This weekend marked day seven of the lamb experience. We are doing surprisingly well. That green grass at the end of the year really helped the ewes out. They went into winter with the most weight they have ever had. This is reflected in the sheer quantity of lambs that are being born. It doesn’t help that we did not really cull out any ewes last year so we have almost 50 ewes and close to 200% productivity. We could have 70-80 lambs running around. They are already underfoot everywhere you go. They are incredibly cute and very loud at the same time.
- Date of update- March 30 2025
- # of Lambs born – 36
- # of ewes who have delivered babies – 19
- # of ewes still pregnant – Approximately 25 in area, I don’t think they are all pregnant
- # of single lamb births – 4
- # of twin lamb births – 13
- # of triplet lamb births – 2
- # tagged male (weathers-neutered) lambs- 0
- # tagged female lambs-0
- # of bummer lambs – 1
- # of lambs who died in first two weeks – 2
- Total # of lambs on farm -33
- % birthing rate- 189%
- % production rate -174%
- % survival rate at birth – 100%
- % survival rate at 2 weeks (bummers count as death as they need help and leave the farm) – 92%
Mr Rainman worked on cracking grain on Saturday while I did the grout patching in the bathroom. I had picked up three metal 55 gallon drums with lids this week and he proceeded to fill two of them with cracked grain. We now have a 55 gallon drums, two metal trash cans full of chicken feed. We were able to take two full 55 gallon drums with cracked grain to the barn so we can feed the nursing ewes some grain twice a day.
The lambs really are not bright. We had one hang himself in the fence on Friday evening. He stuck his head over the woven wire and then reached down to reach back into the same field. This caused his nose to get stuck behind the wire and he hung himself. We had just been out there two hours earlier! The lambs are so small that they keep getting out of the momma/baby area by just crawling through the woven wire. They get stuck outside the fence and start hollering incessantly. So today we lined the bottom of the fence with boards so that the little lambs cannot crawl out. This is no guarantee but it should work.
On Saturday, I was talking to Mr Rainman and looked up to see a ewe have a baby. It literally just popped out! The placental sack was still intact and we watched the lamb flop around inside the sack. After a couple of minutes I realized that the lamb was not going to break out of its coffin. I walked out there and had to tear apart three layers of “sack” to get the lamb’s head out of the covering and out of the liquid. I drug it out of the rest of the sack and then chased the ewe over to near it. We then left to see if nature would reverse course. The ewe did come over and start cleaning the lamb off. We now have that ewe and both twins in a jug inside the barn. I saved a life!
Today we cleaned out the strawberry bed but did not see any asparagus starts poking out. If we did not drown them last year they should be coming in very soon. We also trimmed the blackberries and raspberries. I realize we are late getting them trimmed but they did get done. I also dug up a row of dirt and shoved cut off raspberries in it. I am trying to propagate another row of raspberries.
Mr Rainman will come out this week and do annual repairs on the sprayer and start spraying fields 1 & 2.
Stewart Creek Somethings 