Today we commenced the start of a new sheep keeping year. The breeding ewes were joined by the ram. Some sorting out was needed first. I had to bring all the ewes into the barn and separate out the three ewes that were unintentionally 'caught' and produced July-born lambs, as well as the three lambs of course.
The remaining ewes (nine of them this year) were led out to the field where they will remain for the rest of this year. It is a slightly smaller field so the ram has potentially less chasing to do.
I then had to separate out one of our two rams who will service the ewes. This will be his first year on the job. Always a trickier operation as the two rams tend to stick close together and are more pushy and stronger compared to the ewes. Some deft manipultaion succeeded in extracting the correct ram who was led off to join the ewes. He will remain with them for exactly 4 weeks so that we know more or less when to expect lambs to arrive and the likely final date: 7th March to 3rd April 2025, give or take a couple of days - sheep usually give birth within two days of the expected date of delivery. The regular gestation period is 145 days.
The three ewes and their Summer born lambs were put into a separate area to continue to put on condition.
Our second ram is being hired out to a Wiltshire Horn sheep keeper in Lavenham, as he was last year with good results.
This is a cycle that is being repeated all over the country and one that has been much the same for centuries.
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| Ewes before being sorted |
I thought the second ram might be feeling rather sad, until I read on that he was going to have party time in Lavenham!
ReplyDeleteOh yes, plenty of interest for him in Lavenham an day now.
DeleteI'm always impressed by the careful time management, so you can plan so precisely for the birth. How many baby lambs does this represent? How common are multiple births?
ReplyDeleteVery common. Most hope for mainly twins, so up to a 200% result. That's important for commercial producers. Triplets (or more) can be problematic because a ewe has only two teats so you might end up having to bottle feed one. We are happy with singles as the lambs grow on more strongly. We rarely go away but next Spring we are planning to visit a daughter up north for a long weekend at the end of February and another long weekend to another daughter in Ireland in the middle of May. This means we will be back before the first lamb arrives and again in mid-May when the lambs are past any birth complications and are out grazing with their mums. So it shoud be straight forward for the person overseeing things while we are away.
DeleteHope your young ram quickly works out what he has to do - they don't usually have a problem!
ReplyDeleteHe is already showing a lot of interest in his new companions!
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