Lambing update

Lamb count: 15
Sets of twins: 6
Singles: 4
Ram lambs: 11
Ewe lambs: 4
Ewes due to lamb while I am away this week: 9, plus 6 more due April 1 and 2 (YIKES!)

Six sets of twins in a row! Followed by a streak of four singles. We lost one of the twin lambs due to a difficult birth; he tried to come out with all four feet at one time, which is one of the worst presentations possible. Brian will have his hands full while I am off "playing" at Dairy Challenge this week. But on the bright side, there is so much grass that the mamas will be put out on pasture tonight, and that makes for a bit less work. The new Dorset ewes and the ram group went out on pasture Sunday, and the ewes over at New Hope went out to fresh grass yesterday. All but four of our 2011 market lambs should be sold this week, and the other four will be leaving next week.

Three inches of rain over the weekend. The barn is fantastic! The first year we had sheep we put tarps over the jugs to keep the new mamas and babies as dry as possible. Every couple of hours I would go out and tip the tarps up to push off the pools of water that had formed. Later we just gave up and everyone got soaked. What a wonderful thing to have a roof over all of our heads this year.

We got a new ram over the weekend. He's a Dorset and should be a great addition to our flock, but we are waiting on the results of his DNA test to find out for sure that he has scrapie resistance. We tried out a new DNA collection method using typifix ear tags. Very slick. They are not cheap, but will save a lot of labor as we can tag all the lambs at birth and store the tags until later this summer when we evaluate the ewe lambs to find possible replacement animals. Then we only test the ewes we are interested in, and there is no blood to collect, and no ridiculous shipping charges to send the blood to the lab. Enough talk, I know you're just here for the adorable lamb pics, so I won't make you wait any longer!

 312 with her twins

44 with her surviving twin. She was worn out by her very difficult delivery. She laid down a lot, but she managed to get the little lamb dried off and fed.

 Psst...can you keep a secret?

 

I was snapping photos of this little lamb yesterday afternoon and realized that he had a watery left eye. His eyelashes were flipped inside out and irritating his eye ball. This is a not-uncommon condition known as entropion. I manually everted the lashes, and will keep an eye on him to be sure that worked. He looked pretty good this morning. If my flipping of his lashes doesn't take, I will inject a very small amount of penicillin under the skin just below his eye. The fluid puffs out the skin just long enough to train the lashes correctly. Last time I had to do the injection I had the very skillful help of my sister. I am wishing I had her help again, but I'll get it done if need be.

The cherry tree is in full bloom, and the sheep laying in the shade under the green grass just seems so peaceful. Don't know if we'll have any cherries as we had a frost and 25 degrees last night; time will tell.