Tag: lambing

Finally!

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This evening after a very productive afternoon in the fiber rom, we decided to make a quick check of the field before heading to the house for dinner.  All the way at the bottom of the hill, we were so excited to to find this —

There – finally – beautiful twin lambs!  A wonderful white ram and a beautiful black ewe, both weighing 8 lbs 5 ozs.  It took awhile to get everybody back up the hill and in the barn, but they’re all tucked in a lambing jug with second-cutting hay and a bucket of molasses-water.  Julie did a great job as a first-time mama.  We are so proud of her!

It’s Here!

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Well, according to that ticker up there at the top of the blog – IT’S HERE!  Lambing season officially begins, and after watching that ticker move ever so slowly over the past month, it honestly feels as if there should be some kind of bells and whistles or maybe even fireworks!  Barn and field checks are now more frequent, and the first things that are noticed are the bulging bellies and swelling udders.  Yes, lambing time is here.  Don’t be too disappointed if the lambs do not begin hitting the ground immediately.  Sometimes it takes our girls a few days to get into the swing of things.

Following our post mentioning the addition of raw apple cider vinegar to the watering trough, Dori had some questions which we will attempt to answer here.  We usually add a 32 oz bottle to the 50 gallon watering trough which we fill to about the 3/4 mark or about an ounce or so to a 5 gallon bucket.  We try to use unpasturized, unfiltered vinegar such as this, but sometimes have a hard time finding it.  We use it to promote general health, to combat heat stress, and we also use it as a drench to combat diarreah.  We rarely use it during the winter unless someone looks like they need a little ‘pick-me-up’.
There are many different resources that promote the use of vinegar:
Laurie Ball-Gisch wrote an excellent article on heat stress for ‘sheep!’ magazine.  She also shares her ‘vinegar miracle’ on her wonderful website, Lavender Fleece, and has a lot of information about her experiences with vinegar including a study done in New Zealand.   Pectin and enzymes are among the things mentioned as the reason that raw ACV seems to help many different conditions. 
More information can be found in “Natural Sheep Care” by Pat Coleby.  I think it is also mentioned in “The Complete Herbal Handbook for Farm and Stable” by Juliete de Bairacli Levi but I cannot put my hands on either of the two copies we have, at the moment.
(Please remember, that this something that works for us, but may not work in your particular situation.)

Maebh’s Lamb

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This morning when going to feed, I was greeted in the barn by Maebh and her brand new baby ram: a sturdy, robust 11 lb. 13 oz.-er. Things must have gone smoothly, he was almost dry and was eating away. They are settled snugly in their jug for the next few days

And so it begins….
Hope this is a harbinger of how lambing season will progress this year….
Guess we will discover that when the real fun begins in a couple of weeks….

The Little Fellas

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We realized sometime this week, that we have neglected to share with you the story of ‘The Little Fellas’. Born on April 24th, these little twin rams weighed 6 lbs 11 ozs and 4 lbs 15 ozs when they hit the ground. We were worried that the smallest one might not make it or might become a ‘bottle baby’, but he was strong and determined. Their mama, Dierdre, was a wonderful, attentive, 1st time mother and seemed to be intent on getting her little fellas up and going.

We moved them into a lambing jug in the barn and went to work. It definitely helped that Dierdre is small and built low to the ground because little Mr. 1034 could just barely reach her udder to nurse. We put a ‘grow light’ on them, and they grew… even thrived.
Look at them now! ‘The Little Fellas’ – Mr. 1030 and Mr. 1034 – out in the pasture going strong. They are still pretty small, but seem determined to catch up to the bigger lambs. It will be fun to follow their progress throughout the summer.

Weekend Babies

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These beautiful, twin ewe lambs were born Saturday morning. Perhaps the most vigorous of all the newborns, they were attempting to get up before mama, Naomi, had even begun to clean them off.

Naomi must have walked a mile during her contractions, up and down, back and forth… ending up, of course, choosing the dirtiest place in the pasture to finally push the wee babes out.