This weekend was lamb weaning weekend. There are lots of philosophies about and methods for weaning, and pro’s and con’s to all methods. I tend to wean late- this time at 90 days. Some people wean earlier, which optimizes feed usage when there isn’t a surplus of grass. But then the ewes still have a lot of milk, and ideally you have to do special things with them to get them to dry up and avoid mastitis. Some people dry-lot the ewes for a week on low-quality hay, or even withhold water for a day. But for me that’s extra labor and hay, I’d rather have them stay out on pasture. This time of year, grass is in abundance, so I have no concerns over conserving feed in the fields.
At three months, I find the ewes already limiting how much the lambs can nurse, and are well on the way to drying up all on their own. So I can leave them out on grass with less risk of mastitis. And, this way the lambs get a little extra boost as well. Lambs always lose some weight from the stress of weaning. So if they are a little bigger, they are better situated to weather the storm.
90 days is kind of a magic date because after that, it’s possible for ram lambs to be fertile and viable. And occasionally a ewe can go back into heat midsummer, though most of them wait until after the days start to shorten. So this is a good time to separate boys and girls. I put all the lambs in the same pasture as the adult rams. This gives them some calm mentors to follow around. The three ewes which lambed late are also staying with this group. This is for my convenience, so I only have to creep-feed in one pasture, since they still have lambs at their sides. I feel fairly confident these ewes won’t breed-back so early after lambing, so they can hang with the rams for another month.
In early August, I’ll do 120 day weights, and then put the ewe lambs back with the girl group to ensure they don’t breed early (though it’s unlikely). By then, the mama ewes should all be dried off, so no more nursing can take place. In past years, I’ve left some lambs on the ewes until butcher time; this is a perfectly fine thing to do when the ewes are looking thrifty and can afford to keep making milk all summer. But I have a lot of lean ewes this year, so I want them to have this extra time to put some weight back on before fall.
While I was handling the lambs to sort them, I replaced their tiny lamb ear tags with my favorite, gigantic #5 tags. These are easy to read from a distance, which is nice now that they will be loose in a big field. I’ll keep watching them grow, and I don’t yet “know” all of them, so being able to see their numbers is helpful. Sometimes I get feedback from what I would term “sheep fancier” buyers who do not prefer the large tags for aesthetic reasons. But for me, I’m not going for beauty, but functionality, and the big tags are just so much more practical. For those discriminating buyers, I can always put in some spare smaller tags, or they can do the same when they get home; it’s easy to switch them since there are nicely-healed holes in the sheep’s ears.
This weekend was filled with the noise of complaining lambs, and some casual answering from their mothers. I left their mothers next door, so it’s not so terribly distressing for the lambs. And the mothers are usually pretty happy to give their lambs the boot; nursing lambs at this age are violent, being nearly as big as their mothers! The lambs are still pretty mad about not being able to nurse, even though they have fence contact with their mamas. After a few days, they’ll accept this new reality and get back to eating and growing.
When the hubbub has died down, I’ll move the ewes up to our hillside to do some “mowing” work for us, which saves a lot of labor over weed-whacking the steep slopes.
July 16, 2012 at 12:21 am
http://www.easywean.com.au/for-lambs
I purchased these this year and LOVED them! The cost was $1.00 US per ring and shipping was $9.00.The order is air shipped from Africa, came in about a week and a half. I liked the idea of not having to separate the lambs from the mommas, a whole lot less stress for everyone including me. Just make sure you screw the nut down tight so the ring doesn’t fall off, although the bright orange color made it fairly easy to find when one did come off.give it a little tug before you let the lamb go. The lambs didn’t know what to think of the foreign object in their nose but it only took a few minutes for them to forget about them and go about their business of grazing.
Love you blog, very informative.
July 16, 2012 at 12:55 am
Michelle, I think those are a great idea, especially if there is no other reason for keeping two separate flocks! I have enough adult and intact ram lambs that I have to keep two grazing groups by midsummer, so adding the lambs to this group isn’t much more work for me. But if I had smaller groups, I’d definitely give this a try.
July 16, 2012 at 1:56 am
CF, just don’t try sweet potatoes as a weaning medium. My grandson conjures up all kinds of facial contortions when the sweet potatoes alight on his taste buds. Just wondering, too, about the wool dimension of your operation. I can’t remember your posting about wool–or did I miss something? I’m sure you’ve seen the PEMCO ad about the goat grazing guy. Maybe your sheep could do some blackberry razing somewhere when they’re not doing their other sheep stuff…? TMJ
July 16, 2012 at 3:35 am
TMJ-no wool here, these are sheddin’ sheep! I have seen that Pemco guy on the sides of busses- hmm, I wonder how much that pays to sit in a lawn chair and guard your ruminants while they clear land? If it’s as good as software engineering, I’m there.
July 16, 2012 at 5:03 pm
Michelle –
I can’t imagine weaning before three months — why would you and waste that good momma milk?
I wean at four months and it seems fine. As you suggest, the moms at this point are really restricting access – they’ve had enough of those pesky kids.
We did it Saturday and, believe me, Saturday night was NOISY.
Peter Findlay
July 17, 2012 at 3:11 am
CF, those sheep are not very long legged, are they? How about that llama? My boxwood hedge is sorely in need of shearing. By the way, what’s a “sheddin’ sheep?” Seems strange you don’t maximize the product. Take bees, for instance: honey, pollen, propolis, beeswax, pollination, bee sting immunotherapy (bee venom)–and, for the adventurous, chocolate covered bee larvae! Wool? Didn’t they used to make afghans out of the stuff? TMJ
July 17, 2012 at 4:13 am
Peter, I think there is good justification for early weaning in some operations. Supposedly by the time lambs are 3+ weeks old, they convert feed better on their own versus it coming to them first through dams’ milk. So energy is lost running feed through their mothers after that. This would be important for feedlot operations, that they can save on feed by drying up the ewes and putting them on modest ration until breeding, and only giving the lambs the high energy fuel.
But for those of us who have scads of grass by the time the lambs hit 2+ months old, saving on feed is not really a concern. Then I think the concerns of mastitis outweigh anything else.
There is a lot of discussion in the NSIP group about selecting too heavy for the “maternal milk” characteristic (MWWT), because high metrics there makes weaning at 2 months nearly impossible for feedlot operations- the ewes just can’t dry up that soon without disastrous mastitis. But it just goes to show how NSIP metrics are nice, it’s like a control knob- you can select #s for whatever fits your operation.
July 17, 2012 at 4:13 am
TMJ, no, most of my sheep are pretty short-legged, though I do have some tall ones too. Not pony-sized like the Suffolks at the fair though!
Katahdins are “hair sheep”- they do grow wool, but it sheds naturally every spring, taking after the original genes of wild sheep. There is no longer a market for wool in our country, it costs more money to shear it than you can get for it. There are some exceptions, like for small finewool operations, but for the general market, it’s not worth it. So sheep producers are switching over to hair sheep breeds in droves- I think Katahdins now have the 2nd largest # of registrations annually of all breeds in the U.S. You can “breed the wool off” in about 3 generations.
There are a few other markets- for lamb skins (de-haired) and placenta,
but I don’t really produce enough to try to tap those, as there is no local market.