The barn is done and lambing season has begun!

Since my last post we have spent many hours feverishly working to finish the barn in time for lambing. When the idea of building the barn this spring was first suggested to me I was highly doubtful that we would actually be able to use it for lambing this year. I am 100% okay with being wrong about that! Thanks to amazing weather and some hardworking friends, the barn is done enough to start using it. There are still some things left to finish, but we moved the ewes closest to lambing into the barn last night. Technically speaking we did not finish before lambing started - the first lambs were born Thursday the 15th - but we will get plenty of use out of the barn this spring. Yay!!

The doors and side metal were installed March 7 and everything was ready at that point to finish the roof. We also finished shearing that day.

Last Saturday the long-awaited roof was completed. It went very smoothly and was a good end to that phase of the project. Many thanks to Kenneth and John for all of their work!

Sunday we picked up another batch of replacement ewe lambs. These ewes have a high percentage of Dorset genetics and are out of a Tamarack prolific ram. They will be exposed to rams this spring and we are hoping for some fall lambs out of them. This brings our total fall lambing experiment to 34. Go ahead, you can call us crazy --- we have to be for planning to lamb 34 first time mamas in the fall. We'll just see how it goes.

Thursday we had gravel delivered and spent several hours smoothing out the floor of the building. (You can see the gravel in the pictures from the weekend.) Thursday evening we had one ewe who was apparently in a rush decide that she wasn't going to wait for the new barn. I had already crawled into bed and was halfway asleep when Brian came in to let me know that there was a ewe in labor. We went out to the barn (I just re-read this and realized I'm going to have to be more clear. What we used to call the barn is just a shed with some lambing jugs set up behind it outside and an electronet pen behind that. Functional, but not really a barn. Anyway, that's where this ewe lambed.) and waited while she delivered a healthy set of twin ram lambs.

Here is mama 68 with her twins - the first lambs of 2012.

  

 Saturday we started setting up the inside of the barn and the working areas. We plan to have a pretty flexible layout with a working area in one corner of the barn. The photo above is our new lambing jug area.This will be set up during lambing and stored away when not in use. The panels are from Premier and are very impressive.

 On the other side of the barn in it's current configuration is a large drop pen where the ewes will have their lambs. Later this year (when the grass dries up this summer) we will add dividers to form two or three smaller pens for feeding lambs.

 A closer picture of the lambing jugs. Here you can see the hay feeder that rests on the pen divider and will serve a ewe on each side. This is such an improvement over our old system of feeding hay in hay bags (designed for feeding horses). The bags were very portable and stored small, but they were too big for sheep and the ewes tended to either chew the strings or get tangled up in them. Plus they were kind of difficult to fill with hay.

At this end of the barn you can see the mixing pen on the left where ewes and their lambs will spend time with a few other ewes and their lambs before we let them out into the large group of all ewes. This gives them plenty of time to bond and find one another in a group setting. Plus it gives us a chance to observe them closely for about a week before they are out on pasture.

In the center of the picture is our working chute. I'll wait to go through that until we have it completely finished. We are missing one key piece (and boy did we notice how key it is when we sorted the ewes last night). And on the right is the end of the drop pen.

Sunday we finished up all of the outside working area, made a run to pick up straw over at the other farm, and bedded the barn. Then we set electronet alleys to run the ewes from their pasture to the barn. Sorting was a bit challenging, but we managed to divide the flock into 18 ewes due in the next two weeks and 26 due after that. The ewes closest to lambing were placed in the drop pen and the others went back to the field.

And we were just in time! It rained all night and Brian found another set of twins on his way out at 4:30 this morning. Probably the excitement of the big move yesterday had some influence, but another nice set of twins and everyone (including me) gets to stay dry.

 The close up ewes in the drop pen this morning.

 This little cutie is a ram lamb who can't deny he's out of Dalton.

And here's his sister and their mama, ewe 64.

The last step last night, completed well after dark thanks to our headlamps, was to move ewe 68 and her lambs from the old lambing jugs here at the house down the hill to the mixing pen in the new barn. Brian held her in the back of the truck while I held both lambs on my lap and drove. It went really well, and I thought it had gone without a hitch until about an hour later. While watering I noticed I had some clay like yellow stuff on my butt. I thought, hmm, where could I have sat in crayon? Well duh. It was lamb poop. A lot of it. All over the seat of my truck. Oh well...it happens. Add detailing the truck to my to do list.

It is raining and sounds like a thunderstorm is brewing. I guess the photo update on the daffodils will have to wait. Meantime, I'm going down to the barn to check on the girls and listen to the rain on the tin roof. Bliss!