Circle M Farm

This morning we welcomed our first lamb of the winter – a darling grey girl with black legs we’ve named Shiver.

Though it’s 40 degrees and really a quite good day to be born, our little lady is tall and skinny and a bit shivery. That’s perfectly normal for new lambs, as they get acclimated to life on the outside. She and her mother are currently locked together in a small pen in our cozy old Calving Barn. Karla is my lead sheep and a great mother, having produced seven lambs for me on this place and multiple litters at her home farm. I suspect there is at least another working its way out right now.

In the meantime, I see Shiver trying to nurse and standing content without bleating. Those are good signs to me that the suckling relationship is established and that she isn’t growing weak from lack of milk. We’ll be checking on the family every few hours, though, and will hang a tarp along the pen to keep back some of the blustery gusts.

Though I generally breed my animals to deliver in May, this year I thought I’d do a few in the early winter, as the weather is pretty much the same as early spring and it would cut down on the busy-ness come planting time. So I’ve got two other ewes due in addition to Karla. I hope they’ll all drop babies in the next few days, since they are predicted to be unusually warm.