lambs

Spring activities continue

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Despite the need to finish the bathroom other work still has to happen on the farm. Mr Rainman came out on Monday evening to help me sort and load cows. We wanted to sell off our four largest Dexter cows, there were 11 for sale and we don’t have enough meat customers for that many animals. I happened to look into the stock trailer while Mr Rainman was hooking it up and spotted the kittens. I just tossed two pallets over a couple of horizontal telephone poles to make a cubby and then moved the kittens out into that hiding spot. It was only about eight feet from where they were originally. I figured out the momma would hear them and deal with it. She did, Annmarie spotted her moving the kittens an hour later.

We got the four cows separated from the other seven and loaded them into the trailer. Only one refused to go into the trailer. She had gotten turned around and would not back up. We just let her out of the chute and ran her around again. This time we did not let her slow down in the chute so she could not turn around . As always it was a five minute gig to just drop off the cows at the auction. We got the check on Saturday. We had one heifer and three steers. The heifer sold for $2/# and steers $1.75/#. They did very good. I was hoping for $1.50/#.

I was able to get another friend to hatch out a dozen straight run chicks for me. She will replace any roosters with new chicks when I can determine gender. I thought I had eliminated all but two of the roosters from the January batch but yesterday I saw two crow that were not on my list! I only want two roosters so I will be looking a lot closer to determine who is a rooster and who isn’t. I will have to thin out at least three more I think. One of the new chicks died by fratricide. Its fellow baby chicken sat on it after it got behind the feeder. So now there are 11 chicks.

Our asparagus did not die last year! We had four shoots pop up from the strawberries this week. We planted ten plants but it is just now starting to warm up at our house consistently and we think that is why we are behind our neighbors on growth rate. We still only have four shoots buy there is still some life and we thought we had killed it all. We want to get another container going for just asparagus.

We had a lamb that got sick and had to be put down. We have had two more sets of twin lambs and think we are all done lambing. We have put all of the sheep back together into one herd. We are only locking them up into the ram pasture now at night. They can go in and out of the barn freely as they want.

Annmarie is working on getting all of the garden, lavender, herb water going today but as always there is some part we are needing to get the job done. She has a shed full of drip line and 1/2” PVC connectors but there is always one thing. We will keep working on this until it is done.

Lambing update

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We had two more ewes give birth this week. We think there are two left maybe three but that is it. So I flopped the barn back to its lamb starting position. The main area is now for all of the mommas and babies and the small portion is for the rest of the herd (14 sheep). We have also opened up the back hillside behind our house to the main herd of sheep. They are working on converting their intestinal bacteria from a dry food to wet food (green grass), it always makes for mandatory rubber boot ware.

The sheep are just really stupid. I was headed inside yesterday when I thought I heard someone hollering. I had already pushed both herds into the barn and almost let this single ewe stay outside. I did not realize that her head was stuck in the fence until I got closer. I just had to turn her head and trip her so her body dropped when her head was turned to get her head unstuck. She ran right back to the barn and wanted inside with everyone else.

I found a little boy lamb that I had to carry off the hillside yesterday. Today, I had put everyone away in the barn and was headed into the house. I had not gotten chicken eggs yet so I did that and went the back way alongside the creek. Normally, I go around and go through the yard but for some reason I went the back way. I spotted the lamb I had moved yesterday. Francine had only taken one of her two bottles so I fed this lamb and brought it inside the house. Momma made the cull list since she only had one lamb to keep track of and she is not feeding it or being a good mother. Our normal nursery caregiver came and picked him up to go home with her.

Francine is doing well. She drinks a bottle in the morning and evenings. Tonight she only wanted 16 oz, she had been up to 24 oz but seems to be cutting back. The lambs always look like they are dead when they are on sunning themselves on the back hillside. They love laying in the sun.

The Gingerman got a set of large discs moved off the property. He had to take down a section of fence to get it out of the alleyway. The fence is all repaired and now the cows and sheep cannot play on or around the equipment. I was able to spread a little gravel on our main road in the problem area.

The plan for this week is to take the four largest feeder cows to the auction this Tuesday. I am told the prices are really good and we have 11 cows getting fat on the lower part of the property. We have moved all of those cows into the fields next to the Mother-in-law’s house. They are cheat grass and we are getting the cows and alpaca to overeat and stress the field. We are going to kill it with Roundup and keep it killed for the year then replant in the fall or spring.

