Mar 16, 2005
Today we moved about 30 ewes and their lambs to the pasture from the corral in one group. It was quite the parade. Last night I brought in a set of twins, followed by a granny. She was in the early stages of labor so she got to stay in the barn along with a yearling who was showing mucous and talking a lot, but who had picked a poor place next to the pond to deliver. To get the yearling I had to bring about half the drop band (those who still have to drop their lambs) into the barn and do some fancy body English (sheepish?) to get the yearling isolated and the other 30 or so back outside. She had a single lamb by the time the next person got there to check them this morning. We have another itty bitty lamb in the warming barrel, smaller than the one we had a few days ago. He is a twin but sure came up short. His pipeline must have had a clog or a kink in it. With only about 55 ewes to go things will be winding down soon, but on the other hand there is a weather front coming in so that could produce an activity burst again.
The drop band is fed about mid afternoon to have most of the births during daylight hours. Sometimes it works very well, other nights I wonder.......
Mar 17, 2005
The theory on the timing of feeding is this: They fill up and bed down near the chow line to chew their cuds, get up a time or two during the night to eat a bit more of the leftovers or get a drink, and do not move around much like they would if they were hungry. Toward morning they get hungry again, move around more to glean the leavings of hay or find some grass to nibble and this encourages any ewe who is in the early stages of labor to have more contractions, similar to when I walked the halls of the hospital to get my labor to speed up. If they are fed early in the day they move around too much at night and so more births come at night when it is less convenient for us to watch and care for them. We record the approximate time of birth (1am, 3pm, etc) and our records show this pretty much reverses what would normally happen.
Our weather is cold and windy again. Tonight when I went out with the lamb mobile I saw a ewe with a standing lamb in the shelter of a shed out of the wind, then spotted one out in the open, also with a standing lamb. Standing lambs are warmer than those laying on the ground. They get to their feet within a few minutes of being born and need to nurse right away which makes they generate some heat. Sometimes a nervous mother won't stand still for her lambs to nurse, sometimes another one is coming right away so she will lie down again and then Jr doesn't get a drink and chills quickly on a cold night. When they chill they can't get up again so I knew it was ok. I made a quick check of the rest of the flock to be sure nobody was in any serious trouble, then picked up the one in the wind and took it to the barn, made a second trip to get the one by the shed. Each ewe had another lamb after they came inside, so both have nice sets of twins.
Another fun activity was feeding the little bitty lamb who is still in the barrel under the heat lamp. He drinks from a bottle now but couldn't stand up without help. Without the heat lamb he would chill again because he is so tiny he can't generate enough heat to stay warm. The barn is a quite airy place with open places missing windows, cracks between boards, etc. This is good because ammonia from the pens does not build up and we don't have many cases of pneumonia. Most of the newborns do just fine with straw bedding and momma's milk, but they have the advantage of a warm mother to snuggle up against, and a meal any time they want it. This little guy will get plenty of TLC over the next few days and seems to have passed his first crisis, but now may be getting pneumonia, he sounds rattley when he breathes. I made a note of that but the next person who feeds him will probably hear it if it was anything other than some milk getting down the wrong pipe.
I took more pictures while waiting for the ewes to deliver their second lambs but haven't downloaded them, so be patient, they will be coming soon. Right now, yawn, I'm going back to bed.
Mar 17, 2005
This is the barn. It has been there a long time and you can see that it is very well ventilated. The section nearest the road has a lot of small pens, another section like it over on the right side out of sight has the mothering pens where we put 3 or 4 ewes with their lambs for a day before turning them out into the corral or pasture. We bring the sheep inside from the pasture through the corrals in the back. More corrals and sheds are to the left of the picture. I was standing across the county road when I took this.
Mar 18, 2005
Good morning. It was kind of a long night. Production has not slowed down yet. When I got to the barn there was a ewe inside who was in early labor and one outside who had her water bag out already. Since it is easier to move a ewe with a lamb than one without one I waited in the barn, watching the first one. The pens are mostly full and I needed a place to put one so I repaired a fence panel that some anxious ewe had gone over and broken. Bailing wire to the rescue again! It is what holds these old farms together.
