I was born yesterday, mega sheep update

This black badgerface ram lamb being petted by a mysterious stranger is Zuko IV, out of Brunhilde.  She had him Sunday afternoon right before my eyes.  She is going to be our first ewe cull for conformation defects, her teats are located in very poor positions for nursing lambs, equivalent to under the arms.  Her little guy is cheerful and of hearty spirits, but totally unable to figure out suckling.  He has the strength, but not the instinct.  She was one of the unexpected lambings.

 

So was Ripley.  Hers was sadder.  She miscarried 8/4/16.  (GRAPHIC FETUS PICTURE BELOW)

 

 

So we are at 15 lambs delivered of 9 ewes and 13 live lambs, of which one is currently a bottle lamb.  9 live males, 4 live females and sex indeterminate of the miscarriage.  Still waiting on Toph and Katara to give us a sign they got pregnant.  Nothing yet.

We got enough fencing in place to keep the yearling rams from roaming.  And roam and roam they did, apparently in the wild it is normal for young unbred rams to find a little pasture away from the herd Rocky-style and train (via eating lots, the sheep version of lifting big and posting gains) to take down the Big Ram.  So that is what Clovis and Zuko II were doing when they kept busting out of the fencing.  But now they’re stuck in our roughly 4 acre pasture, until we can send them to freezer camp.

We met several neighbors, who were pretty cool about things and have really nice pastures, at that.

We are done with breeding for the next few years and will just focus on fiber.  We will probably just eat and/or sell all the rams.

 

 

 

Lambing tally 2016 by ewe mother

Shaft’s second breeding of the ewes has yielded the following lambs.  We’ve named them all.

Goldie: boy/boy both moorits (Wolverine and Cyclops)

Badgerface: boy/girl, spotted girl (Faux Cow), moorit boy (Strop Boy)

Grey: surviving girl is solid moorit and named Newt

Black N Tan: boy/girl, both dark moorits (Dark is the boy and Lovely is the girl)

Azula: boy, moorit (Pedicure)

Dottie: boy/girl, like Badgerface, a moorit boy and spotted girl (Camo is the boy and Saddleback is the girl)

Lisa: boy/boy, black badgerface (Zuko 3, very similar coloring),  and moorit (Gambit)

The fencing has been progressing and the sheep can get to almost everything within our property line.  They are pretty happy.

Also, I saw a fawn today on the other side of the fence up the mountain.

Dottie lambed a spotted girl and a fawn boy on Sunday afternoon

She was pregnant when we left for church and when we got back there were two little lambs at the top of the mountain.

Grey lambed today, it looks like twin girls.

 

So our final lambing tally is 8 rams and 5 ewes.  We will know for certain when we catch and wether half the rams, roughly.

Pictures later today or tomorrow.

 

Swimming in rams

Lisa graced us with twin rams right in the barn stall a few minutes before we were going to leave for church on Sunday.  One was very frail and weak looking, with original-Zuko‘s coloring. He is the only lamb with a name so far, Zuko 3. But he only needed a couple pumps of Nutridrench and he was off to the races by the time we came home from church.  His moorit brother was also on the smaller side, but both ram lambs are doing very well rambling after Lisa up in the maternity ward.  She was fretful and Badgerface was being kind of mean girl until she got on the move, but overall the ewes have been good to each other.

Lisa and Zuko 3, she was trying to avoid the other ewes and rams and get some privacy.

Zuko 3 and his brother. They are on the tiny side.

We currently are waiting on Dottie and Grey and we have seven ram lambs and two ewe lambs out of five ewes. Azula turned out to have a little fawn colored ram upon much closer inspection.

Lambs, lambs everywhere

The sandy place up the mountain where many of these pictures was taken we’re calling the maternity ward, since all the ewes are hiding out far away from us and the rams to give birth.

The rams are completely avoiding them and hanging out about as far away as they can get.

Azula had a little fawn colored lamb today

She is showing great mothering instincts, very protective and birthing in a safe, cool clearing.  She didn’t show signs of having a second lamb, but gotta make sure with those first time mothers.  Getting pictures off my phone is a challenge since I switched away from Windows Phone, but it looks like everything will be able to be posted tomorrow.

Five lambs from three ewes so far, four more mature ewes to go and 1-4 one winter ewes due in August or September.

 

Lambing has begun

Goldie gave us two chocolate moorits in the morning and Badgerface gave us one chocolate spotted and one brown/white spotted a few minutes ago.  So we’re at 4 lambs right now.

Goldie’s are probably boy/girl and I could not get close enough to sex Badgerface’s or get pictures of her night twins.  I’ll have some up tomorrow though.

 

 

Sokka dressed at about 40 pounds.

He weighed about 120 live, give or take a few pounds. So he was spot on. They’re putting weight on in the right places, even if it’s not as much as we’d like.

Now we’re just waiting for lambs next month, right around the time summer school gets fired up.

Sokka slaughter and ducklings outside

On Saturday we had to slaughter Sokka.  He’d recovered well from his flystrike, but it made his horn grow back wrong and during the last week or so before his slaughter, he had a ton of new growth…right into his jaw.  We caught it before it could kill him, but he was starting to experience discomfort.  He hung around 90, not unusual for Icelandics and ok for a ram who’d been through what he had.  His carcass was in great shape and he was in fighting trim.

The ducklings are outside in the old run, we lined it against weasels, we’ll see how that goes.  They are very happy and enjoying a diet of greens and bugs to add to their feed.  Looks like only one drake, so we may get a broody girl and some natural ducklings in a year or so.

We have to slaughter all the males Shaft produced.  They favor fleece more than we’d like and aren’t making weight like their sisters.  At least we’ll finally have that freezer of lamb/hoggett.

The duck adventure begins again

Now that we have two kids old enough to do the feeding and watering when they hit laying age, we’ve decided to do ducks again.  We are doing ducklings again for the pure cuteness factor and also because it turns out to be nearly impossible to get 20-30 dollar a bird laying ducks.  Cheaper isn’t cheaper if you can’t get it readily.

We didn’t get any cool colors, just went down to the feed store on Friday for a straight run of Khaki Campbells and Indian Runners, three of each.  Straight run means no sexing was done, so we’ll see how many drake feathers we get.  Last time we had 0 drakes on straight run, perhaps it will happen again.

In sheep news, Shaft is trying to get jiggy with all his daughters and may have succeeded with Ripley.  But she weighs enough to handle a birth, so if it happens, well, that’s sheep for you.  The other three lambs don’t weigh enough to conceive, and have speedy little legs.