Capri just gifted us with an enormous baby boy! 
Meet Grantham, only moments old in this picture. (These photos are a little strange as a result of being taken in the lambing pen under red heat lamps. I’ll post more tomorrow in the daylight.)
7 more ewes left to lamb.
We lost the black ewe lamb from our mismatched set of twins this weekend to pneumonia. It was terribly sad, but rather than focusing on the negative, I’ve decided to celebrate the twin who is still with us this morning, Hughes.
As you can see, her mama is keeping a careful eye on her.
Since we’re thrown headfirst into lambing, I thought I’d answer some questions that typically come up each year. Some of these are pulled from old blog posts or from the ravelry thread, so if you’re a longtime reader, some of these might feel familiar!
What are all the terms I need to know?
Ewe – female sheep
Nanny – female goat
Buck – male of either species.
Ram – male sheep
Wether – male sheep or goat that has been castrated
Lamb – baby sheep
Kid – baby goat
Doeling – female lamb/kid
Buckling – male lamb/kid
Yearling – a lamb or kid between one and two years of age. We don’t breed our Yearlings.
Who is pregnant this year? We do not breed all the ewes and nannies each year. I decide who to breed based on a number of factors but the most important one is the condition of the ewe going into breeding season.
Who sired the ewes and nannies? Because so much of the flock is closely related, it’s important to bring in new blood. This year we rented a buck so the gene pool will widen.
Is the flock getting bigger? Not really. We giveaway a number of sheep every year to maintain a flock of about the same size. Total animals on this property hovers around 100.
What are the signs of labor? There are lots of signs that a ewe is in labor, which gives you lots of opportunities to notice. A ewe in labor may paw at the ground (called nesting), make a knickering noise that is usual for her, turn her head and talk directly to her belly, look around for her lamb (even though it hasn’t come out yet), run around the paddock smelling other ewes’s lambs, and get up and lay down repeatedly in an effort to find a comfortable position. All of these things can go on for hours, but I find that when they start making the face above, they are usually pretty far along and are starting to push.
Can you tell us more about the need for the shot of selenium? The farm is in a low-selenium area. We have always given every new lamb and kid an oral dose of selenium but this year our ewes are definitely deficient, so we have moved to a 1 cc injection at birth, to be one the safe side. A selenium deficiency leads to White Muscle Disease.
Why do we put coats on newborn lambs? One of two reasons- the first is that it’s cold and the forecast calls for hard frost. As of Friday night, we were still having hard frosts a couple times a week. I think they’re probably over now, but you never know. The other reason to coat a lamb is that they are shivering and don’t seem to be warming up quickly. In that case, we go back and take the coat off within an hour or so once they’ve warmed up.
I see the little lambie tails wagging around, and they are adorable. Do you ever dock the sheep’s tails? We do. The reason why is because of fly strike. You can read about how my thoughts on docking tails evolved here.
I was wondering…when twins are born, are they identical twins? Some twins are identical, according to everything I’ve read, but I’m not sure I can tell which ones are and which aren’t.
I am curious to know if there is a reason why some of the lambs have their left ear tagged versus their right ear? Girls are tagged in the left hear and boys are tagged on the right. Just like women’s shirts have buttons on the left and men’s on the right.
Do you have a burning question about lambing? You can post them here and I’ll try to answer them.
Comments Off on Ask the Shepherd: 2013 Lambing Edition
Tagged ask the shepherd, FAQs, lambing
Well that was a surprise. This morning I walked out to feed the animals and before I even hit the barn I heard the tiny call of a newborn lamb. Cassiopeia is the mother of twin lambs, a boy and a girl.
It was so bright outside that I had trouble getting a good family portrait but you can take my word for it- they are awfully cute! Since characters from Downton Abbey got the most votes in out poll, this pair of lambs will be named Bates and Anna.
Brenda B. was the first to nominate Downton Abbey as a naming convention, she is the winner of a share a share in our 2014 CSA. Brenda, you can choose a Colored Share or a Cormo Share (I’m betting you pick Colored but it’s totally up to you.)
2014 Shares, including yarn made from the fleece from these little ones, will go sale on Monday.
The bred ewes that I was worried weren’t bred because they weren’t getting very big have suddenly become enormous, almost overnight.
I think part of the reason for the late growth is that I’m not graining the flock very much this year. In the past few years, we have had enormous lambs, which is not my favorite thing. I like a good-sized, healthy lamb but the 18 pound whoppers are much more likely to get stuck and require assistance.
The Cormo ewes show their pregnancy much more than the colored flock, probably because the colored sheep are so much taller.
But never fear! The colored ewes are bagging up, so I know they are bred too. You can see the enlarged teats and beginning of an udder here.
Here’s an udder shot of one of the Cormo ewes. (I can’t imagine the crazy web traffic these shots are going to draw!)
Feenat, one of the ewes we weren’t planning to breed this year, appears to have been caught as well.
