Little lambs

Shaping up to be a busy time of year. My sis and bro-in-law roughly estimate 100-130 ewes ready to lamb in the next few weeks... They're behind on getting ready so we've all been pitching in to help catch them up.



Mike

years back I helped a buddy who had about that many ewes. I did the night shift "baby sitting' during lambing. interesting part was castrating time,,,,,he used his teeth. ive heard that was common many years back.

Finster hates lambs, just hates them! Every time he walks past a lamb pen they run up to the fence hollering "Daaaaady, Daaaaady". Go figure.

Mike thats a lot of fresh lamb for St Patrick's day.

That might of just been what he told you so it would not seem so weird.

My dad just finished lambing. Won’t be long and he will dragging my sister and brother all over going to “show and sales”. They are way into it. He burnt me out on it in high school and I have zero interest in anything farm now. My sister won the Missouri State fair a few years ago. That dumb lamb sold for $21,500 at the sale of champions. Crazy. I tease him that he got remarried and had more kids just to have a reason to continue his hobby.

nope,,it was a common method years back. we banded a few one winter, and that was a lot harder on them than the "old fashioned" way. in a few hours they were up and hopping around and playing. the banded ones were walking stiff legged and in obvious pain for days. but yeah,,,he WAS weird.

Never heard of using the chompers. We used “rubber bands” on their tails and jewels. Let that sink in...a super small industrial strength rubber band around your boys.

we also docked the tails, and used the castrating bands to seal up a tail that wouldn't quit bleeding. worked great.

You must be doing Club lambs ..

We had Oxfords here ,for 13 years....small flock..most we ever lambed out was 20 ewes....My son had some very nice show sheep too....here's one of his rams ...325 lbs

These are hair sheep. Most are bound for sale...

My brother-in-law ran cattle for years and decided to try something else. He sat down and crunched the numbers several times and came to the conclusion that he could turn a better profit with these sheep.

We'll see.

Mike

It's funny, I'm not real soft hearted when it comes to animals...

But there isn't much that tugs at your heart strings like a newborn lamb.

Mike

No kidding....especially when one doesn't make it....very sad

And around here they alway lamb on the coldest day of the year in Jan and Feb.....

Much smaller scale at my Son's farm. I go over daily to feed my 4 beef animals and their 6 ewes have 9 live ones with one more to lamb soon we hope. Noisy place when you open the door. The oldest were born in the middle of February.

Bryce

Some of our biggest wettest snows have come in March. Nothing like a New England Nor'Eastah but bad news if it comes during lambing...

But the weather reports call for nice Spring weather for the foreseeable future so that's one less worry.

Plenty of coyotes around though.

Mike

Fixed it for ya! Was nothing worse than the 2-3am checks and have one struggling when it was brutal cold. It seemed like you would just get warmed up enough to get back to sleep ans it was time to chore before school.

They have a guard donkey...or..llama...Great Pyrenees ??

They have a dog, Chief. He is part Pyrenees and something else. My parents live on the premises too and Chief is dad's constant companion...

He's a pretty good dog. They had a goat drop a kid in the middle of a cold night... little feller didn't make it. As soon as dad stepped out the door the next morning Chief came and got dad and took him to the paddock to show him the kid. Chief has the instincts, but it's just him with a couple hundred head.

Brother-in-law is looking into a llama too.

Mike

Yup night ! Lol....we even had a baby monitor in the barn and in our bedroom,during lambing....just so they didn't freeze to death....we could get out to the shed and get the colostrum in them and under the heating station..

They always come on the coldest night... It's like the law or something.

Mom always laughs when she tells the story about waking up one morning and finding a dozen or so piglets in the bathtub...

The sow had her litter on the coldest night of the year... So grandpa sacked them up in burlap bags and brought them in the house.

Mike

One trick we learned with a cold lamb.....fill up the tub with very warm water ( in the house bathroom) and put the lamb in a plastic garbage bag...with the head sticking out of course.....and lay the lamb in the tub ..to get its core temp up....works slick and keeps lamb dry.

