This is when lambing season starts to take it’s toll. Everything has been going OK, but there is starting to be some sleep deficit. Thank goodness that during the two days I was driving to the Bay Area to teach classes it was slow here.
Yesterday started just after midnight when Mable’s lambs were born. All OK. I think I didn’t go back out until just after 6 a.m. and Sophia had new twins. They seemed fine although I had a little trouble making sure they nursed OK. The answer for that was to go back to the house to eat breakfast and then the “problem” lamb was ready to eat.
Mary came out to help and that help is so appreciated. We were completely backed up in the lambing jugs and the alleyway of the lambing area. (I think that’s like when you see on TV shows the gurneys with patients lined up in the hall of the hospital.) So the first thing to do was to start moving sheep around in the cycle from lambing jug to group pen for a few days to mom and baby part of the barn and field which hadn’t been set up yet. We worked on that at the same time as watching Lana in labor.
Lana had a very pretty lilac ewe lamb. Eventually, after it seemed things were taking a long time, I checked and found another lamb, pulled it, and spent about twenty minutes trying to make it live. I don’t know if it was doomed from the start or aspirated fluid during birth, but it could never get a good enough breath and it died. 
In the meantime Raquel was in labor. I have been in touch with some students at the UC Davis vet school who are interested in coming out for some hands-on practice. It’s been difficult to coordinate their schedules with sheep lambing, but they were able to come out then for a couple of hours. Unfortunately Raquel didn’t lamb while they were here but they did do some ear tagging, tail banding…
…and they listened to the normal and the not-as-healthy lungs of these twins, one of whom has been getting penicillin because he almost died from pneumonia following a difficult birth (in this post).
We finally got the ewes with the first lambs out on the pasture. Can you tell where all the mom’s food is going now?
After getting the ewe through the end of pregnancy and then lambing in good health, the next challenge is keeping an eye on the udder health. As the milk is coming in (the lesser amount of colostrum giving way to a greater quantity of milk) the udder may become engorged. If there is tenderness and the ewe doesn’t let the lambs nurse on one side it becomes a vicious cycle. Sore udder and teat…no nursing…more milk backing up…udder more full and sore. This can eventually lead to mastitis which, if not treated, can ultimately kill the ewe or at least ruin her udder.
Walking back to the house I noticed Mae standing like this. “Lameness” in a ewe who in nursing lambs may have nothing to do with the feet at all, but be because her udder is full and painful.
I went out to get her and bring her to the barn. I am amused by her response to me approaching.
This is why. Her lambs are hidden in the grass.
This is how Mae looked walking back to the barn.
This is from the front. I tied her to the fence and milked the one side, taking 7.5 ounces.
Then it looked and felt balanced. I milked her again this morning. There was another ewe in a similar situation and I had to milk her a couple of times. I have to remember to be watching for that over the next few weeks as these ewes lamb.
We set up the creep for the lambs. They can get through the narrow slots on that panel. The ewes aren’t always happy that their babies can go somewhere that they can’t follow.
These are BFL-X lambs born the night before.
The last lambing of the day was Raquel. After the vet students had left and I had finished working outside I finally went to the house. I went back to the barn to check and these lambs had been born. It wasn’t until later at the last check around midnight that I realized that Raquel didn’t want one of them. But that is another story.
This is Mae, who lambed with twins a little after midnight.
It’s a long story, but she probably had ketosis (pregnancy toxemia), fortunately in the early stages. After talking to my vet I got more proactive and pulled the lambs.
That black lamb is 11.4 pounds and his brother is almost 8 pounds. The only other white lamb I’ve had sired the BFL ram was this same cross–Athena x Faulkner–and there was also one black and one white. After some careful watching and TLC (interspersed with dealing with Maggie) Athena seems to be doing fine.
And how about a little more baby horse cuteness? I went down the road to visit this guy again. Here he is about 36 hours old. I got to pet him this time. So soft!
One lamb.
Two lambs.
Three lambs. All were up and nursing quickly. Good job, Ears!
…I knew that, however unlikely, a lamb could get stuck between it and the wall. 
Sure enough, that happened while I was still sitting there.
How about this foal that was just 12 hours old?
He was born down the road at my friend’s house. We have to wait 5 months for lambs to be born. This foal was due on January 29 (11 months) and was just born today on February 22! That is almost a year of gestation for the mare.
Mae from the front.
Mae from the rear.
Shelby from the side.
