private parts of people or animals, but doing our chores this morning, we noticed that Griselle’s udder had dropped dramatically, a common sign of impending birth.

I asked the people who had the Romneys and asked us to take them if they had been with any intact rams. Griselle and the other Romney’s were all on a farm for months with Samson, an intact Romney ram.  He was the one who banged Red around when we pulled the sheep out of there.

Good Lord, I told Maria, it is very likely that all four are pregnant. A dropping udder with protruding nipples is an important sign of impending birth. We may have to scramble to get ready.

Nobody else’s udder has dropped, and this wasn’t visible with all of the long wool hanging off of Griselle before the shearing. But it is a sign of things to come, and you can wager that some, if not all the lambs will start popping out the day Maria steps on the plane for Calcutta in February.

Griselle might be a lot sooner than that. I’m calling the Granville Large Veterinary Animal Service today to ask that a vet come by to do an exam, including an ultrasound,  to see if we can figure out if Griselle is really pregnant, and if so, how close she is. It seems to me I swore off of all this two years ago when we last lambed, but I have a hunch we are doing it again. I gave all of our lambing stuff away. I suppose there is such a thing as fate, and it will guide us to where we need to go.

This is the lesson of life on the farm: you are really in control of absolutely nothing.