Lambing coming to a close soon

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We had some help this morning with the lambs: Gingerman, Mr Rainman and the Lamb Whisperer. The Lamb Whisperer had not been out to the farm before but she fed Francine then caught lambs while I tagged and banded. It took us a couple of hours to tag and banded 59 lambs.

We had to bummer off one very healthy lamb as its mother rejected it. We are continuing to feed Francine morning and night and she must be getting milk from somewhere else because she is only taking a 12 ounce bottle morning and night. The nice thing is she hangs with her mother until the morning or evening feed then she hunts down a human and hollers at them until they feed her. She was so insistent last night that she ended up riding on the tractor with me while her bottle was getting mixed. She just rode in my arms without any difficulties.

One of the lambs had a piece of grass under its eyelid so the Gingerman washed it out and he and Mr Rainman got it out of the lamb’s eye.

We were able to catch lambs in one area of the barn and once tagged/banded they were let loose on the other side of the gate. This kept all the tagged lambs in one area, only a couple got out and back in with the mommas. It went fairly smooth. I was glad we waited as I had two boys that I was almost not able to find both testicles on when banding. I don’t believe I could have done it had they been any younger. By pure happenstance both genders ended up using #431. We use blue tags for boys and some form of pink/red for the girls. This makes it much easier to spot gender when looking at tags. Hard to believe that we have had over 850 lambs since we started raising sheep.

The Lamb Whisperer had done her part and proceeded to head home once she learned that installing the toilet was next on the list.

The stats had to be updated to reflect the number of lambs that have died and been born. Once we counted today it was a lot higher than I anticipated. We only have one lamb left to tag, the one born today. I think there are three more ewes that need to give birth. There is at least one for sure!

  • Date of update- April 13, 2025
  • # of Lambs born – 68
  • # of ewes who have delivered babies – 39
  • # of ewes still pregnant – 3, I think
  • # of single lamb births – 12
  • # of twin lamb births – 25
  • # of triplet lamb births – 2
  • # tagged male (weathers-neutered) lambs-32
  • # tagged female lambs-27
  • # of bummer lambs – 2
  • # of lambs who died in first two weeks – 6
  • Total # of lambs on farm -60
  • % birthing rate- 174%
  • % production rate -154%
  • % survival rate at birth – 100%
  • % survival rate at 2 weeks (bummers count as death as they need help and leave the farm) – 88.2%

Lambing week one

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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.

Lambing has begun!

Steve HardinLeave a comment

We knew the sheep were due to have lambs very soon so we started to lock them up at night four days ago. This morning we had our first set of twins! The Gingerman and daughter went out to check on the sheep and discovered the pair. They went into a jug and were fed and watered. Sarah asked me about feed for the momma. We usually supplement their hay with some grain or sheep feed to increase the number of calories the nursing mommas are getting. I didn’t have any out in the barn. So I added it to my list of items to get accomplished today. The Gingerman had brought down another six bags of garbanzo beans so I decided to grind up a few bags to feed to the mothers. I brought the tractor around with a few old protein lick tubs and proceeded to mix feed as it went into the grinder.

I only had one stoppage while grinding this time. I think one of the wires is loose in the on/off switch but I managed to get it going again without tearing it apart. I ground about 200# of feed for the sheep. I have two full metal trash cans of feed already ground for the chickens and at this point I need to get some more metal 55 gallon drums to store feed in the chicken coop. I will need to start moving the cracked seed out into the barn into the large metal feed container. It will hold over 1000#. At this point I am still pretty focused on the bathroom so I will only be cracking grain when I need it for the sheep. I am hopeful this cracked batch will get us to the weekend. The grain containers don’t have covers but I am hoping the raccoon will leave it alone. We will see.

I went into the barn and set up the momma/baby area. Put out feed, opened up the side fence so they can get to water. I put a brand new protein lick tubs outside and pulled a panel over the gate so that no one can get out. We are now ready for the mommas/babies when they are bumped out of the jugs and into their own area.

The sheep snuck by the tractor when I was grinding grain so I had to battle them most of the time. I finally ended up opening up the gates so they could go up onto the back hillside. The grass is a couple of inches tall so they can get some fresh green grass into their diet. We are still filling all of the feeders in the barn also. We won’t stop that for a while. I am hopeful lambing season will go quickly. There were three rams in the pasture for breeding so we are hopeful they all tried to outcompete each other!