Week 7 lambing update

Steve Hardin

Well lambing is going to be better than last years five months long endeavor but we are definitely not getting it done quickly. We are going to have to go through three cycles to get everyone delivered. What happened to the good old days where one had to worry about the ram losing too much weight because he did not even bother to take time out of his busy day to eat! Our new ram is so GenZ. He does a little business, eats, rests, wanders then remembers occasionally he has a job to do. The baby boys all lay around for 20-30 minutes after getting banded looking like they wanna die. You can see that in the picture below!

  • Date of update- Jan 10 2024
  • # of Lambs born – 40
  • # of ewes who have delivered babies – 26
  • # of ewes still pregnant – 8 in area, I don’t think they are all pregnant
  • # of single lamb births – 13
  • # of twin lamb births – 12
  • # of triplet lamb births – 1
  • # male (weathers-neutered) lambs-32
  • # tagged female lambs-5
  • # unknown lambs- 3
  • # of bummer lambs – 3
  • # of lambs who died in first two weeks – 5
  • Total # of lambs on farm -32
  • % birthing rate- 154%
  • % production rate -123%
  • % survival rate at birth – 100%
  • % survival rate at 2 weeks (bummers count as death as they need help and leave the farm) – 80%

We had a ewe up and die on us. She was one of our older ewes. She had twins and they are both very healthy. I brought them into the house and spent 1.5 hours getting them to take a bottle. I am not very good at bottle feeding lambs. I usually let Annmarie do that and I take care of the barn animals but she had to go to work and it was my day off. I was going to go into work late to catch up so I had the time to give them both a boost. Once they had a couple of ounces of formula into their tummies they became quite insistent on getting more. I had to keep switching between lambs so no one had to do without for very long.

We are pretty surprised by the 32 boys out of 40 lambs. That is some definite leaning to one side. We have never had a lambing where the numbers are so skewed.

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