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.
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.
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.
This brings us to seven lambs from four ewes. Pictures to follow.
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.
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.
We managed to get all the lambs vaccinated with their initial shots today. As is the case with many folks who do not farm full-time, we have been trying to change our electronet over to other types of fencing, but we aren’t done yet, so it’s still up. Our solution to the entanglement issue is boosting the charge with a plug-in charger instead of a solar one. And it’s only on one side instead of two, so that’s a sort of progress.
We also got the shearing for spring done, I may offer some of that in July, it looks much nicer than I thought it would. I hope to have some more pictures up Monday of the sheared sheep. In the meantime, here is a picture of some ferns.
Pretty cute ferns!
Black N Tan: Brunhilde and Clovis (ewe and ram respectively)
Grey: Ripley (ewe)
Badgerface: Sokka and Toph (ram and ewe respectively)
Goldie: Zuko II and Katara (ram and ewe)
Brunhilde is the black one and Clovis is the moorit mouflon.
The girl is dark blackish like Ripley (Grey’s girl) and the boy is paler, almost as light as Badgerface’s Toph. Black N Tan lambed about 2:30pm, as we were heading out for an errand. By the time we got back, both lambs were up and gamboling and she was passing the placenta. It was easy, quick and that’s exactly what we want to see.
The girl is black and the boy is light brown. Black N Tan is a very devoted mother.
Our final tally for this lambing season stands at 7 live lambs, 8 births and 4/3 split on girls/boys. It would have been 50/50 without the stillbirth. Now we just sit back and watch them grow.
They are very leggy and fawn-colored and look more like small deer than lambs. But Badgerface’s twins Scottie and Dottie were very leggy last year, so that seems to be her thing.
Sokka is the paler one on the right and Toph is the darker one right up against Badgerface.
Toph nursing, Sokka jumping in to get his share of the milks.
Food, Farming and Faith in Snohomish County 