When I out to pick up the ewe and lamb I found that she had twins, one on it's feet and one dead in the birth sack. She is in one of those stanchion pens to try a graft with a triplet that has been waiting for a surrogate mother. Whenever possible we try to get every ewe to raise 2 lambs except the yearlings who are still growing and don't have enough milk for 2.
The ewe in the barn in labor concerned me but I left her and came home after watching her awhile longer, didn't sleep well thinking maybe she was in trouble, so after daylight I went back to look, she'd had twins. Maybe she was just waiting for me to leave.
We had an event of some kind here on our road this morning, don't know what happened yet. I saw the ambulance go by with lights flashing. That is very rare, there are only 4 houses past ours on the road, so the first thing I thought of was that my bosses elderly mother-in-law might have had a problem. The owner and his daughter showed up soon after, everything was ok with the mother-in-law, so now we are all thankful for that but still wondering.
The new arrivals in the field were brought to the barn along with a ewe about to deliver who followed us. We shuffled some ewes that we knew were through lambing to the smaller pens in the front of the barn to give the new ones a large enough pen to lie down and have another lamb. It's hard to tell if they are really done until the afterbirth appears.
Yesterday I took this picture of the back side of the barn so you can see the corrals and the lean to on the left where there are more pens inside. This shot was taken from the pasture so I guess you get a sheep's eye view.
Mar 22, 2005
It's been a few days without lamb news, so here goes. Things have slowed down quite a bit. We are down to about 30 ewes left to lamb. Last night there was a set of twins at my 1am check but nothing tonight. Only 3 ewes lambed during the past 24 hours.
There is a one week old lamb in the warming barrel who needed tube feeding tonight, I don't think the little guy is going to make it. He is one who has been out in the pasture and must have missed a couple of meals, got chilled and was brought in for a warm up and treatment. He is very lethargic, won't suck on a bottle and has labored breathing and maybe pneumonia. I'll be surprised if he makes it through the night. This year has been strange weather wise, warmer than normal which is less stress on the little ones, but we have still lost quite a few from various causes. Last night it rained and hailed and that must have chilled this little guy. His momma has another lamb and I hope she takes good care of it. The lambs have started running around in groups so it is easy for them to get quite a ways from their mothers, then suddenly they are tired and realize they have no idea where mom is in this big world of their pasture. They tend to stand in one place and maaaaaaaaaaa and expect mom to come find them. Often the ewe just stands in one place and answers instead of going to look for her baby. Sometimes they don't reconnect in a timely manner and then the lamb misses a meal, not too serious if it only happens to miss one meal, but when a cold front moves though at the same time that can change things in a hurry.
Pictures to come soon, they aren't downloaded yet and I need to get some sleep. We have company and so time online has not been easy to come by.
Mar 23, 2005
Another quiet night on the lamb watch. It's a rainy night but when I was out checking it was not raining as hard as it seemed to be after I got back inside the barn, but then that could have just been the noise from the tin roof. Lots of tin roof on that big ole barn. Despite the holes we can see when inside looking up there are very few leaks. The tin was on a different roof before it was put on that barn, so there are rows of holes. Why it doesn't leak like a sieve is a mystery to me when our shop roof leaks despite the black tarry goop we use to patch the holes.
The lamb I fed last night died, but I had a different one to feed tonight, a twin that got chilled at birth sometime yesterday. This one was under a heat lamp when I went to the barn about 4pm but was still with it's mother and sibling. No heat lamp tonight but my "do" list said to bottle feed it which was easy enough to do because this lamb has a strong sucking reflex even though it doesn't seem to have the energy to stand up and find dinner at mom's diner. It was warm tonight without a heat lamp so will be ok. The strange thing with lambs is that the ones chilled at birth usually live with a warm up and feeding, but if they get chilled a few days later it is hard to save them. Another thing that is hard to figure out. Life is just full of mysteries.
