# Well Finally, Lambing Season 2017 Started



## RuttedField (Apr 24, 2016)

It is about 2 months late due to our warm fall, but finally lambing season started and in earnest. Not a great start number wise, 3 mothers dropping one set of twins and two singles. The singles are stocky, twice the size of the twins, but they are singles! All are perky and doing well, so zero mortality rate so far, but I doubt that will last! If you got livestock, you are going to get deadstock, especially with lambs, but despite all the work, the 2 hour checks, the middle of the night lambings, I still love lambing season.


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## RockyHill (Apr 24, 2013)

RuttedField said:


> It is about 2 months late due to our warm fall, but finally lambing season started and in earnest. Not a great start number wise, 3 mothers dropping one set of twins and two singles. The singles are stocky, twice the size of the twins, but they are singles! All are perky and doing well, so zero mortality rate so far, but I doubt that will last! If you got livestock, you are going to get deadstock, especially with lambs, but despite all the work, the 2 hour checks, the middle of the night lambings, I still love lambing season.


When we were leaving church tonight Jeff & I were talking about being glad we didn't have any sheep to deal with lambing. The sheep were the first "cutting back" and a few years later the cattle. Everyone should be required to raise sheep -- lots of lessons learned that way.

Shelia


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## Tim/South (Dec 12, 2011)

I have never seen baby sheep (kids?) before. Not any around here.

From reading Shelia's post I can guess it takes a special person to raise sheep.


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## PaCustomBaler (Nov 29, 2010)

Nice Rutted, but don't you know it's bad luck to tag a newborn lamb? LOL. That's just asking it to die!  I'm just picking....good luck on your lambing though, my dad does the same thing.

Do you keep your barn lights on overnight (during lambing season) or do you turn them off at night?


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## paoutdoorsman (Apr 23, 2016)

I have no experience with sheep. Those fella's look pretty good size for newborns.


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## RuttedField (Apr 24, 2016)

PaCustomBaler said:


> Nice Rutted, but don't you know it's bad luck to tag a newborn lamb? LOL. That's just asking it to die!  I'm just picking....good luck on your lambing though, my dad does the same thing.
> 
> Do you keep your barn lights on overnight (during lambing season) or do you turn them off at night?


I am different then some sheep farmers, every lamb on my farm, whether alive or stillborn is given a tag. Now in the case of a stillborn the tag is not affixed to the dead lamb obviously, I just throw it away, but in that way I keep better track of what is happening. It does increase my lambing mortality statistically from national averages though.

As for barn lights, I run two sets of lights, Regular barn lights which every light comes on when you flip the switch. These are spaced 8 feet apart. Then I have lights spaced 24 feet apart. These I call my night lights because they are on a timer from dawn to dusk to save some electricity. In that way I can check my sheep a few times in the night and see if we have lambs.

For whatever reason we feed our sheep once per day at 13:00 and almost always have lambs around 07:00. I am not sure why that is, but I still don't trust myself to NOT check sheep in the middle of the night. My mantra is, "When I get sleep during lambing season, lambs die".


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## RuttedField (Apr 24, 2016)

Tim/South said:


> I have never seen baby sheep (kids?) before. Not any around here.
> 
> From reading Shelia's post I can guess it takes a special person to raise sheep.


Sheep have lambs and goats have kids.

Its interesting that the Mennonites will not refer to their own human children as "kids" because there is a passage in the bible where it talks about the sheep will be separated from the goats. They believe it is sinful to refer to human children as kids then because goats have kids. Myself, I think that is taking things a wee bit far.

Lambing season is tough. "Lambs were born to die" as the saying goes, and the sickest ones end up in the house in trying to save them. I had to tell the teachers when my kids got in school that they "have a deep understanding of death", because when lambs come inside, they probably won't make it. But sheep farming is pretty easy for the most part. Somehow these white wooly creatures go out and eat green grass, poop out black manure, pee yellow urine and make delicious red meat. It is a miracle!


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## stack em up (Mar 7, 2013)

I've heard the lambs are born looking for a place to die thing before too. Truth is, sheep have an extremely good immune system, and when they do get sick, it's usually fatal.

We are down to 25 ewes, had well over 100 ewes when I was in high school. Dad and I took shifts during lambing season. He would be out in the barn during the night whilst I slept, then I would relieve him at 5:30ish, he'd go in and sleep. I would come home at noon hour to check on ewes and then be home st 3:00 for chores. We would do late chores together and then I'd go to bed.


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## PaCustomBaler (Nov 29, 2010)

Whether it's true or not, my dad used to keep his barn lights on at night and would have some lambs during the overnight. A friend of ours told us to keep the lights off at night during lambing and see how many lambs were born....and tada, no mas lambs de noche. Anyone else try it before?

I lamb on pasture, so I'm at the mercy of mother nature's light


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## stack em up (Mar 7, 2013)

PaCustomBaler said:


> Whether it's true or not, my dad used to keep his barn lights on at night and would have some lambs during the overnight. A friend of ours told us to keep the lights off at night during lambing and see how many lambs were born....and tada, no mas lambs de noche. Anyone else try it before?
> '
> I lamb on pasture, so I'm at the mercy of mother nature's light


We always keep a 40W burning overnight during lambing. Bulb burns out and we still get lambs, so maybe our ewes are just weird too.

All this sheep talk makes me miss the busyness of lambing lots of ewes. I tore down one of our old lambing barns a few years ago so I wouldn't get the urge to start it again. Then the FarmTek catalog came the other day and I see a smallish hoop barn that would be a great lambing barn if I built it up on a small 3' pony wall.... More ideas for projects I don't need.....


