Still no lambs 🙂 but on one of my many trips to the barn this weekend I got to thinking that very rarely are the lambs born when my husband is home on the weekends. So, I sat down with a calendar and figured out the percentage of weekday lambings and weekend lambings (I didn’t have anything better to do anyways). It turns out that over 6 years – 75% of the lambs are born during the week with only 25% born on the weekend – very weird. Last year it was – 90% during the week!!! I accused him of putting something in their water over the weekend. The even stranger thing is that I was talking to my mom and only one of us kids was born over the weekend – I am the oldest of six! Is this common? Are most babies born during the week? What is different? Why does this happen? Oh well, there is your little piece of statistical, doesn’t mean anything, bit of information for the day 🙂
Lambing
aka Saddlebag Girl 😉
For some reason she insists on having BIG lambs and up until last year she always had boys – 11 of them. She usually has twins and they tend to range from 9.5 to 10.5 pounds each. She still has a month to go and I’m already starting to feel sorry for her.
This year has felt a little like that song about the cat that always came back. We have had quite a few sheep find their way back here as well as a few that weren’t born here but needed a new home. The most recent flock was from a guy that bought a few lambs from us 4 years ago. He has had several bouts of cancer this year and has undergone radiation and chemotherapy. I am happy that we were able to take them, but now I need to figure out what to do with them 🙂
They are a lovely group that brought back some fond memories.
This is Petunia and has matured into a beautiful girl. The interesting thing is that she is Douglas’ sister!
Here she is as a cute little lamb.
This is Aurora
and she reminds me a lot of her mother, Violet.
This is Ellie Mae and I will always remember helping her into the world…
she weighed 16 lbs. at birth!!! We were sure her mom had triplets she was so big!
This is Dawson and he has turned into a handsome boy. So we will have lambs from 5 different rams because he has bred the 4 ewes that he came with. He is really laid back and I would love to find a home for him. They are all in need of being sheared 🙂
I have started a new page and will be updating it over the next week. It will include all of the ewes that we have bred, who they were bred to, and their due dates. We are going to be busy at the end of January!
Rams that is 🙂
I have given a lot of thought to this year’s breeding groups as well as where I was going to put everyone. I learned several years ago that having empty pastures in between the breeding groups is very important. We had a ram destroy several fences trying to breed EVERY ewe on the place. He left us early that year…
We have 4 breeding groups this year, which includes 30 ewes – 9 first timers 🙂
Our first group is:
Kenleigh’s Douglas with Maverick Marloe, Red Wing Frodo, Windy Acres Kate Lynn, Kenleigh’s Liberty, and Windy Acres Darling. As stated in a previous post they went together a little early 🙂 Douglas has behaved like a gentleman since!
The second group is:
Kenleigh’s Wrangler with Windy Acres Amber, Kenleigh’s Legacy, Zettle’s Hattie, Zettle’s Harley, Kenleigh’s Chevelle, Kenleigh’s Celeste, bide a wee Tess, Painted Rock Jeslyn, Meridian Shasta, and bide a wee Dolly Doll. I’m not sure how it happened, but this group includes all of the overly friendly (climb on top of me during feedng time) sheep. This pasture also had one of our llamas in it, but Wrangler saw him as a threat and was going to take him out, so we had to move him. We haven’t had this happen before.
Our third group is:
Magic Moon Junior with Craft’s Miah, Rolling Hills Elsie, Rolling Hills Veronica, Windy Acres Darby, Windy Acres Dusty, Brenalan Amelia, Meridian Bella, Kenleigh’s Aimee, and Sagebrush Sera. It’s hard to see in the picture, but Junior is feeling very dejected. He was originally in the pasture next to the barn. He made quick work of ramming through the gate to the next pasture which shares a fence line with Wrangler and his girls. One of Wrangler’s girls was in standing heat and Junior felt like it was his duty to breed her. We quickly moved him to the pasture with the electric fence before he was able to crash through the fence. He was very upset and is still pouting in the corner – poor guy!
And the final group is:
Kenleigh’s Pilot with Kenleigh’s Eclipse, Kenleigh’s Holly, Kenleigh’s Azera, Kenleigh’s Ellie, Rolling Hills Dee Dee, and Kenleigh’s Sahara. Pilot is the only one that behaved himself this year! He was easy to catch and halter and he walked to his pasture like a pro.
“Come here baby!”
Since everyone enjoyed the lamb racing video so much, I took some more video today. This time I used a better camera (the first one was on my cell phone while I was doing chores).