Mar 24, 2005
Our weather is cold and windy so I was very glad not to find any new lambs in the field tonight. Two lambs that were born earlier got cold, one is still under a heat lamp after being warmed in water and then tube fed. That one is getting around ok and seems to know where to find dinner, it wouldn't suck from a bottle. That could have been because he wasn't hungry or because his mother was having a fit with me handling her lamb, she wanted to butt me and I had to take the lamb out of her pen to try to feed it. She was quite happy to get it back. Another lamb is a bit slow in the learning department and belongs to a nervous yearling who is doing a pretty good mothering job, standing quite still while her baby looks for the nipples. I bottle fed that one, he only drank about 2 oz but that is enough for now and maybe he will find his dinner before he needs to be fed again.
Mar 25, 2005
Last night was a quick check and come home, no new lambs, no ewes in obvious labor, no bottle babies to feed. Our weather is still cold, about 25 at night and about 40-45 in the daytime, but the wind is what makes it feel about 15 degrees colder. Only 2 ewes lambed yesterday, one of them is a ewe lamb (1 yr old) who had a very large lamb. She has the sweetest face and is such a good mommy. When I looked at her last night she looked at me and then looked down at her lamb as if to say "this is mine!"
This picture is the one I have been hoping to get. The lambs have so much energy and they love to climb on their mothers when nobody else wants to play. The ewe just laid there chewing her cud while her lamb climbed up, pawed at her head and jumped down. My camera has a 5 second delay so wouldn't take the second picture. And of course when the camera was ready the lamb was through playing. I've missed more good pictures that way, but am glad to have this one.
Mar 27, 2005
The barn is almost empty. There’s just one ewe is in there with twins that were born yesterday. The others have all been moved to the pasture across the road. When I checked the flock they were all bedded down. I putt-putted around them on the 4 wheeler and they all got up and walked around a bit. The wind is not as cold as last night with just a few sprinkles of rain coming down but still I was glad to get back into the barn, write a quick note and come home to a warm house and a hot cup of mint tea. There are 23 ewes left out in the flock and some of them probably are not pregnant but they are so wooly it is hard to tell. The chances of finding new lambs gets slimmer as the numbers go down, so I probably won't be bringing in many more lambs or doing this night check too many more nights. I'm ready for a whole night's sleep. The full moon didn't have any effect on the birth rate, so I am guessing some of those ewes got bred on the next cycles. Sometimes the stragglers finish up in mid to late April but I don't know how many stragglers will be kept this year, feed could be short because of the drought. Also, the lambs are easier to market if they are all about the same size at the same time. It helps to synchronize things on a farm so that the animals require the same feed and care at the same time, so too many late (and therefore smaller) lambs have to be left with their mothers and this would require separate handling if it goes too long.
The last few minutes have been spent next to the back door looking out the window with the porch light on to see what new cat has shown up here to eat. We usually get one every winter. He looks just like our big Newt cat only smaller, a gray and black tabby. Newt was scrunched down growling and neither of them wanted to fight although they were just 2 ft from each other. My orange kitty was inside standing by my feet growling and when he heard her he make a slow and careful 180 turn and disappeared into the flower bed. He (probably a he, the strays usually are) can stay as long as he is not a trouble maker. I think he is the same cat I saw about a month ago at the neighbors but he wasn't theirs either. Maybe he likes our cat food flavor better.
Mar 29, 2005
Tonight's check found a yearling ewe with a partly born lamb. She was quite nervous but went into the corral and followed the cow funnel chute into the head catch where I trapped her, reached in to pull the lamb's feet out and get it delivered, but sadly the lamb was not alive. Momma is ok. I put her in the barn with it so the owner can tell which ewe she is. Another yearling delivered a lamb which was almost dry when I found him. She didn't want to follow me to the barn so I had to bring the flock in. The ewe finally went to the pen where her lamb was waiting and talking (that helps) and I got the gate up and turned the others back out to the corral and eventually back to the pasture. I keep the corral gate shut when I am sorting sheep in the barn because if the wrong one gets past me it is easier to put them back in if I don't have to start from square 1 (the pasture).
