Two new arrivals

Friday 30th October: Mild and sunny, clouding over and cooling down around teatime. Last night I saw some pet lambs for sale on trade me, so I rang first thing this morning and arranged to collect two 4-week old ewes later.
We drove into town for the boys' piano lessons and then went into town to buy bottles and milk powder for the lambs. We returned home and the boys did some schooling while I made a snack lunch.
At noon we drove north to Hinds (just south of Ashburton), a trip of about 90 minutes. When we arrived at the sheep station the guy selling the lambs was busy elsewhere and so he gave us instructions on where to find our lambs. We had to drive to the sheep yards, then walk through them to the woolshed, up on to the shearing stage and find 3 lambs in a pen then choose two from them. There was no-one else around but finally we found the little lambs, hiding in a corner being as quiet as they could. A short chase began and then two lambs were caught and we put them in boxes in the back of the truck. The smaller one, Felicity, laid down in her box and rested all the way home. The slightly bigger one, Shirley, proved to be a little more troublesome and spent most of the journey trying to clamber out of the box.
We got home about 4pm and prepared and secured the area for the lambs, outside our living room door, just beyond the deck. As soon as we let them out of their boxes they ran to the far corner and hid in the long grass. We tried to give them their bottles of milk but they weren't interested. However, the goat, ewe and older lamb had spotted the new lambs and were all stood looking up the paddocks trying to work out what was going on (photo).
I cooked tea and Steve returned home and came to meet the new arrivals. I went out to the supermarket to stock up the cupboards while Steve put the boys off to bed. When I got back we caught the lambs and cuddled them as we tried to give them their milk, but they didn't have much. They spent a lot of time scooting round trying to escape over the surrounding fences though!
Once it was dark we could hear Shirley and Felicity "maahing" , calling to the pet lamb next door. Hopefully in the morning they'll still be there and will be hungry enough to have milk.