Sheep Shave

I have one wooly sheep left in the flock, this is a crossbred Jacob x Katahdin ewe. Her mother was a purebred Jacob, a not-my-favorite-sheep kind of ewe. I butchered that crabby lady last year, had her made into delicious sausage. She was unthrifty and I could never find a cause; plus she had lost a teat to mastitis, and she was nasty with her horns, both to me and the other sheep. This daughter was a bottle lamb (due to the one teat situation); I left her brother on the ewe to grow into a butcher lamb. I thought I’d let this girl get tame and maybe more polite than her mother.

 

Orphan Rear #3

Gosh, where has the time gone? I guess I was utterly consumed with lambing, barn building stuff, lack of sleep, catching up after being sick, and I don’t know what else. My 2.5 week vacation went by in a flash, and going back to work, it felt like I’d never been gone. But maybe that’s because I checked my email every day and still did some work from home during that time. I hate going back to a mountain of work after taking time off.

Lambing had a lull in the middle, and then a big rush at the end of high maintenance issues, emergencies, and a flood warning. Phew. Phase II of the labor overhead began with the lone Jacob ewe, who was crossed to a Katahdin ram. She had twins midmorning, nothing extraordinary in the birthing. But I noticed the littler one was slow to nurse and a little weak. So I tipped the mother over to help the little lamb out and get one serving of food into her. Only to find that the ewe has a half functioning udder. :-{

 

Left Hook

Last Tuesday evening I noticed one of my ram lambs looked like he had a puffy lower lip. It was subtle, and the tired part of me thought, I’ll look at that tomorrow. But then, no, I’d better look at it right now. I called down Maggie to help me gather the group and nabbed him. It’s a good thing I didn’t wait.

 

Sixty Day Adjusted and Re-Adjusted Weights

HHS107 and triplets ranked 11, 12, 13th

As I mentioned, I just finished doing my sixty day weaning weights on all the lambs, and then performing the adjustment calculations. And not surprisingly, I was surprised by the results. 🙂

 

It Was a Dark and Stormy Night…

After moving the sheep to the far pasture Friday, I rushed to my nephew’s birthday dinner. I was late, gulped down some hors d’ oeuvres and ham, and then had to leave early, because then it was time to feed the sheep! It was still bitterly cold and rainy when I belatedly gave them their grain and got everything settled down for the night. And then I noticed the Jacob sheep was going into labor. <sigh> So I walked back up to the house, got my lambing bucket and lights, and committed to a chilly evening in the storm. What a night to pick to give birth. At least this was the last one…