Shelby from the rear.
Esmerelda, front.
Esmerelda, rear.
Athena from the front.
Athena from the rear.
Marilyn is due 2/26. 
Here she is from the rear. She was shorn in November. I sure like the recently shorn views better for this.
Noel is due 2/27.
Fran is due 2/28.
Fran from the rear.
Spring isn’t due until March 5 but she always looks so big I thought I’d just give you a view.
Who is this? Trick question. That is Delight who is nursing twins.
And here is Dazzle with her single. You can sure see the difference in body condition of ewes that are nursing month old lambs.
Last week as it was drying out I put the flock on the pasture and then turned the new lambs out with them.
One thing I watch for when putting lambs in the pasture for the first time is that they don’t get tangled up in the electric fence. 
I’m glad to see when they touch the fence because I know that they will have learned to avoid it.
This looks worse than it was. The whole incident was very brief and then…
…the nearby lamb was off and running.
Bertha, one of the yearlings thought this looked like a good game…
…so she kept up the chase.
Eventually this lamb found his mom who hadn’t been particularly concerned about him.
In the meantime the other two lambs stuck near their mom. I’m going to use colored tags again this year to give me more information about the lambs at a glance, mostly about sires. However, these first three have an unknown sire and the ram lambs (gorgeous as they are) have been banded. That’s what the red tags mean–wether.
When I asked how many alpacas there are, Mary said between 150 and 200. They roam the hills on the ranch, accompanied by guardian dogs.
This is one of the many ranch dogs that include guardian and herding dogs. We were told that this one is only 8 months old.
Our meeting was in the greenhouse located near the field where the bucks live.
This guy seemed pretty friendly.
Before we started the meeting we admired each others fiber products. This is one of the Twirl yarns produced by Mary.
This is what I brought to share–sheepskins, buttons, yarn, and shawls from my Jacob sheep. The new 
This is a felted hat made by 
Here is 
…and this is a piece she felted from the wool of Vicki, one of my Jacob sheep.
We were able to see the recently produced Wool and Fine Fiber Book. Each producer has a spread in which samples of their fiber is attached. These books will be circulated to designers and manufacturers who want to find out what kinds of fiber are available locally, how to contact the producers, and to learn how these fibers might be used in end products. This was an amazing undertaking by Fibershed.
While hearing about all this we were also doing what Fibershed producers do best, eating and baby animal snuggling. This is a two-day old kid who needs some TLC.
One of the dogs was feeling left out.
Even Rebecca found some goat snuggling time.
I hadn’t had a chance to do anything with it until recently. The first step was to gather some information.
The McMorran yarn balance is one tool to do that. You trim the ends off a strand of yarn until the arm balances.
Then you measure that length of yarn and multiply by 100 to get ypp (yards/pound). I repeated that a few times to get an average–1500 ypp.
Another measurement is wpi (wraps/inch). This yarn measure 15 wpi. However, from past experience I know that this isn’t quite accurate. Most yarn is scoured (washed) and skeined before it is sold in yarn stores. That can have a dramatic effect on the yarn. The yarn that I got from the mill on cones has not been scoured yet, so it is not really “finished”.
Look at the difference a soak in warm water makes. Now this yarn measure 1200 ypp (which is what the specs from the mill were)…
and it is 10 wpi. Based on those measurements I wove some samples.
These samples look pretty open on the loom…
…and I had to be careful to not beat the weft yarn down too much.
This is how the samples look off the loom. The 8 epi samples are in the top row.
And here is how they look after a quick wash. Dramatic difference from the loom to the finished fabric.
Here is how I had them displayed in the shop at the recent Shearing Day. The skein on the left has been washed. But these yarns aren’t just for weaving. My friend, Mary, bought some, washed it, and then used it for a Mystery Knit Along. Here is the shawl she knit.
This was knit over a few weeks with a new direction given out each week.
It is gorgeous in person and has a wonderful hand. I can’t wait to get some of this yarn on the loom and get to work with it.
Mustard blooming.
Mistletoe berries.
Almonds just about ready to bloom.
Looking west.
Taken earlier in the day. One of our two almond trees is in full bloom and full of bees.
This is Ginseng above and below.
This is Betty.
Esmerelda.
Lauren, one of last year’s lambs, almost a yearling. The yearlings look a lot skinnier than the older ewes with no wool.
Jillian, another yearling.
Jerry, a wether.
Isabelle
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