My great uncle used his teeth. Said it was the cleanest way to do it. No infection for the lamb.

Good info. Thanks.

Mike

Just came back fron NZ. They are shearing their fall lambs before market, and breedimg the ewes. Got the ewes and rams in the best pastures. Never seen so many sheep in my life.

That's how they did it here, long ago . I mentioned that here a while back...no body seemed to know what I was talking about. That was considered the sanitary way , back in the day .

Well they sure as heck ...didn't do it that way in Maine.....You'd be hard pressed to find someone with that many teeth.....

I raised a few sheep several years ago. One fault I found was a perfectly healthy ewe could be walking in a pasture one day & think to herself "I wonder what it is like to die?" She will die & there ain't a darn thing you could do about it.

Haha!

Then what? Just swallow??? LOL

We have some where around 30 ewes. Turned the ram in on the first of November, so we figure lambing should start soon after the first of April.

We use bands to dock and castrate. Aim for day five. Never had any problems, all the lambs have been up and around in just a few minutes.

We don't bother castrating. They bring the same at the sale barn. This is hair sheep I'm talking about.

My son banded all his sheep.....it worked out great,to get a nice tail dock

big bob,,swallow if you feel the need. we didn't swallow any of them til they came out of the deep fryer later.

we docked the tails with a docking shears. first set of jaws crushes the bone, second jaw snips the tail off behind the crushed area. occasionally the second jaw would slip between 2 crushed vertebrae, then youd have a bleeder. we'd slip a band over the stub and the bleeding would stop immediately. worked great.

No new lambs today... So far.

Mike

My dad raised sheep and was around them all my life. My dad always had a bottle of whiskey around with a nipple on the bottle when lambing started. The sick one's came inside and got them all warmed u[ and he gave them a shot of whiskey. I'm not sure if he had some other thing mixed in with it or not. He said it was the best medicine you could give them. LOL

Lambing was a great time of the year and nothing more fun to be around are the lambs. LOL

New one from yesterday...



Mike

What breed is that one ?

Not sure Nessy, they're hair sheep. I'll ask my sister... I'm headed back over tomorrow to help build fence.

They're usually pretty skittish, but I managed to hold that lamb for a minute... The ewe wasn't happy. I got the stink eye and foot stomp.

Mike

Mike, when I was a kid we had 600 head of ewes. Some days when we were lambing we would have 30-40 a day. Spent lots of nights in the lambing barn.

Sac, I helped my sis get the majority of her sheep off a trailer a few days back. The seller said all the ewes had been exposed but couldn't give definite numbers... His rough estimate for lambing was March 20... A few have already hatched.

I have a feeling the next week or two will be busy.

Somewhere between 150-200 head right now... If things work out the way they hope they plan on expanding the operation even more.

Mike

I remember when in the west 10s of thousands of sheep ranged the National Forest. Yep, my brotherinlaw used his teeth. They slept in the lambing sheds and handled thousands, apparently sheep don't give birth unassisted.
Wool used to be an American product. Mo. used to subsidize wool here. With the subsidy and the wool crop a ewe would always make a high margin.

In the 70’s when we had sheep, I think Dad always said the wool would pay for the ewes keep for the year and the lamb was profit. Maybe it was the other way around, I don’t remember for sure.

We generally had to pull a few lambs at birth. We lambic a lot of yearlings and they wouldn’t come to their milk without oxytocin. So we always had small pens for ewes with their lambs until everything was fine then we would ick them out in a bigger trap/small pasture. Always kept mommas and babies separate from pregnant ewes.

Lost that little one this morning... But another one was born this afternoon.

Mike

We use to milk out the colostrum into a syringe and feed it to the lamb...and then 2-3 sqirts of "Lamb Saver "...Got it from Pipestone Vet..on line.....got them going !

We gave the mother a couple squirts of lamb saver too.....and the mother got a 5 gal pail of warm water with molasses mixed in it.

I asked my sister a few days ago and forgot...

Katahdin ewes, Dorper ram.

Mike

Nessy you're over your limit on PM's.

Mike