Tag Archives: Ewe

Lambing is coming

The sheep are getting fat…

This month has been up and down weather-wise. We’ve had snow and beautiful frosty mornings. Such a pleasure to be able to walk the dogs and come home clean. Not quite so good for the livestock as there’s no grass to eat so we have had the sheep inside for a bit of respite and a trough of oats.

On the flip side when the thaw happens we once again return to soggy ground and what seems like oceans of mud.
We have been busy preparing the barn for the lambing ewes, cleaning out pens, putting down disinfectant so that it’s all ready for them, and they could be needed as soon as 30th Jan, which is our first possible lambing date, nevertheless, it’s unlikely that any one of them will pop on that day.
Most years we have them scanned as it is so much easier when we know they are definitely pregnant and also the estimated due date.  However, this year, time just got away from us, and we didn’t get it done so it will be a bit of a guessing game. We will have to watch them all much more closely. Most of the girls look pretty fat, especially Big Bertha (pictured) but then their fleeces always make them look much larger than they really are. Last year Bertha failed to get pregnant, but we’re hoping she is in lamb this time. She only ever has a single lamb, but it’s always a whopper and gets well and truly stuck!
The biggest giveaway is when they start to bag-up (their udders fill with milk), but even that is not a reliable indicator. Some bag-up the night before and then catch you out with a surprise lambing the next morning! One thing’s for sure; we don’t want them giving birth outside on the sodden ground as the lambs wouldn’t survive long. Vigilance is key.
Our favourite bit, apart from when it’s all over, and we can get some sleep, is when they are all tucked up in their pens on a thick bed of golden straw, bellies full, snoozing peacefully waiting for the moment when it all kicks off, and chaos ensues!

Lambing begins and ends

We experience a pain-free month of lambing, although the ewes may disagree…

Lambing began unexpectedly at the begining of the month with the first ewe giving birth without our intervention.  She had two healthy boys with no problems at all.  As we hired a Suffolk tup this time, instead of the usual pure white lambs, we had a mixture of black and speckledy faces.  It pretty much continued in the same vein, with most of the ewes coping by themselves, which is just as well, as we couldn’t get the CCTV cameras working.

As a result, we haven’t had a single sleepless night!

The last one was due on 28th but she lambed two days early, so we are all done for this year.  We’ve never had such a quick and efficient lambing season!

We didn’t get as many as we hoped for and we also got more boys than usual, but we will certainly keep some of the girls for future breeding.

Toby’s training is coming along very well, although he can be a little demon in the evenings when we are all ready to sit down and relax in front of the TV.  He has other ideas and stalks around the lounge like a thug!

He is so bright and clever, it’s a real pleasure to teach him.  He missed one training class due to illness but quickly caught up with the rest of the group.

For his last session, there will be a party and every pup is expected to perform a trick.  We decided to teach him the Bang Bang trick with a variation: we ‘shoot’ him (or rather, we say ‘bang’) and he goes round in a circle and then falls flat to the floor.  He’s just about got it and you can see him demonstrating it in the video below.  Whether he will be willing to do it on the night in front of an audience is anyones guess!

Geraldine

We say farewell to an old friend

Back in 2005 we went out to collect a second hand chest freezer and came home with 3 sheep and 2 pigs!

One of those sheep was Geraldine, a real character.  Having never owned sheep before, she taught us a lot and gave us our first ever lambs.  It wasn’t long before we were hooked on the woolly beasts and built up our own little flock.

She had been hand-reared so she was pretty tame and would go anywhere in pursuit of a bucket, so if we wanted to move them about, we would use her to lead the way.  The others, would always follow.

She got into so many scrapes, like the time we found her stuck in a drainage ditch.  She squashed out of a small gap in the fence, in search of greener pastures.  We hauled her out and soaking wet, she laid on the ground.  The only way we could move her was in the bucket of a tractor.  Unfortunately, on the way back to the shed, the tractor got stuck in mud, so we had to abandon it and wheel her in a barrow!

With careful nursing, she recovered.

