On the Way…
Karla’s started the babies. No lambs yet, but the first fluid sac has broken and she’s taken up residence in the small calving barn – at just the same corner she lambed in last year. I’ve popped inside the house to toss down another cup of coffee and quickly skim through the pertinent bits of my sheep manual and animal herbals. Some body part should appear about an hour after the sac, so I’ll know in about a half-hour whether she needs my help to sort things out in there.
There she is, back in her special corner, on the right.
This is a fabulous day to have babies outside – sunny, still and 30 degrees with an inch or so of clean snow on the ground from last night. Though it seems counter-intuitive, I like the lambs to come in snow. They arrive covered with tight curls and waxy fluids, so the moisture doesn’t bother them and the surface of the ground seems almost sterile. Worst is a muddy-warm early spring day. Most farmers arrange to have lambs in early spring; sometime around March or April here. The weather is generally not too harsh, the moms stay close to home for the hay in the barn, and all of the bloody messing around of tail-docking and castration is over before the flies are out to prey on wounds.
Our first lambs last spring were born in a foot or more of snow. Mamma Polly dropped them right in the middle of the pasture, as many ewes do, and just in time for us to be out seeing the kids off to school.
Polly had the first lambs of 2007, Pearl and Opal, on February 25. Here they are, greasy and strong in the snow. Both ewes, now grown and pregnant themselves, were sold and have since gone to live at a neighbor’s farm.
Karla’s lambs, of course, won’t be born in the snow since she’s chosen the barn both this year and last. Luckily, I freshened up the barn early this morning when I found her camping in the corner. Fresh hay in the feeder, fluffy straw on the floor and warm water with molasses in a bucket nearby. We’re ready.
