The Ewes Are Huge!

The Ewes Are Huge!

One of the first harbingers of spring is the start of lambing season; a time of great joy and concern.  This will be our first experience with lambing and like everything else we have experienced during the first year with sheep, I expect a very positive outcome with a couple of valuable “lessons learned” mixed in.

When we finally took the plunge and purchased our first sheep, the big motivation was to have the sheep eat the pasture grass so we didn’t have to spend so much time on the tractor mowing.  We quickly learned about appropriate stocking rates and how many sheep we were going to need; as it turned out, a lot more than we had. (First valuable lesson learned) So we purchased three more ewes and a ram to fill out the herd.  After the loss of our ram to disease and the predation of a couple of ewes, (more valuable lessons learned) we ended up going into winter with three ewes and a new ram that was picked up at the end of October.  We also changed to hair sheep instead of wool sheep. The original plan was to process and sell or use the wool ourselves.  With no time to devote to it (yet another valuable lesson learned) we switched to Katahdins, a hearty breed of hair sheep with no wool to shear and are well suited to our climate.

Shelter divided into two sections as lamb jugs

The wonderful folks that provided us with the Katahdin sheep happened to read an article I had written this last fall.  I described the winter paddock and shelter that the sheep would be occupying and about the ewes probably being pregnant.  They wrote to advise me that we should construct “lamb jugs” to place the newborn lambs into right after they are born.  Simply described, they are an enclosure protected from cold rains, snow and low temperatures where mom and lamb(s) can bond for a few days, giving the lambs a better chance of survival.  Also, the ewes are more likely to care for and feed the lambs, meaning we won’t have to bottle feed them.  I decided to section the winter shelter I had constructed, into two separate lamb jugs, each 4’ wide and almost 8’ deep.  I also constructed an additional jug by attaching plywood to a 6’ x 10’ metal tubing dog kennel frame that I cut down from 6’ high to 4’ high.  I divided the kennel in half with a sheet of plywood, and added a roof, making a jug about 5’ x 6’.  I can easily make the other half of the kennel into an additional jug next year.  The front of the jugs will have wire gates which will be facing toward the house so we can observe and they will be out of the wind.  The jugs will serve double duty

Old dog kennel is now a jug

this summer as shade shelters.

The ewes are pregnant and getting bigger!

So the ewes continue to grow, and our checklist is almost complete.  I think we are ready, although I am sure there are a couple of those valuable lessons to be learned this first time.  That’s okay, we can be taught and we look forward to the experience.  We truly are living the dream…