Another time, we went out one morning and found her flat on her back with her legs in the air.  We thought she was dead, but no, not Geraldine.  Once again the wheel barrow came out and we tucked her up in a warm pen and nursed her back from the brink.  She had twin lamb disease.

Then there was the huge abcess that came up on her face.  She received plenty of tlc until she recovered.

At the end of last year, we decided not to breed from her again, so she didn’t go in with the tup.  We thought she had earned her retirement.

Sadly, a couple of weeks ago, despite more careful nursing, we lost her.  It was very upsetting as we had all been through so much together.

She has left behind many of her offspring, we have daughters, granddaughters and great granddaughters.  Some of them have her sassy attitude but none have as much character as her.  She was definitely a one-off.

We miss her dearly but she managed to instill in us an enduring love of sheep.

Goodbye Geraldine.

 

Lamb-a-lot

Sleepless nights are catching up with us

It’s that time of year again when we walk around like zombies for a month or so – lambing!  We began in early Feb and expect to keep going until mid March.

Each night, we take turns in checking the ewes every two hours.  These days it’s much easier than it used to be. Thanks to the CCTV cameras in the lambing shed we no longer have to trek down there in our PJ’s in the middle of the night, but it still takes its toll.

Every year we try to improve our procedures and this year we attended a talk by our local vets practice where we learnt how we can make some improvements.  There were also free stovies on offer after the lecture, and since we don’t get out much this was a strong inducement!

This year we only have a small flock of ewes as we sent all the troublesome ones to the mart in November.  We were hoping to have wiped out the cases of entropian (turned in eyelids) but have had two born already with this genetic condition.  They have to be injected with penicillin in the lid to puff it out and stop in rubbing on the eyeball.  A very unpleasant job.

We have had one set of triplets, first time in years, but sadly the mother is poorly so we have been nursing her and bottle feeding her lambs to take some of the pressure off.

Our biggest problem is knowing the exact date each ewe will lamb.  With the help of the scan man, we can make a good guess but sometimes this can be weeks out.  Next year it is our intention to fit the tup with a raddle ( a harness with a marking device) so that when he’s done the deed, it will leave a mark on the back of the ewe).  That way we will have a more accurate prospective lambing date.

Until that time, it’s constant watching and broken sleep!

Lamb land

We are taken by surprise

We were feeling rather smug about lambing this year, everything was ready, or so we thought.

The ewes had been scanned, so we knew who was pregnant and how many to expect, the CCTV was set up and working after the installation of a new cable, thanks to someone who shall remain nameless, chopping up the previous one with a strimmer!

The pens were mostly ready, although we did decide to split a larger pen at the last minute to give us more indivicual lambing space.

Armed with the dates, we sat back and waited, convinced that even though some of the girls had huge udders, they weren’t going anywhere.

However, one evening it ocurred to us that given the date the first tup went in with the girls, they could have given birth two weeks previously.  Realisation set in and a late night check on the girls in the paddock revealed nothing but eyes shining back in the torchlight.

We were convinced that nothing would happen that night and we would at least be safe until the morning.

How wrong could we be.  We slipped out at sunrise and on the way to the field, could hear quite clearly small lamb voices emanating from the tin hut.  One of the ewes had given birth to two pretty little girls.  We carried the lambs inside to a lovely warm straw filled pen and mum followed.  Luckily they were all fine but we stuck them under a heat lamp just to be on the safe side.

That’ll teach us to be complacent.

So far we’ve had 10 lambs, we are feeding two as their mothers are not producing enough milk and we lost one due to an abonormality.

After mother and baby have bonded for a few days, they are transferred to the nursery pen where they can all meet each other and have plenty of space to gambol around.

It’s been very tiring so far and we’re only half way through, there are still plenty of sleepless nights to look forward to!

 

 

Scanning

We gear up for lambing

It’s been a busy month.  With lambing imminent there were many preparations to make.  All the pens needed to be mucked out, the hay moved and new lights installed.  The weather was a worry, we bought all the ewes in for a week to get them out of the wind and rain.

