Post Lambing Round Up

Eleven lambs still survive. In fact, they're positively thriving. That's just a hair short of 140% lambing return. That kicks the arse out of last year's dismal 85%. Of course, there are plenty of diseases, predators, and impending bad weather to redress that balance. I learned about a new disease just this morning: entropion.

By chance I was reading Sheepish by Catherine Friend, the second book chronicling her life as a somewhat unwilling sheep farmer (her wife Melissa is the farmer, Catherine calls herself the 'backup farmer'). Melissa noticed a newborn lamb with a weepy eye and diagnosed entropion, a condition where the lower eyelid turns inwards and the lashes scrape against the surface of the eye causing pain and infection.

Last night, I noticed that Mary, one of my triplet ewes, had a squint. Could it be entropion? The book says it's not uncommon. On daylight, I picked her up out of the maternity pen and investigated. Yup. So I did what every good shepherdess does and googled it. 'Treatment for entropion' sends you to a helpful, if graphic, instructional video on YouTube. This morning, even before my first cup of coffee, I was watching a vet inject 1 ml of antibiotic into the lower eyelid of the lamb.

Into. The. Lower. Eyelid.

All I could think of was that scene in Bunuel's Un Chien Andalou. If you've seen it you know which one I mean. 

I bottled out and made an appointment with the vet, assuring myself that if he showed me the exact technique, and I didn't subsequently faint or throw up, I would attempt it myself next time. I mean, I did manage to ring Knit Romney's testicles all by myself. I feel OK about saving eyeball injections for next year.

Here's Mary, post-treatment, riding home from the vets. Like all good shepherdesses, I let my baby animals ride in the front of the truck. We rolled the windows down going through town and she bleated at all the early Christmas shoppers.

Knit Romney, the last foster lamb, is managing to keep up, size-wise, with his sister Baarack O'lamb, but only because I give him extra bottle feeds. I smile to think that Mitt's namesake is the only member of the flock who relies on handouts. I'm up at 5a.m. every morning whizzing up a sheep's milk frappuccino for Knit. 

And because, like all pregnancies, I'm already forgetting the emotional pain and sleepless nights of childbirth, I just sent two ewes to the ram this afternoon: L845 who didn't get pregnant last cycle, and Grumpy ewe who lost her lamb. With help from friends stronger than me, we wrestled them both into the back of the Land Rover and drove the truck, now swaying with 180kg of contained and angry ewe, to our neighbour's farm and dropped them in the field with their ram. 

It's not like I need spring lambs but both these ewes are well-covered (that's polite talk for 'fat') and they may be difficult to get in lamb again if I wait until next May. This is also Grumpy ewe's last chance. She slipped her lamb the first year, and lost her lamb to disease this year. She's only producing singles, and if she can't keep one of them alive then I will be packing her off to Ice Camp.

So, there may be sheep babies to accompany all the pheasant babies this April. That's twice a year lambing, like a proper shepherdess, or "flock mistress" as one local shepherd has christened me. I'm hoping to get good enough at this sheep farming thing to graduate to the revered status, coined by Catherine Friend, of "Pasture Goddess".

I wonder if that comes with a tiara?

Aaaannnd...Done!

Autumn lambing is officially over. L817 gave birth unassisted to triplets this morning while I was having my first cup of coffee -

Two more ewe lambs, and a ram lamb that we've named Knit Romney. Knit has been fostered onto Eudora who had a single yesterday. The local shepherd came over and showed me a technique to fool Eudora into thinking she gave birth again. Fostering this way can be a bit of a crapshoot but it beats putting her in stocks, which I don't think I could be hard-hearted enough to do. 

So to recap: this has not been the worst lambing year ever, and it went much better than last year. From 7 pregnant ewes we had 12 live births, lost one lamb but no ewes, and finished with 8 ewe lambs and 3 ram lambs. All have mothers, none rely on bottle feeding, and we've even survived some trying weather conditions.

I've managed the night checks better than last year too. Of course last year's lambing went on for 56 days, this year all were delivered in 22 days. I'm going to write that ram a thank you note.

The best part about the end of lambing is that I can have a glass of wine in the evening. Lambing tests my sobriety. It's no good being a bit tipsy, just to wander out on a night check and find a ewe in distress. I can't be drunk in charge of a uterus, they depend on me. Tonight, when all are settled into their pens, I am going to toast all our health and give thanks for unbroken sleep.

This weekend, I will move the biggest twins and their mothers to Milkweed and good grass. Lambs will get ear tags and ewes will get foot treatments now that I can flip them over on their backs again. And readers will get a break from sheep news. New posts will be about game, shooting and stalking. After I catch up on my sleep of course. 

Results!

Our six, week-old lambs spent their first night outside of the maternity unit, no electric fences just their mothers to look after them. Well, mothers and a nervous shepherdess who checked on them every couple of hours under the guise of staying awake simply to watch the election results.

The lambs did great, and by 4a.m. I got the news that Obama won. Phew.

At 9a.m., Eudora produced a single ewe lamb-

It was an easy birth, though I found Ewe L817 helping Eudora clean the little lamb. I penned the baby with her mother, but L817 is still calling to the lamb, and circling the pen -

She's waiting on her triplets, which will give her more than enough lambs to satisfy her maternal instinct.

