Goodbye, Sparkles

This was not a blog post I expected to write. This was not a situation I thought would happen. Not to my Sparkle Sheepie. I know I write these posts to help process my grief, and I have been fighting back tears all morning.

I think I've got all 5 stages of grief battling it out inside me right now. Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance - Oh, i thought one of them was exhaustion. Seriously.

It started Friday - she struggled to come out of the barn. I thought maybe she was getting close to labor so I moved her into the stall with the Most Expensive Goat in the World. I kept an eye on her on camera, she was getting up and moving around, and I was watching for signs of real labor. By the end of the day, she couldn't get up, so I expected pregnancy toxemia. So we started treating for that - electrolytes, nutridrench, propylene glycol, vitamin B. Often, I see that turn around in a day or so. So by Sunday, she was struggling to stay sternal, so I called the vet. I tried to see if she was dilated and maybe had stuck lambs but my hand wouldn't fit.

But the vet came out and did an ultrasound - and she wasn't seeing a heartbeat or movement. So she went in. The first lamb was all tangled up - legs wrapped around it's head and it's head tilted to the side - just a ball of lamb that was expired, and Sparkles would never get it out. So we got both lambs pulled out, we flushed her with iodine, and we started antibiotics and an IV.

I kept an IV in her overnight. She actually perked RIGHT UP - whether is was the lambs being gone, the banamine, or the IV - she was holding her head up and started eating hay on her own. I really thought this would turn around and my honest concern about the IV was that she would stand up and rip it out of herself.

But that didn't happen. She did start drinking from a pan, and eating hay if I put it in her mouth. So we rigged up a sling and started lifting her up to get her able to stand. But her legs were not working. So I continued feeding her, making her oatmeal with molasses and honey, hand feeding her hay and sitting with her head in my lap.

But it wasn't enough. She passed this morning. So let me tell you about my Sparkle Sheepie... Mine and Shannon's Sparkle Sheepie

Sparkles came to us in 2021. My neighbor, who usually has just goats, decided to get some sheep to raise up for meat. Sparkles was one of them. They named her Toilet Sparkle. It was a little Shannon joke. Shannon loved to watch My Little Pony when she was little, and the main character was called Twilight Sparkle (I really liked Fluttershy). But Shannon couldn't say Twilight, and always called her Toilet Sparkle

So when it came time for the lambs to go off to become food, Kirsten liked this one too much and offered her to us. So we bought her later in 2021. And since she was so friendly, Shannon trained her up to be her breeding ewe for county fair. Sparkles went to the county fair 3 years in a row, and won lots of Ribbons. Shannon took 2nd place in showmanship with her 2022, earning her a spot in large animal round robin. Shannon didn't show sheep last year, and we were talking about giving Sparkles one more go this year.

We always got a kick out of the comments people made when they walked past her stall and saw her stall card with the name Toilet Sparkle.

Because of how much she was handled for fair, Sparkles was a very friendly sheepy. This was often my view of the farm when Sparkles was around.

She was always ready for snacks and snuggles, but definitely preferred snacks. And was always hoping you'd have snacks.

She was part Suffolk, so mostly a wooly sheep. She did require shearing every year, but as a show sheepy, she got shorn for show. And shearing her in the spring also just kept her being used to being handled, and shorn, and brushed and bathed for fair.

She was not quite 5 years old when we lost her, and in her time with us, gave us 7 lambs. Her last would have made it 9; a sweet pair of black twins, one ram, one ewe.

She was a good mama, very attentive, and easy to work with.

Her first lamb was a ewe named Eithne, born in March of 2022. She had the most beautiful colors.

In April 2023, she had her first set of twins.

This is Juniper and Sorrel. We had a really bad winter that year and lost several lambs - bloat, pneumonia, etc. We did lose Juniper. And Sorrel, when he got older, had an accident and broke a leg that couldn't be reset. I couldn't handle any more loss, and decided to have his leg amputated so he could come home. He got around great on just 3 legs.

in 2024, she had another set of twins. Celeborn and Galadriel.

Celeborn is in the back, and likely the papa of most of the lambs being born right now. Galadriel is in the front, and we kept her! So we do have a legacy from Sparkles. But Galadriel has no where near the same disposition as Sparkle sheep. She's very flighty and a very anxious mama.

In December 2024, she gave us this little darling, Noel.

And in June of 2025, she gave us her final legacy, Diamond, who is still with us on the farm. I'll talk to Shannon and see if we might choose to keep her. I'm very sentimental.

Now if you do the math, having lambs right now means she didn't get much of a rest between lambings. This can happen, and I am not blaming this as the reason for her demise. The truth is, we will never know. But my original diagnosis of Toxemia, though not rare (Jewel just had it and turned around in a matter of hours after treatment) was maybe a poor choice due to Sparkles' condition - this was not a ewe that was under conditioned. Sparkles was in really good shape! Maybe even overweight.

She did have 2 beautiful black lambs, a ewe and a ram. I knew she was pregnant, as her udders were filling up, and Sparkles liked to surprise us by lambing before her bags were so big that is was obvious. So while all the ladies like to lamb this time of year, I was keeping an eye on her, but not expecting her soon. I don't know how long the lambs were tangled inside of her (vet said the presentation was so messy that she never could have given birth that way). We did get the lambs out and saw a bit of improvement. But the honest truth is, Sparkles went septic. Her back end smelled something fearful, and sometimes when she burped, I smelled it too. We kept her on antibiotics, pain killers, and supportive care of all kinds. For a brief moment, when she sat up and started eating again, I really thought by morning she'd be up and around, and my biggest fear was her ripping her IV out of her neck.

But she never did get up again. I sat with her when I was waiting for the vet and let her rest her head in my lap and I sang her a song. Not sure what I sang about, I just made it up. But I told her to get better and how much we loved her.

The barn won't be the same without her. And she was so young, I thought we had a lot more time with Sparkles. I don't want to say goodbye, but my Sparkle sheepie is now gone. I will miss her freckly face. I will miss her nose in my back pocket. I will miss having a sheepy I can sit down with and lean on. I loved you Sparkle Sheep.