A few of the girls are definitely farther along than others, so my predicted lambing date of 3/13 may not be too far off.
Stay tuned!
I am sorry that it has taken me so long to get this post up but it’s really your fault. You all suggested so many excellent naming conventions this year that I knew it was going to be a lot of work to sort through all the nominations and put together a poll. So, yeah, I was was kind of lazy but if there had been fewer good ideas, I might not of been. See? Your fault entirely. Don’t let it happen again.
It was really hard to narrow down the field of nominations so I didn’t. I really just eliminated the conventions we have used in the past. We have more options to vote on than we’ve ever had before!
Sadly, you can only pick one choice at a time but I am allowing multiple votes per computer because I know that a lot of our readers have kids who like to vote as well. (You will have to reload the page in order to reset the poll.)
As an added inducement, we’ll be giving the first person who nominated the name that ultimately wins a Full Share in our 2014 Yarn CSA, so you are encouraged to get out the vote. Feel free to share on Facebook, Twitter, Ravelry and mighty Pinterest if you have a mind to.
The polls will remain open until 6:00 a.m. on March 1, 2013. Good luck!
Comments Off on Vote Here for 2013 Lamb Names!
Tagged lambing, lambs, Naming Conventions
I don’t know how it happened but after ten years, this lambing season snuck up on me.
Actually, maybe I do know how it happened. See, I put the Draco, our ram yearling, in with the ewes for two weeks, beginning on October 13th. That gave us a lambing window March 3rd through April 8th. The only problem was that the ewes didn’t look bred to me. They just weren’t getting as large as they usually do and I was about half convinced that our ram was shooting blanks.
Honestly, I was dreading coming here and telling you all that there would be no lambs this year, but I had kind of gotten used to the idea. Then, on Monday, I had all the sheep in the barn for a pre-Spring worming, and while I was at it, I checked the girls for udder development. KAPOW! We have lamby buns in the lots of ovens.
The only trouble is that I am not convinced that these ladies are due in a month; they just don’t seem that far along to me. It’s entirely possible that Mr. Sneaky Ram resorted to some self-help in November or December, which stinks. Not knowing when lambs are coming is almost as bad no lambs at all. I have a truly insane amount of stuff going on in the next few months, which is why I tried to schedule an early lambing this year.
More on all that later, though. Right now, it’s time to nominate this year’s naming convention! As you may remember, Juniper Moon Farm’s lambs are always named according to a convention chosen by our readers. The first step is to open the floor to nominations. Are you ready?
Let’s hear your best ideas! Before the lambs start hitting the ground we will put it to a vote.
Comments Off on Lambing Season is Upon Us!
Tagged lambing, Naming Conventions
I have to tell you, this lambing season kicked my backside. For the last month I’ve been just completely exhausted, absolutely bone tired, and no amount of “catch up” sleep seemed to help, this time.
And it wasn’t just exhaustion. I was having a terrible time focusing on all the work I needed to get done. Emails were piling up. My to do list was getting longer and longer and longer.
I assumed that I either has some terrible disease (which is always my go-to) or that lambing was just going to keep getting harder and harder every year. Then I overheard Amy telling someone that someone that she had been suffering from much the same symptoms and it turned out to be allergies. I was intrigued, because I have never been an allergy sufferer. (I know, don’t hate me.)
I did a little research and it turns out that allergies can manifest themselves in fatigue and inability to focus without the runny nose and stuffy head that everyone else gets. Three days of Zyrtec changed EVERYTHING. I feel like my old self again. I’m just bummed that I didn’t figure this out before I spent a month being miserable.
Now I can catch you up on the things that would have taken too much effort to write about a few weeks ago!
Two weeks ago, I made the drive up to my friend Phylleri’s farm to pick up a few new additions to the colored flock. This is Leo, a chocolate Angora goat kid. Isn’t she gorgeous.
Bootes is one of three colored lambs we acquired at the same time. She has a sister named Sagitta and an unrelated ram friend named Draco. (We stuck with the constellations for the colored flock this year.)
It appears that our lambing season is at a close, earlier than we expected. Four of the yearlings we bred this year did not conceive, which is disappointing but not terribly so. We have a lovely crop of healthy lambs this year and they are doing well.
We did lose two little ones, tiny Earhart and Armstrong. Earhart’s mama rolled over on her and Armstrong was just failed to thrive. I felt guilty about not writing about them at the time, but I was so sad and so tired, and the words just would’t come. I know many of you were sending prayers and wishes for Earhart, and I wish I had better news to share.
I am trying to take the advice of Dr. Seuss who said, “Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened.” They were lovely little lambs, and it is so precious to me that I got to spend some time with them, however brief.
Losing a lamb always makes me so grateful for the ones who we get to watch grow up.
They are amazing little wonders, so full of life and personality! There are untold adventures awaiting them.
Another set of boy-girl twins! Whoohoo!
We’re naming them Aldrin and Armstrong. We also named Sicily’s twins; they are called Stanley and Livingston.
