lamb productivity – Stewart Creek Somethings

Lambing update week 7

March 12, 2023March 12, 2023Steve HardinLeave a comment

This weekend I had to spend some quality time in the barn again. The mother/lamb area needed to be expanded. It now covers 2/3 of the barn. The rope we used to tie one side of the creep gate in place is getting stretched by the ewes and the thin ewes are able to crawl through the side. This morning one of the ewes was stuck in the creep gate. She got stuck right in front of her back hips and could not move. I had to pull the pins out of the gate and drag her back out. It took her about ten minutes to get her sea legs under her. Her lamb was glad to see her and kept nursing as much as it could. This has prompted us to get bigger eyelets so that we can stick a 1” rod down through the right side of the gate. We are out of the skinny rods so the bigger aluminum ones need to be used. I am afraid to use an eyelet that just gets screwed into the wood. I am afraid the ewes will just tear it out by pushing on the gate. I had four of them pushing on it Saturday as they were able to get their noses into one of the feeders. They could barely reach it with their tongues but they were not giving it up! I had to lean over the gate and hang in the air to push it away from them. They would not let me pass. I have a bolt on eyebolt that will fit and now just need to install it.

We are now certain that a second ram is needed. We have been lambing for seven weeks and we are still not done. So this spring we are going to keep the sheep in a small contained area when we introduce the ram. NO more letting the sheep run over 40 acres and the ram having to chase them all down.

Date of update- Mar 12, 2023
# of Lambs born – 48
# of ewes who have delivered babies – 30
# of ewes still pregnant – 12 in area, I don’t think they are all pregnant
# of single lamb births – 13
# of twin lamb births – 16
# of triplet lamb births – 1
# of bummer lambs – 5
# of lambs who died in first two weeks – 3
Total # of lambs on farm -40
% birthing rate- 160%
% production rate -133%
% survival rate at birth – 100%
% survival rate at 2 weeks (bummers count as death as they need help and leave the farm) – 83%

We had one of the traveling staff from Florida come out for a few hours on Friday and see the lambs and ewes. She got to pet everyone and tour the house. We then fed her leg of lamb for dinner! It was amazing as always. She wore her snow boots out in the barn. Being a city slicker she had never seen anything like it before. She kept marveling at the fact that there were no neighbors.

Lambing update fifth week

February 26, 2023February 26, 2023Steve HardinLeave a comment

Well our annual second winter came this week. We got about eight inches of snow and the temperature dropped into the single digits. The cows were happy I took them another big bale of hay. I fed out two more big bales this morning and only have five big bales left. I have half the barn and the machine shed full of 40# round bales that can be fed out! Once I get all the big bales fed I can let the cows into that four acre area. No animal has been in there to graze since last fall so with a little warm weather that area will perk up quite nicely and allow for some decent grazing.

This weekend some time had to be devoted to the sheep again. We have to get the ewes and babies in the jugs tagged and banded so we can make room for more babies. Currently we only have two jugs open. I think I can tag and band the single under the stairs and the other single. Both of those babies are healthy and moving around well. It gets a lot harder to find mom when there are 25 other screaming little lambs running around.

Yesterday morning I had three different sets of babies in the barn. I was able to let everyone out but those thee ewes and their babies. One of the ewes was crazy! I know this because after 20 minutes I had still not managed to trap her in a jug. I also noticed she had a notch out of the no ear tag ear. I have a notcher for marking the bad ewes. I almost never use it as I don’t like it, but this ewe is getting another notch and we need to cull her. I ended up trapping her in the chute then opening up the barn side of the chute and chasing her into the jug under the stairs. This worked surprisingly well. It did require moving stuff around but in the long run it would have saved me time. I had a set of twins and a single in with the two ewes. When I separated the ewes I must have messed up. I went out there this am and the dark black ewe was head butting both of the pure white babies I had in the pen with her. So I swapped babies and will need to go out later and see how the babies are doing. When I swapped them out the mothers went right up and were sniffing the babies. Yesterday the ewes were eating and they let the babies nurse. So I could not tell who belonged to whom.

Date of update- Feb 26, 2023
# of Lambs born – 41
# of ewes who have delivered babies – 25
# of ewes still pregnant – 16-18 in area, I don’t think they are all pregnant
# of single lamb births – 10
# of twin lamb births – 14
# of triplet lamb births – 1
# tagged male (weathers-neutered) lambs-13
# tagged female lambs-13
# of bummer lambs – 2
# of lambs who died in first two weeks – 2
Total # of lambs on farm -37
% birthing rate- 164%
% production rate -148%
% survival rate at birth – 100%
% survival rate at 2 weeks (bummers count as death as they need help and leave the farm) – 90%

The ram and his cronies got out of Alcatraz this week. I am pretty sure they got out through the lamb shed. I did not reinstall the gate in front of the barn after it got knocked off last summer. Not only do I need to reinstall the gate but I need to mount a cattle panel onto it so the sheep cannot pass through the bars. I managed to lure them back with grain and used the horseshoe door anchor in addition to the clip.