In honour of our incumbent returning to the White House, I have named the new lamb... Baa Rack O'Lamb.

We're still lambing in this weather

It's not ideal. 

I started taking hay to horses and sheep at 7am, and warmed the dogs' kibble with hot broth. Yesterday was a shoot day and most of the dogs came out to work, so they're getting a snow day today.

The lamb with pneumonia appears to be on the mend, breathing normally and bouncing about with the rest of the flock. That was a success story: I caught it early, knew how to treat it, and the lamb was strong enough to fight the infection.

We're still left with two ewes to lamb: Eudora, who's expecting a single any minute, and a ewe expecting triplets. 

Lambs in the snow just doesn't look right somehow.

Samhain

It's no Hurricane Sandy, but we've got howling winds and driving sleet now. One turkey is sick with a mystery virus, my oldest ewe lamb has come down with pneumonia, and my pumpkin harvest this year is a total of four measly fruits -

So my Halloween display looks a bit frugal. I've lit a few lanterns but my decorating efforts were hampered by the weather and my time was redirected to livestock: putting little plastic parkas on lambs, moving the sick one with her mother to a dry stable on Milkweed, rebuilding the shelter pens for the rest of the ewes and lambs, haying and watering everyone. Samhain seems a better description than Halloween today, what with all this pagan weather and primitive shelter-building.

All the wood stoves are lit, and clothes are drying. There are enough natural cobwebs and spiders around this place to pass for festive, if we get any trick-or-treaters tonight.

My treat is a big cognac, which I'm having now to dull my constant worrying about the young stock. It's a shoot day tomorrow, and this is perfect weather from the keeper's point of view: birds hunker down out of the wind and stay in the drives, so we know where to find them. It seems mean to push them out and make them fly in this wretched weather, but the wind makes them a very sporting target - 30 miles per hour plus whatever excitement the winds add to their speed and change of direction. Getting shot at is a lot better than getting shot, from the pheasants' perspective anyway.

Wishing you all a happy Halloween and safe passage from hurricanes, poor harvests, and ailing animals.

Grumpy in Stocks

Some readers have asked to see Grumpy the ewe in her stocks -

Although she seems to feel that it's a punishment and humiliation I'm inflicting on her, it has made milking her a one-person job. And that person - me - doesn't get kicked in the head now.

She can move her head up and down, and eats hay while I fill the milk jug. The whole process, including catching her and wrestling her into the stocks, takes about ten minutes. The end is the best bit: she's freed and I get to top-up feed two little lambs whose mother isn't as milky as the rest. I never get tired of bottle-feeding lambs.

We had cold rain yesterday, followed by freezing temperatures, so we quickly adapted the maternity unit making windbreaks out of pallets and roofs out of tarps, and putting down straw beds for extra insulation -

It's not picturesque, but my lambs are warm and still alive. Even Grumpy appreciated the extra bedding and kale treats -

Or maybe not.

Ticking right along

Ewe 2836 lambed at 6 am this morning. The whole village knows this because she started calling for her lamb even before it was born. It's the hormones: the contractions start, the ewe lays down and pushes, then gets up to check where she laid to see if baby arrived with that last push. She calls and listens for a response (I guess in case it's disguised in long grass). Sometimes their hormone-addled brains get the order mixed up. It's not uncommon for a ewe to try and steal another's baby during her own labour.

2836 had a ewe lamb. It got a bit stuck when its head tried to come out before its front feet (it should look like someone diving into a pool). This birth was a double bonus as it gave me a chance to foster one of the triplet boys onto a mother with a spare teat. It's a simple technique: rub foster lamb in the afterbirth so it smells like its sibling (don't let ewe see this), then stand back, let ewe stand up and check out the delivery. So far the ewe has been happy to accept both her lamb and the interloper.

But nothing goes that smoothly. Just after the successful fostering, I checked the teats to clear any blockages. No milk. Nothing. I hoped milk production was just running a bit behind schedule. I had to give the new lamb replacement colostrum, then it was Grumpy's turn to provide. I put her in the stocks. She wrenched them out of the ground, finding strength in adrenaline and pure spite. So I banged them in deeper. Eventually I milked enough to sate both lambs now on Ewe 2836, and a few hours later her own milk started to flow.

While all this was going on, Eunice popped out two ewe lambs by herself, and she's a first timer -

Minutes old and still pretty gooey

So our fox-deterrent maternity unit is taking shape -

Mums and babies are recuperating -

Biiiig yawn

I've been cutting kale and turnips from Mike's pheasant cover crop, which the ewes love and helps them produce more milk. At the moment they're all safe and warm enough in these pens but the weather's turning colder this weekend. Cold and dry is do-able. Cold and wet is a disaster, a lamb-killer. We may have to move our maternity unit to the horse stables at Milkweed field, after our shoot day tomorrow. We'll see what the forecast says.

We're only one week into our lambing period, and already five out of seven ewes have lambed. Last year we lambed for 56 days. Our running total this year is five ewe lambs, two ram lambs. All I can say for sure is - so far - it's not been our worst lambing season. Yet.