Though winter is a wonderfully optimistic and rather dreamy time for the gardener, the compost suddenly hits the shovel on the cusp of spring. All the meticulously drawn bed plans and organized files of seed packets are worth nothing if you miss the planting deadlines for your particular crops. For us, the first of those deadlines has arrived. And we’re sort of terrified! continued »
Sheep are vegetarians – grazers. But once a year the ewes turn carnivorous. When a lamb is born, the mom smells the tiny baby still wrapped in its birth sac and immediately begins to eat the membrane away. She continues on to the umbilical cord, leaving it about 4 inches long. Within an hour after the babies are all born, the ewe then delivers the afterbirth- the red placenta and all its attached ropy blue and red cords and such. Of course she’s curious about what else she has delivered and she will sometimes go ahead and start nibbling away at the tissues. Sometimes a mom will gobble up the whole thing. Curious, yes, but perhaps a survival instinct from pre-domestication times when a bloody mess left on the ground might attract predators of various sorts to the lambs? Maybe it provides a nutritional boost for lactation. Here, this ewe has licked her babies clean, but now she’s preoccupied with eating that afterbirth. After a few minutes, I removed it to encourage her to focus her attention back on the babies since they were triplets (one behind her leg) that all needed attention to get up on their feet and suck. In the end, she did reject one of the lambs – now our bottle baby.
Well, we’re up to 10 lambs now, but it’s been a bit of a struggle to get there. Thursday morning we saw one of our older ewes birthing in the pasture. Rather than interrupt her cleaning and bonding, we just watched from a window (one of the many blessings of having the winter paddock right in the front of the house). She dropped another, and then a third. She started licking one, then moved to another, then came back to the first, then over to the third. Within minutes they all began struggling to their feet. And that’s when everything went haywire… continued »
We’re up to 7 lambs and counting for 2011. Meet all the new families – continued »
Ah, morning. And it’s a good one, thank God! Last night I crawled into bed well past midnight, with trepidation and with serious doubt as to whether I should take off my barn clothes before falling onto the blankets. My judgment on that was certainly clouded by exhaustion, but also by the nagging idea that I ought to set an alarm and be back outside in a few hours. I came in leaving two new lambs still damp with a 20-degree breeze blowing through the barn, one lamb not nursing and one ewe on the verge of delivery. In the afternoon I would have stayed present for any single one of those issues, but I just needed to sleep. I made the desperate and selfish decision not to set an alarm, and at 6:30 am woke and headed to the barn to find the weak lamb nursing, the wet ones dry and the ewe still licking off adorable spotted twins. An undeserved gift of rest and peace… continued »
After my experience tonight, I’ve decided sheep really get a bad rap when it comes to smarts. I watched Ruby labor for several hours and finally I helped her deliver a gigantic red ewe lamb. But in the process I not only got to participate in the crazy miracle that is birth, I also gained a new respect for and trust in my sheep. continued »
I learned something cool today. Well, I’m not actually sure of exactly what I learned, but I did observe something that I thought was interesting. continued »
We had another lamb waiting in the barn for us this morning – a tall white eweling born to Rizzo, one of my white Merinos. I named her Candy because she came into a world completely encased in ice and shiny like a candy apple. Last night’s rain froze on everything, turning our muddy farm into a glass sculpture. continued »
We had our first lambs of the season yesterday morning. Cricket, one of my white Merinos, dropped two gorgeous ewelings in the clean hay at the back of the little stone barn – right inside one of two jugs we use to seclude new families so we can keep an eye on the nursing and bonding. Good girl! All I had to do was bring a bucket of warm water with molasses and shut the gate. That was just the perfect spot. And the perfect day – sunny, above freezing and dry. Today is another matter, though, as we watch and wait anxiously for the rest of the lambs to be born into this sleet… continued »
A few weeks ago a neighbor lady showed up on my doorstep with a crazy story. Her son had asked his grandparents for an alpaca for Christmas and they had said yes. continued »