The 4 wheeler with the lamb cart was uncooperative tonight so I got a bit of exercise checking the flock and bringing in the live lamb. We have plastic lamb carriers that go under the lamb's chest and he can be carried like a little suitcase with his legs dangling. The ewe went back to the flock when I approached her lamb, then the whole flock went toward the barn so I followed them, laid the lamb down near the gate to the corral, stepped away about 50 feet and waited for the ewe to come to it. The rest of the flock went through the corral into the barn (open door and lights on, they know there is good alfalfa hay in there) and when I approached the lamb again she followed them. I put the lamb in a pen and waited for the ewe to go to it. The lamb talked a lot and she kept going to it but every time I tried to get the gate she would leave again. Finally I just got lucky. She is very nervous and tried to jump out. Sheep are panicky things.
It's time to sleep. Most of you are awake and starting your day now but it is 4:40am here.
Mar 29, 2005
I'll be checking them for the next few nights since things are still happening and the weather is bad. This afternoon has been one snow squall after another. Maybe I can get another good picture or two, but it isn't the end really since they will be around for the next few months sometimes pastured in the field next to us and sometimes on our place. They go through a really cute stage at about 2 months old when I just want to catch and hug 'em all.
Mar 31, 2005
Good morning. Yesterday we sorted out the ewes that either don't look pregnant or will be very late lambing, so now the drop band is down to 14. I got a few pictures of the unusual colored brown lambs before we moved them to the pasture. They are twins and both female so they might be kept as replacements, we'll have to see how they grow.
Mar 31, 2005
Here they are on their way to the pasture. They don't exactly go in a straight line, all concerned about where their lambs are so it takes a lot of zigzagging to get to the gate. They have a tendency to try to go back to the barn where they have just spent 3 days with their lambs. We are just outside the barn door at this point and need to go to the trees on the right. Good thing our road is not very busy. The trip should take about 1 minute if they just walked, but with all the confusion it takes about 4 or 5 sometimes.
Mar 31, 2005
When we arrive at the pasture gate one little lamb discovers that the grass (a new thing that smells good) is also good to nibble. The building in the background is an old homestead house that is now used for storage and also makes a great windbreak. The creep feeder is beyond that and hay was waiting.
Apr 04, 2005
My night checks are over and endurance competition season has started, I will start a new thread for that. When I came past the baby pasture yesterday on my way home there were 3 more ewes with lambs in it. The older lambs are in a larger adjoining pasture and several little groups of them were running and jumping. Those little guys enjoy playing king of the mountain on the molehills and I saw one lamb standing on it's mother who was peacefully laying there chewing her cud.
Apr 04, 2005
Today I'm on lamb watch again. One ewe has been acting like she might go into labor but so far she hasn't. Ok, so how do I know? Well, she isolates herself from the flock and stands there making lamb talk, then the next time I look she is back with the bunch, no mucous or water bag, but a couple of hours later there she is alone and talking again. probably just a case of really slow early labor. She looks like there could be twins in there but they fool us all the time. The main flock of ewes with lambs has been moved into a large pasture next to us but they are too spread out to get a good picture. They are staying on the sheltered side of a hill because we have a pretty cold windy day with frequent snow squalls. The lambs have never seen so much space, their little world is getting bigger and bigger. Maaaaaaaa, where are you mom?
Apr 07, 2005
The ewe I mentioned above had triplets. One was very tiny and weak and was given to the neighbor who buys the bummer lambs. Oh, and what is a bummer? Basically it is an orphan lamb or one whose mother cannot feed it. If left with the flock they become panhandlers, bumming a sip of milk here and a sip there before being chased away by a ewe who thought she was feeding her own lamb until she sniffed it. Then the lamb goes to steal from another ewe, sometimes coming up behind them to grab a nipple and get a little milk before the ewe can react. Triplet lambs that can't be grafted to another ewe become bummers and go to the neighbor who feeds them milk until they can live on hay or grass. A ewe can usually feed two lambs but don't have enough milk for 3. If we leave the 3rd lamb with the ewe all of them come up short. A ewe will call her lambs who come running and plug in on both sides of her. A third one would get nothing, and then maybe the next time would not be strong enough to compete with the others, gradually getting weaker if he didn't become a very adept little thief.
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