Final lamb update spring of 2023

Steve Hardin

This is the final tally after a long drawn out birthing time. It is so long that we will have to sort the sheep and pull off all of the three months and older lambs off of the herd before we can stick the ram back into the main herd.

  • Date of update- May 13, 2023
  • # of Lambs born – 63
  • # of ewes who have delivered babies – 39
  • # of ewes still pregnant – 0, it should be zero now!
  • # of single lamb births – 17
  • # of twin lamb births – 20
  • # of triplet lamb births – 2
  • # tagged male (weathers-neutered) lambs-idk, still have a few to tag and band
  • # tagged female lambs-idk, still have a few to tag and band
  • # of bummer lambs – 5
  • # of lambs who died in first two weeks – 2
  • Total # of lambs on farm -54 (but after predator kill this week only 52 but that doesn’t count towards productivity. That is a predator loss)
  • % birthing rate- 162%
  • % production rate -138%
  • % survival rate at birth – 100%
  • % survival rate at 2 weeks (bummers count as death as they need help and leave the farm) – 86

Dragging out the birthing process is not good. We had a lot of bummers this year, far more than normal. We still have 52 lambs to sell by the end of the year. We also want to weed out about 5-8 of the older ewes. If we get the ram in with the ewes in the next two weeks we will have more lambs five months later, so mid October. This is a much better time to lamb than January.

I enjoy the sheep way more than the cows. Currently, the cows are worth more but they are a lot harder to deal with and as I get older they may be one of the things I have to give up. I went ahead and ordered a solar powered red eye predator warning light. I can mount them on a wooden pole down in the orchard and hopefully scare off whatever is killing our lambs. It should be here next week and it can get installed. I am hopeful it makes a difference. I would advocate some 243 therapy for the predators but they are never seen so that solution is really not viable.

I am using the sheep to mow the lawn but today I opted to let the sheep go up with the cows and give the ram pasture a break from them. They will need to be brought in every night for their protection. It will be good practice for Chance.

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