Lambing update

February 20, 2023Steve HardinLeave a comment

This weekend some time had to be devoted to the sheep. The ewes have finally started to have lambs on a regular basis. We had ordered four more portable panels and they came. They come in two feet sections and have to be assembled. I put them all together on Friday. I had to go into town and get more grain for the ewes and mothers. We have been feeding them up for the last month. They had started to get skinny. So when I went out Saturday morning to check on the sheep I rearranged panels and built a couple more jugs. The jugs needed fresh bedding and feed buckets and water buckets filled. The mother/lamb area needed to be expanded also, by the time I was done two hours had passed.

Date of update- Feb 20, 2023
# of Lambs born – 35
# of ewes who have delivered babies – 21
# of ewes still pregnant – 23 in area, I don’t think they are all pregnant
# of single lamb births – 8
# of twin lamb births – 12
# of triplet lamb births – 1
# tagged male (weathers-neutered) lambs-11
# tagged female lambs-9
# of bummer lambs – 2
# of lambs who died in first two weeks – 1
Total # of lambs on farm -32
% birthing rate- 166%
% production rate -152%
% survival rate at birth – 100%
% survival rate at 2 weeks (bummers count as death as they need help and leave the farm) – 91%

We have a single lamb from one mother who makes the weirdest noise, it sounds like a cat! I tagged and banded him today and when I picked him up his rib cage is narrow and big. It is not the correct shape. We will be watching boy # 347 to see if he survives. The sheep are now at the annoying stage, they are super friendly and know that you are bringing good treats and they just want to be the first one to get them. We try and usher them gently out of the barn but after five minutes of trying to be gentle and quite we end up hollering at them to get out of the barn and chasing them out. There is only so much patience one can have before you realize that it is getting you nowhere and there are other things that need to be done.

Our spring is running a little muddy so I drove up the pastures to look and see how our pseudo soft spot was doing in field #2. It is pretty boggy and soft, I had to get out of the soft mud so I did not sink the tractor and there is running and standing water. There is one corner of the field that I had not marked out that is really soft. I need to mark it as off limits so in the spring when I need to cut hay I avoid that area.

Sheep update, not where we want to be

February 12, 2023February 12, 2023Steve HardinLeave a comment

There are a lot of lambs left to be born yet! I am pretty sure a couple of the ewes are not pregnant and we are going to be past the first 21 day ovulation cycle this week. We are going to need a second ram so this event does not drag out. We would like everyone to be born in a three week window. That is not going to happen this cycle again.

Date of update- Feb 12, 2023
# of Lambs born – 21
# of ewes who have delivered babies – 13
# of ewes still pregnant – 31 in area, I don’t think they are all pregnant
# of single lamb births – 6
# of twin lamb births – 6
# of triplet lamb births – 1
# tagged male (weathers-neutered) lambs-8
# tagged female lambs-5
# of bummer lambs – 2
# of lambs who died in first two weeks – 1
Total # of lambs on farm -18
% 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%

We had another bummer, the ewe got distracted and forgot about one of her twins. Annmarie fed the baby and we left it for two hours with the ewe and it was still cold and laying down. She brought it into the house and warmed it up by the stove. She got it more alert and fed up. Tisha came and took the bummer away a few hours later.

I had on chicken die so there are only 11 layers left. Spring is coming, I have 2-3 chickens die every spring when the wild ducks come in to the back creek. I just replaced the light bulb again in the coop. I have been changing it every month due to the tweetie birds bouncing around inside the coop and breaking the light filament. I got LED lights this time.

Lamb day

February 3, 2023February 5, 2023Steve HardinLeave a comment

The sheep have taken up more of my staycation than I anticipated. I spent a whole day on Friday messing around with them. Due to all of the babies and only having one Jug left open It was determined I should tag and band babies. I usually just turn the babies loose and in a month try and match and catch random babies. It tends to be inaccurate and fairly labor intensive. Annmarie has been trying to get me to tag and band from the jugs for ages. The real problem is banding the lambs at that age is not easy. I have tagged and banded over 330 male lambs so I am pretty confident in getting it right now no matter the age. Plus it has the added benefit of actually being able to track each ewe accurately. Meathead helped me tag band and give selenium supplement to everyone in the jugs except the newborn twins under the stairs. We then put fresh straw in all of the used jugs and moved panels around to make the momma/baby area bigger and created a chute for the pregnant mommas to get into the barn. As the momma/baby group gets bigger we just keep giving them more of the front of the barn and the preggers get the smaller back half. It took us few years to figure this out! Nothing is ever easy when you start, there are a lot of hard lessons to getting a good routine down. The feeders get moved around also to correspond to the number of mouths needing fed.

Date of update- Feb 3, 2023
# of Lambs born – 15
# of ewes who have delivered babies – 8
# of ewes still pregnant – lots
# of single lamb births – 2
# of twin lamb births – 5
# of triplet lamb births – 1
# tagged male (weathers-neutered) lambs-6
# tagged female lambs-4
# of bummer lambs – 1
# of lambs who died in first two weeks – 1
Total # of lambs on farm -13
% birthing rate- 188%
% production rate -163%
% survival rate at birth – 100%
% survival rate at 2 weeks (bummers count as death as they need help and leave the farm) – 87%