Tag Archives: lambing

Ara, one of our colored sheep, gave birth to TWO beauties last night- a ram lamb and a ewe lamb. We named them Corvus and Canis after the constellations.

Between visitors and lambing, things have been so chaotic around here that I haven’t been responding to all the questions in the comments on posts. Here are a few I know I’ve missed.

The diapers that we put on the baby goats were designed for dogs. Sadly, they didn’t work very well, although they worked better when we flipped them around and used packing tape to keep them on.

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.

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.

Do we have any bottle babies this year? Other than Blanca and Fresca, the dairy goat bottle babies, we have been lucky so far in that all the ewes are taking care of their own babies. This is especially lucky considering how many first time mamas we have this year! The only slight exception is Clark, the tiny lamb pictured here next to his enormous brother. His mama is feeding him, but I felt like he should be a bit sturdier at this point, so we are supplementing him with a bottle whenever we feed the girls. It’s already done him a world of good! In two days of supplementing, he is looking much less Gollum-like.

Did you ever name the new baby? We did! Her name is Sacagawea, Gigi for short.

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.

Do you breed all the ewes and if not what goes into deciding who to breed? We do not breed all the ewes 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. We had a nightmarish season last year, in part due to parasites, and I rested many of the older ewes this year in hopes of getting them back into condition.

Why are some of the ewes sheared? We pre-shear as many sheep as possible ahead of our Shearing Day Party to make Shearing Day more fun/less stressful and to help the girls cool off. With milk production and babies sleeping on them, I figure they need every possible way to keep cool! One of the ewes isn’t shorn, Lyra, because she gave birth the morning Emily came and we didn’t  want to stress her. Generally, you need to give a ewe two or three days to recover from lambing before shearing her, so Lyra will have to wait till May 19th.

Why so many lambs and so few kids? We only bred the dairy goats this spring, so we are only expecting one more set of twins from Bertie. We may breed the Angora for Fall kids this year.

Have any questions about lambs or lambing? Ask them here and I’ll try to answer them today

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Born at 4:30 a.m. We haven’t named her yet but she sure is pretty!

Capri is in the pen nearest the camera.

Born to Darcy at 7 p.m. ish. She weighs in 8 1/4 pounds and WOW what a beauty! Name to come soon.

Jeykll gifted us with two ram lambs tonight, one ENORMOUS and the other tiny. Lewis is the larger one, weighing in at a whopping 12 pounds (!) while wee little Clark is around 5 1/2. I tried to capture the size differential in this photo.

Both babies are looking great, so I am going to try to snag a couple hours sleep while I can.