Author Archives: Robin

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About Robin

Owner of Meridian Jacobs, farm and fiber shop. I raise Jacob sheep, teach fiber arts classes, weave handwovens for sale, and manage the store.

Barn chores

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Today I decided to clean the ram pen. Over the last few months the rams have broken a few bars out of the feeder. I didn’t realize until a few days ago that they had been pulling most of the hay through the broken area, so there was a big build up of wasted hay.

Rusty moved the rams to the back and I had him keep an eye on them while I worked. (You can read Rusty’s blog post about this.)

This shed that the rams have for shelter is an old concrete building that has barbed wire instead of rebar for reinforcement (there is a hole where you can see that). I have reinforced the end of this wall with wood and this is where the gate hangs. That is also where I throw the hay into the feeder and hadn’t noticed how it had built up. I was filling up the wheelbarrow and then I noticed this:

This pen had flooded a month or so ago and all that old straw was wet. Look at all those mushrooms. I was glad that my friend, Jackie, was coming over in a little while because I knew that she would be excited about mushrooms.

Jackie has been doing some natural dyeing so we scooped up a lot of these mushrooms and she is going to experiment with them.

Jackie’s daughter and her boyfriend are visiting from New York. While her daughter visited with the sheep, Jackie and Mark pitched in and helped me finish cleaning the ram pen. That’s my kind of visitors!

Pretty faces

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I think I am procrastinating, but I like looking at pretty sheep photos…especially when it’s dreary and raining outside.

This is a ram lamb but he doesn’t look so tough when he still has little tufts of hair on his horns.

Hot Lips

Rosie

Faulkner’s lamb

BFL x Jacob

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Several people are anxiously waiting for the black BFL (Blue face Leicester) x Jacob lambs to grow up so that we can evaluate their fleeces. The BFL is a long-wool breed (but with a finer fiber diameter compared to other long-wool breeds) and Jacob wool is in the fine-medium range. Crossing these two doesn’t mean that you get a fiber in the middle range of fleeces. Here are some photos of the BFL X fleeces and lambs.

The photos below are of the youngest lambs. You can see quite a difference in their fleeces.

By the way, I did not cross these breeds with the idea of keeping sheep for fleece. My goal was to produce a larger lamb and be able to market them more quickly at a higher weight.

Farm Day

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Last Saturday was Farm Day and 8 of the 10 Farm Club members were able to make it here. We caught all the lambs and checked for split eyelids (a condition that sometimes happens in 4-horn sheep) and number of horns.

With this many people here it went quickly. Everyone else caught sheep and I weighed them. I don’t usually weigh lambs as they grow, but I’m interested in finding out if my BLF cross lambs grow at a different rate than the Jacob lambs. I’ll report back on that.

After working with the lambs everyone grabbed pitchforks and shovels and, with 3 wheelbarrows going, they made quick work of cleaning the barn.

What a great group of friends!

Lambing: Two Failures & a Success

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Here is a story from last week’s lambing.

FAILURE: Last Thursday a big yearling, Helen, delivered a lamb that was dead when I found it.

FAILURE: The Saturday before that a yearling, Hattie, delivered twins. Both were alive, but one was almost dead when I found it. I think she had delivered standing up and when the lamb came out the body landed so that the lamb’s neck was bent back with the head behind. The lamb couldn’t shake its head to break through the membrane over its face and the mom was still working on Lamb #1. I removed the membrane and the lamb started breathing. I knew that this lamb wouldn’t be up right away so I milked the ewe and tube-fed the lamb with colostrum. Then I left the lamb there for the mom to clean and hoped that it would be strong enough to get up. When I came back less than an hour later the lamb was still breathing, but had not moved and was almost dead from cold.

I brought the lamb into the house. At this point it was breathing but it wasn’t moving at all. Here is how I warmed it.

This is a pot of water at about 100 degrees. I wasn’t keeping track of time (it was already 1 a.m.) but after the first water bath (10 minutes ?) the lamb’s body temperature was at 91 degrees. I filled the pot with more warm water two more times and eventually got the lamb’s temperature up to just over 100 degrees. I wrapped the lamb in towels warmed in the dryer and tube fed it with more colostrum. I was worried that if it did regain strength it would uncover itself and get cold again so I took it to bed with me. In the morning I thought it was probably dead because it hadn’t moved. No. It was alive. I put it in a crate in the kitchen and warmed milk for it. I was surprised that it actually sucked from the bottle. It tried to get to its feet but that was a struggle. Eventually the lamb could get up, but it was very wobbly. I also noticed at that time that one eye was opaque and blind. I couldn’t decide it the lamb was also blind in the other eye. I started thinking brain damage from oxygen deprivation just after birth. Eventually the lamb gained strength and was walking around OK, but was still blind in at least one eye.

SUCCESS: When I found Helen’s dead lamb I thought about  trying to graft this house-lamb onto Helen. Helen wasn’t particularly interested, but at least she didn’t try to kill the lamb or get away from it. I skinned the dead lamb and used that skin as a coat on the new lamb.

Helen was not enthusiastic, but was more interested now that the lamb smelled right. The next problem was that the lamb had never nursed from a ewe and didn’t show any interest. (You can lead a lamb to the milk, but…) I left the lamb there since it didn’t seem to be in any danger and I thought that maybe it would at least have a mom to follow around even it I remained the food source. By the time I finished chores it was past feeding time for the lamb. I brought a bottle from the house and the lamb was definitely hungry. After a few mouthfuls and took the bottle away and moved the lamb over to the ewe. She started to root around, found the teat, and started to nurse! SUCCESS

This is the lamb with the dead coat removed.

The house was OK, but I'd rather have a mom.

 

Running with the Big Boys

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It was getting dark tonight when I took these photos with my i-phone so the quality isn’t great, but they are kind of amusing. Look at where this lamb ended up today.

I don’t think he was too happy about it.

But of course he wouldn’t let me catch him anymore than the big rams will let me catch them. They needed to be chased into a pen.

"Maybe it's not so bad being with these guys, especially with Dad here on my right."

"But Mom is still my favorite."

Summer & Paulette

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Go back to February 28th’s post to see Summer while still pregnant. She lambed three days later on March 2.

This is Summer with her ewe lambs at 4 days old. They were 7.2, 7.5, and 8 lbs at birth.

I think Paulette will take Summer’s place as “the sheep most likely to have triplets”.

In this case, I know that Paulette is having triplets. She was not supposed to be bred because she usually lambs at the State Fair. However, Faulkner got in with her and this is the result. A sonogram showed triplets…and this follows quads at the fair last year!

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Today started at midnight when I went to the barn for a last check. I found a small lamb near Jazz who was obviously not done with lambing. There were two more lambs trying to come out at the same time.

All are OK now although that little one is sure small (only 4 .2 lbs) and I’ll have to keep an eye on him.

When I went to the house I left Laura in because I thought that she would lamb next. She was lambing when I went out in the morning, but during the night two other ewes had lambed. Fran had twins and…

Pamela had twin lilac (gray markings instead of black) rams. While I was moving sheep around and making more pen space two more ewes lambed. That’s 11 lambs, bringing the total to 44.

Here is what my barn chart looks like.

This is Dina with her lambs.

The lambs are getting playful. There will be plenty more jumping lamb pictures to come.