Every year we muddle through and sadly lose a few lambs so this time we decided we wanted to take the guess work out of it.  We tracked down a lovely man who came along one evening and scanned all our possibly pregnant girls.  It was very exciting and we discovered who was in lamb, how many they were having and their estimated due dates.

It was all very useful but we went one step further and installed CCTV cameras in the lambing shed.  We are now all hi-tech and can monitor the ewes from the comfort the house!  We are thrilled that we will be able sit in the warm kitchen instead of trudging down to the shed through the mud or snow, in the middle of the night.

There is also an added advantage.  Some of the ewes seem to hide their birthing signs when we are watching them close up, so by using the cameras we should be able to see what is really going on without disturbing them!

At the moment all that we can see are a few chickens and cheeky mice but we are looking forward to the next month or so when all the ewes will be tucked up in the straw beds with us observing from afar.

Boy meets girls

Time to introduce new blood to our little flock

It’s that time of year again when the tup is once again reunited with the ewes in the hope that they will produce a lovely crop of lambs next spring.  This year it’s been more fun than usual – but not for us.

We have to introduce new blood into the flock so our old ram who has a gentle nature, unlike some we’ve had in the past, needs to move on and we have acquired two new boys.  They are only youngsters born earlier this year so as yet unproven.  One is a pure bred Lleyn and the other a Texel Suffolk cross.  Both will be a good match for our girls who are a mix of Lleyn, Suffolk and Cheviot so they are not small beasts.

This year we decided to stagger the lambing as there is not enough room in the shed for all of them at the same time, so we picked the first batch of girls and put the Lleyn tup in.  We had a harness and crayon on him so that we could tell when he’d done his job but since he is not yet fully grown, it was far too big.  We had to remove it as it was hampering his efforts. The next morning we discovered to our horror that the old ram had managed to break through the fence and was busy courting the ewes who were promised to the new boy.  We had quite a job persuading him to leave.

Four weeks later we put the second new tup, the Texel Suffolk cross, in with the remainder of the girls and once again went out the next morning, only to find that he preferred the ones betrothed to the Lleyn and was busy chatting them up.  It was a Monday morning and we had all of the weekend orders to pack but we found ourselves in the field chasing sheep and getting splattered with mud!

With all the wet weather we’ve had, the posts are loose and the fences are barely holding anything in.  We have had to move everything around so there is no danger of beasts escaping.  For the time being they are all where they should be but who knows how long that will last.  Now we have to wait 5 months to see the results of all our efforts and find out if the boys were up to the challenge.

It’s lambing time

After many a sleepless night, the lambs finally arrive

After a month of disturbed nights, checking the ewes to make sure they weren’t giving birth, we finally welcomed our first lambs on Friday afternoon.  Despite the fact that we were on high alert, the first lambing didn’t happen without a hitch.  Agnes, started early by expelling the water bag but by lunchtime nothing else had appeared.  She wasn’t distressed but we were.

Eventually the rubber gloves were deployed and we discovered that the lamb on it’s way out had too many legs.  It was quickly clear to us that two were trying to emerge together.  After some skilful manipulation and untangling of small bodies, one of the lambs was pushed back whilst the other was pulled out.  The first, thank goodness, was alive and well.  The second one came out backwards with more than a little assistance.  We weren’t sure if it was all over and since she had been so huge, we ventured back in and pulled a third out.

All were boys and all appear healthy and are feeding well.  We may have to supplement them with goat’s milk if Agnes can’t produce enough to sustain all three but we will keep a close eye on them and monitor their progress.

Well that’s one down, only another 5 to go until we can once again sleep peacefully at night.

New ewe(s)

We increase our breeding stock

Geraldine’s recovery is now complete, and she is as good as new.

We have also just added to our breeding ewes with a purchase of two more from a neighbour of ours (pictured – the ewes, not the neighbour!).

One is pure Suffolk as far as we know, and the other we’re not sure about. Both are a little older than ours, but should give us a few good years of service.

After a couple of weeks with the others, the ram will join the ewes in November. In the meantime, the girls all have access to the main field at night, just to give their current paddock a bit of respite.