Lasties

Lambing finished up early May, except for the broken leg ewe, who was bred late January. She lambed this week, right on time, with a flashy set of twin ewelambs. I had planned on selling this ewe before she broke her leg in the Sydell system in November. She is a good mother, but has had two singles, and either early-aborted a lamb in 2016 or otherwise wound up dry that year. So that has dinged her Number of Lambs Born (NLB) score. But, now that she’s four and has twinned, odds are likely that she’ll keep twinning until she’s in her teens. She has good growth and milk scores.

After the leg incident, I decided to wait until after she lambed, to make sure she was well-fed and carefully handled during pregnancy and while healing that break. In the last few weeks, fat and heavy with lambs, she was favoring the leg some. But, now that she’s lambed, her lameness is nearly imperceptible. The leg (left front) still has an awkward lump and a crooked bend to it. But I think seven months after the break, it is probably pretty stable now and ready to walk on pasture again. I will list her and her twin lambs for sale as a set, discounted because of her leg. Hopefully they’ll make somebody a nice starter flock at a small farm where she won’t have to over-use that leg as she gets older.