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## RuttedField (Apr 24, 2016)

I have had my ups and downs that is for sure.

A few years ago a group called ForeverFarms (which is honestly a complete scam), gave me a grant to help make my farm more viable. There was a lot of money on the line and I would have done well, but the thing of it was, they just wanted the credit for keeping my farm going. We've been farming here as a family since 1746 which is all they cared about. They brought a "team" together and it was sad. No one knew sheep, and everyone was over-paid and puffed right up. Well you guys know me, not on my watch, God gets the credit for if this farm thrives or dies, not a group of former politicians.

Anyway I bowed out telling them that my farms viability was up to God.

Then I went through a divorce, then got up one morning and found 30 breeding stock ewes dead on the ground in a single night from bloat. That was hard to recover from, but I kept at it.

But now, some 6 years later, I am seeing things really come together. Nothing I am putting together, but just my banker all excited about us growing the flock, our pastor getting us in touch with a christian sheep farmer down in Pennsylvania who is going to look at our numbers and ensure we are not being stupid, a new sheep nutritionist, a vet that wants to being involved in the whole process of farming,...just a team which is exactly what the grant was supposed to do, but 1000 times better.

I wish I could describe this better, but I am watching it happen, but not making it happen. And the numbers look really good. Katie and I are excited.


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## PaCustomBaler (Nov 29, 2010)

That's awesome Rutted, you have my support. I'm sure any of us will be happy to give you any viewpoints if you need ideas bounced around.


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## RuttedField (Apr 24, 2016)

I think the biggest challenge will be in trying to find 350 sheep of the breed we want. I would REALLY like Romanov, but may have to settle for Finn sheep due to availability.

Our breeding plan is pretty much to go with 350 new Romanov's. Breed them with Corriedale rams the following year to get the Romanov/Corriedale ewe traits in them, then get the size up with a Suffolk ram the third year. We want the Romanov breed more for early maturity that triples and quads.

I actually have quite a few friends down your way PACustomBaler. Not sure if you deal with anyone in the Gap, PA area, but I am really good friends with some church-goers there at a church called Peque. Great guys.


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## RuttedField (Apr 24, 2016)

It was the best of times, and it was the worst of times...

Our mortality rate thus far has been 0 percent!! (No lambs lost), but they have all been singles. Around here everyone blames the Ram, but we had a severe drought this year and I am wondering if that has been the reason. So far 10 lambings and only 1 set of twins.


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## glasswrongsize (Sep 15, 2015)

I see more triplets and twins pertaining to my ewes than the bucks. My ewes that lamb every 6-7 months have big singles (for the most part, there are some that consistently have twins every 7 months). I'm averaging 2.4 lambs per year/ewe over the whole herd and have lots of singles.

My mortality rate WAS good until last Saturday, I had only lost two since the beginning of this season. Saturday, I lost 5 of 7. I STILL don't know what caused most of them. Of a set of trips, the first was alive/healthy/nursing, the second was still born, and I had to pull the third (head back and one leg folded back). Saved the ewe, but the other lamb died too.

Got another with a uterine prolapse now (well, not NOW as I have a harness on her) that I'm not real hopeful of her survival. She is already prolapsing when laying down and just had a lamb on 08/04/16 and it appears she is too full of lambs already.

Hope your luck/skill hold out Rut!!

Mark


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## PaCustomBaler (Nov 29, 2010)

Romanov are sure to pump you out numbers Rutted, they are big lambers. I'd be careful on your "lambing ease" because of breeding with corriedales. They're a larger frame sheep, and it might be a struggle for the romanovs to lamb the bigger lambs on their own. Just something to consider when choosing your Corriedale genetics...maybe stay on the smaller-framed Corriedale genetics. I'd hate to see you out in the barn pulling lambs all the time.

What's the reason for making bigger sheep with the Suffolk later on? I'm just curious to know. Takes more feed to grow those larger frames.


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## stack em up (Mar 7, 2013)

We had Suffolk for years. Big growthy but the feed efficiency sucked. We went with Columbia rams and Dorset ewes and have been quite happy. Dorset are a little too small for my liking, but they lamb easily.


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## Kasey (Jun 24, 2015)

I have had good luck breeding my Romanovs to suffolks. They seem to always has small lambs, but they would have to when they have litters.


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## RuttedField (Apr 24, 2016)

The problem with the Suffolk is that they are big you you have to really pound the feed to them. I got a few now (maybe a dozen) and they always look thin come spring, but my sheep shearer says all Suffolk do.

We had a few Dorset too, and they were pretty good, but I didn't like the horns. For whatever reason we tried about every breed there is and just went back to the Corriedale. I am not saying they are the perfect breed, we just...for whatever reason...migrated back to them. So with that experience, I am lenient to go to the other breeds that just did not work out.

I'll be honest with you guys, I am not rich and don't have the cash to buy 350 breeding stock ewes so we are going to have to borrow it. The numbers look good because Katie and I are debt free right now so taking on a bit more debt is okay as we are not saddled with any now, BUT our bank only does operation loans so that money has to be paid back in 7 years. I am okay with that, its just we need to get and sell lambs. That is what I like about the Romanov's...sheer number of lambs to sell. But I am having a hard time finding 350 to buy. Finn are everywhere so we may have to go with a Finn/Corriedale/Suffolk cross.


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