Lambing Lull

Over the past month, fifty-five of our ewes have lambed. There are a few more to go in this first batch, and then there are another fifty-five due at the end of April. Each ewe gets a number painted on her side when she gives birth. We paint the same number on her lambs, so if a lamb has a problem or escapes from its pen, it is easy to identify and reunite with its mother. The sheep and lambs are numbered in order, so the lamb below was from the 34th ewe to lamb this spring.

During their short stay in the barn, the sheep are bedded with straw, which absorbs moisture and keeps them clean and cozy. In addition to feeding hay, we provide a free-choice mineral mixture formulated especially for sheep. Here Edith is filling up the mineral feeder, very very slowly.

We have a smaller group of about twenty ewe lambs that were born last spring and are due to lamb in April. This group spent the winter in our greenhouse building. Its doesn't provide as much shelter as the lambing barn, but it keeps them dry and makes it easier to feed beet pellets in addition to their baleage. These year-old ewes are still growing themselves, as well as growing a lamb or two, so they need lots of high-quality feed.

Last fall we we bought a Black-headed Dorper ram, Bo, and moved him to our farm. We weren't planning to use Bo for breeding just yet, but he escaped his pen and got in with the ewe lambs for a single night back in October. Five months later, our first black-headed lamb, Belle, arrived on the farm.

Thanks for reading,

Leith, Mary Kate, Norah & Edith MacKenzie