Well summer lambing started on August 15 2024. In the last 18 days we have had 12 ewes give birth. It has not gone smoothly, as it is summer. Surprisingly, having lambs in the dead of winter is easier. The sheep are all in the barn and tend to deliver in the middle of the night almost without fail. We can then catch them, put them in jugs and leave them to bond for 2-3 days. This is not possible in the summer. For one, they don’t always give birth at night, about 30% of the lambs have been born during the day. The lambs are pretty dang spry by the time we get out there to put everyone in for the night. Which means you cannot always catch them. The space we put them in is very large compared to the amount of space they have in the barn. They are just dumber in the summer.
The stats are not very good but they are the facts so here they are:
- Date of update- Sept 3 2024
- # of Lambs born – 16
- # of ewes who have delivered babies – 12
- # of ewes still pregnant – No clue, I think between 23-33 but I am guessing
- # of single lamb births – 8
- # of twin lamb births – 4
- # of triplet lamb births – 0
- # tagged male (weathers-neutered) lambs-none yet
- # tagged female lambs- none yet
- # of bummer lambs – 1
- # of lambs who died in first two weeks – 3
- Total # of lambs on farm -12
- % birthing rate- 133%
- % production rate -100%
- % survival rate at birth – 100%
- % survival rate at 2 weeks (bummers count as death as they need help and leave the farm) – 75%
Mr Rainman finished digging out the barn today. I put straw in the momma/baby area and opened it up so the sheep could go into that little area of the barn. They can shelter in the barn or over in the lamb shed. For the most part they sneak in with the horse, help her eat her hay and let her watch their babies. She likes the lambs and is very careful with them.
We went to take a couple of dead lambs up to the boneyard Monday morning and they were gone! Annmarie had us out at bedtime looking for coyotes as she could hear them. They were up in field one at the far end of the property. They came all the way down to the barn lot but did not get into the actual barn lot. The corpses were outside the barn lot. We, of course, have not seen a coyote in weeks. We have not lost a sheep that we know of yet this year. There is a skeleton in the orchard but it’s down in a hole and it was all bones. Mr Rainman swears it is new. We had so many deaths last year I am not sure we found them all. So I am not counting it as a loss for this year. We only kept the rams in with the ewes for 8 weeks so we should only have six weeks of lambing left!
Stewart Creek Somethings 