Post by farmwench on Feb 28, 2015 15:04:12 GMT -5
Saturday, February 28, 2015:
First lambs are here a month early; the ram jumped the fence 3 times in September (I have GOT to put up decent fencing!). He got 5 of the 13 ewes I had planned to breed for late March lambing. I have 8 lambs; 7 rams and 1 ewe. I lost 1 out of the first set of twins (too d***** cold and shepherding insufficiency) and 1 ewe had a nice single, which seemed unusual until I saw the placenta. Half the placenta was that muddy, old blood color and looked peculiar, so I looked close and saw the little dead twin, about the size of a bird, that must have died at least 6 weeks ago.
We've had 2 snows (7 inches and about 6 inches), a polar vortex with temps as low as -5F one night, and some decidedly uncomfortable wind chills while these girls were lambing. This is central Virginia and I am NOT set up for lambing in this kind of weather!! (My facilities are primitive at best.) None of the first 3 surviving lambs got iodine on their umbilicals, because the iodine was frozen solid. I couldn't use the bulb syringe to clear mouths and noses because it was too stiff from the cold. Fortunately, swabbing with a cloth/towel does a pretty good job. I had to start carrying the bulb syringe and the lube around inside my clothes to keep them warm enough to use while I was on lamb watch.
All are doing pretty well now, but there have been some issues:
-One nice, big, vigorous ram lamb came out with completely lax hocks; they were bending all the way backwards and he couldn't get them under himself to get up at first. Mom rejected him, so she became the first to use my new orphan headgate from Premier. Baby's legs had improved a lot, so I let mom out of the headgate on Thursday to see what she'd do. She immediately went after that lamb, so she's back in the headgate and there she'll stay for a while longer. Baby's hocks both appeared normal this morning, so that seems to be one problem solved.
-One young ewe I did not suspect was bred early and that hadn't been getting supplemented like the others had twins which were on the small side and not as vigorous as they should have been. Struggled with 1 that got chilled and weak and wasn't nursing well; he's been slow to strengthen, but is much more vigorous now and seems to have turned the corner.
I'm SOOO glad I can get some sleep now! Now I'll only have 8 ewes to lamb out when their official lambing season starts in 3 weeks. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for really mild weather. I have to delete a bunch of stuff from my phone so I'll have enough memory to be able to post pics; hopefully next week.
First lambs are here a month early; the ram jumped the fence 3 times in September (I have GOT to put up decent fencing!). He got 5 of the 13 ewes I had planned to breed for late March lambing. I have 8 lambs; 7 rams and 1 ewe. I lost 1 out of the first set of twins (too d***** cold and shepherding insufficiency) and 1 ewe had a nice single, which seemed unusual until I saw the placenta. Half the placenta was that muddy, old blood color and looked peculiar, so I looked close and saw the little dead twin, about the size of a bird, that must have died at least 6 weeks ago.
We've had 2 snows (7 inches and about 6 inches), a polar vortex with temps as low as -5F one night, and some decidedly uncomfortable wind chills while these girls were lambing. This is central Virginia and I am NOT set up for lambing in this kind of weather!! (My facilities are primitive at best.) None of the first 3 surviving lambs got iodine on their umbilicals, because the iodine was frozen solid. I couldn't use the bulb syringe to clear mouths and noses because it was too stiff from the cold. Fortunately, swabbing with a cloth/towel does a pretty good job. I had to start carrying the bulb syringe and the lube around inside my clothes to keep them warm enough to use while I was on lamb watch.
All are doing pretty well now, but there have been some issues:
-One nice, big, vigorous ram lamb came out with completely lax hocks; they were bending all the way backwards and he couldn't get them under himself to get up at first. Mom rejected him, so she became the first to use my new orphan headgate from Premier. Baby's legs had improved a lot, so I let mom out of the headgate on Thursday to see what she'd do. She immediately went after that lamb, so she's back in the headgate and there she'll stay for a while longer. Baby's hocks both appeared normal this morning, so that seems to be one problem solved.
-One young ewe I did not suspect was bred early and that hadn't been getting supplemented like the others had twins which were on the small side and not as vigorous as they should have been. Struggled with 1 that got chilled and weak and wasn't nursing well; he's been slow to strengthen, but is much more vigorous now and seems to have turned the corner.
I'm SOOO glad I can get some sleep now! Now I'll only have 8 ewes to lamb out when their official lambing season starts in 3 weeks. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for really mild weather. I have to delete a bunch of stuff from my phone so I'll have enough memory to be able to post pics; hopefully next week.