The following video is of my sister’s Nigerian Dwarf Goat babies that were born early this morning. They are so cute 🙂
Enjoy!
Lamb races are the highlight of lambing season. They are especially fun to watch when you have a bunch of lambs. The only rule is – there are NO RULES 🙂 There is usually a leader but we seem to have several leaders this year, which makes it even more fun to watch. Lamb races can be viewed at feeding time. Once the ewes are fed the lambs sneek out of the barn and race up and down the pasture. A couple of the first time mamas would frantically chase after them, screaming at their lambs, but they have succombed to the fact that the older lambs have corrupted their precious babies.
We haven’t seen the sun very much, in fact, it feels like months since I have felt it on my face! It felt like Spring today – it was so nice and rejuvenating. I’m sorry to those of you that still have snow on the ground.
Infiniti enjoyed sunning herself.
Rainier soaked it in.
Solstice was batting her lashes at the camera and flirting with the boys.
I know there will be more rain and cold weather, but I love these warm February Spring like days.
I am really lucky to have such a good little barn helper…
These are a couple Jacob x Blueface Leicester cross lambs. Their mom doesn’t have enough milk, so we are supplementing them. This has become Theron’s job and he is really good at it. If one of them doesn’t finish, he trys to hold onto them and put the bottle back in their mouth 🙂 He loves the fact that they will let him pet and cuddle them.
This is Peanut, he is my other barn helper, but not the helpful kind! He likes to follow me and chew on my pant legs as I am feeding. This morning I almost fell flat on my face due to him crawling between my legs as I was walking.
Here Theron is feeding our other supplemental, bottle lamb – yep, it’s Peanut. His mama only has half a bag due to an old shearing injury. I tried supplementing Peanut’s brother as well, but he wanted nothing to do with it and I was having to chase him down. Peanut was very happy to get the extra food, in fact he doesn’t even hang out with his mom and brother anymore. Unfortunately this has meant that I have to feed him more…
but he is so cute 🙂
I love lambs at a couple weeks old.
I find myself getting wrapped up in watching them and spending a LOT of time in the barn. Watching the moms and their different mothering styles is almost as engaging. There is the ultra protective mama that will take on anybody that looks at her lamb(s) wrong. There is the mother that feeds her lambs, but really doesn’t want to be bothered with anything more than that. Her lambs are VERY independent and tend to be the trouble makers 🙂 There is the very strict mother, I have seen her scold her lambs something fierce for not staying where she told them to while she was eating.
She is very methodical about putting her lambs in a certain spot when she eats and when she is done she calls to them to come get their dinner. There are the babysitters that have lamb duties during the days, these seem to be the same sheep. I wonder what the other ewes have to pay them to watch their kids? “I’ll give you my ration of alfalfa if you will take my kids tomorrow.” There are the screamers – no matter where their lambs are they stand and scream for them. Their lambs will answer, but they won’t go find them, they continue to stand there and scream. And my favorite is the ewe that always knows where her lamb(s) are, is very gentle with them and the other lambs, and doesn’t cause problems with the other ewes.
We are finally back to normal Oregon winter weather – mild and rainy – and the sheep are delighted to be grazing their pasture again!
The last couple of days have been pretty busy. On Wednesday we had 4 ewes lamb for a total of 6 lambs. On Thursday we had a first time mom deliver a huge ewe lamb. No one was due today and I was looking forward to catching up on chores in the barn and in the house and maybe, just maybe – take a nap while my son was at school – ha ha ha ha ha.
Symphony thought I was rather silly for even thinking that 🙂
My list of chores for outside included – cleaning pens, ear tagging, banding tails, vaccinating, worming ewes, bucket brigade water to the barn considering we have had a week of temperatures below freezing with the nights getting to the low teens, regular chores, etc. I was in the middle of the list and Holly thought I was getting too much accomplished, so she decided to go into labor.
She had a very cute ewe lamb with little interference.
I finished my list of items just in time to pick my son up from school. When we got home we checked on the sheep one more time before we had to head into town to run a couple of errands – everyone looked fine. We came back inside and I realized that I had forgotten something in the barn, I ran out real quick to grab it and out in the field I saw Freckles laying down weird. I ran out to see what she was doing and sure enough, she was lambing 🙂 She had a set of twins,
a boy
and a girl.
I moved them in the barn, dried them off really good and after they were both up and had eaten I left to go to town. We ran the couple of errands that we needed to and made it back just in time to do chores all over again…where in the world did the day go…and what happened to the wonderful idea of having a nap – maybe tomorrow?
Stories from the Farm 