The sheep were all locked in the barn/corral area while I was irrigating. Here are some morning photos.
Ginseng and BFL-X lambs.
Fandango with lambs.
Hot Lips and lamb.
Alexandria and her lambs.
Isabelle with lambs.
Melinda and lambs.
These were the last ones born this year.
Amaryllis.
Sheep looking hopeful as I climb back over the gate.
Last Saturday was a Farm Day. Some of the Farm Club members have been coming during the last month to help with all the barn chores during lambing, but this was the “official” Farm Day.
We caught all the lambs to check for number of horns and split eyelids (a trait that is sometimes seen in 4-horn lambs). 
This was also a good time to check the paperwork and make sure that I had recorded the gender and sires correctly.
My neighbor who recently purchased sheep was here also to get some hands-on experience. He told me that a recently purchased goat had kidded that morning and he wasn’t sure the kid had nursed.
I went to his place at lunchtime to check on the kid and while he held the doe (very skittish) I got the kid nursing.
Back at our place, we finished moving sheep around. I moved “Ginny’s flock” of wethers and she was so hot when she was finished that she found the only accessible mud puddle to sit in.
Last in the afternoon we decided to try grafting a lamb onto a ewe whose lamb had been killed the day before. I had debated it that day and at the time didn’t want to deal with it. But I had some new twins and though it was worth a try. This method of grafting is not as pleasant or as satisfying as “slime” grafting where you just cover the adopted baby in the birth fluids so that the mom will think the lamb is hers. With this method there is a dead lamb and you need to use it’s skin to cover the adoptive lamb to trick the mom into thinking it’s hers. That photo above is the lamb in the skin before I cut it to fit better. Bea, the young ewe, was unsure. The scent of her lamb was there but the sound wasn’t right. The lamb didn’t want to nurse at first and when it did Bea wasn’t happy about it.
This photo is blurry because I must have smeared my iPhone lens while working with the lamb. When Bea finally lay down while trying to avoid me attaching the lamb to her teat I was able to get the lamb to nurse on the engorged udder. For a day or two I needed to halter her or just stand there.
At this point Bea has completely claimed the lamb as her own. (The dead lamb’s skin is gone in this photo–I took it off the next morning.)
We were impatiently waiting for Jazz to lamb. I was sure that she would have triplets because she was so huge. She surprised me with twins the day after Farm Day. They are 9.6 and 12 pounds. At that size it’s good there were only two of them.
March!
Western redbud near the house. I wish it would bloom all spring.
These are Mae’s lambs.
Sisters from last year, Jade and Jillian, waiting to go to the pasture. Jade wasn’t bred but Jillian is pregnant.
Sending the pregnant ewes out in back.
These are yesterday’s lambs:
Loretta and a single ram, standing. The one on the ground is the lamb that Raquel rejected a couple of days ago. I successfully “slime grafted” her to Loretta. More about that in a future post.
Later in the day Alexandria lambed with little tiny lambs, both under 5 pounds, but vigorous and healthy.
Cascade lambed with a single ram last night. That lamb is to me an average size but weights only one pound more than Alexandria’s combined.
Here is the status so far. Color coding for girl/boy. BT means that the lambs have had BOSE (selenium and Vitamin E supplement) injections and their tails have been banded. Sires are Ringo, Rotor, Nash, and Faulkner. Only 26 ewes left to lamb!
Part of being in Farm Club is that you get a complete Lambing Journal report every night with all the nitty-gritty of what happened during the day. Sometimes it gets a little long-winded like today’s report. However my blog posts are usually mostly photos. I’m thinking about writing a post every day there are lambs, but realistically that may not happen. I don’t write one every day when there are NOT lambs, so I don’t know why I think I’ll have time to do it now.
And is this really Day 2 of Lambing? Day 1 was really a month ago when the surprise lambs were born. But I’m calling that the Prologue to lambing season. Or maybe it’s the Prequel. Anyway, I’m calling this Day 2. Only two more ewes lambed but it seemed hectic, partly because it got complicated by a dog semi-emergency. Rusty described that in his blog post just a minute ago.
This is Mae, who lambed with twins a little after midnight.
Before I went in the house at 2 a.m. I put Athena in the lambing area because she didn’t look right and I figured that she was in labor. (A good sign that something was off was that she showed no interest in the grain I offered her as enticement to follow me in.)
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!
In the last post I shared photos of sheep that were overdue for shearing. I’m pleased to say that most of the fleeces looked great when they came off today. There will be other blog posts, but this is a quick one with photos of shorn sheep with something in common.
The flock is looking rather ragged. It’s a good thing we’re shearing in two days.
Mable.
Ginseng.
Shelby.
Jazz.
Noel.
Petra.
Petra again.
I’m not sure who this is but she’s certainly round.
Speaking of big and round, this is Spring. Last year she was so big that we had a couple of wagers on lambing–when and how many?
Isabelle sporting her tech head-gear. The video will be coming soon.
No words needed.
We’re less than three weeks away from shearing. I used to shear in February, but several years ago I shifted shearing day to November thinking that I’d shear before I started feeding hay in the winter. For several reasons I decided to go back to February shearing but I didn’t want to make the shift all at once and risk having the fleeces ruined. Last year we sheared the first week of January and this year we will shear February 7.
Here are some of the sheep in full fleece.
Sonata.
Jean. She was Champion Jacob Ewe at Black Sheep Gathering in June.
This is Cascade.
The BFL-cross named Ears.
This is Kenleigh’s Isadora.
Vanessa.
Wesley is one of three wethers that are part of Ginny’s sheepdog training flock.
Wesley and Wally are BFL-crosses and the other two wethers in Ginny’s flock. They were all born at the fair in July.
This ram was also born at the fair. I’ll have to decide about shearing them since they will have only 6-month fleeces and it will be more of a stress on them.
Guess which sheep will let me get this close and hold still enough for photos?
Gorgeous fleece.
Why, it’s Jade! Who else? She’s the one in the Santa hat in the previous post.
Sheep going out to pasture last week. I’ve closed the gate today. The grasses are dormant and need warm weather and more daylight to get growing well again…if they get water, that is. This grass is showing signs of drying out. I hope some of the rain that is predicted comes through.
Yes, it is Hug a Sheep Day and we’ll be celebrating it here at the farm. Anyone can join us. So that those of you who have never hugged a sheep can get a feel for this I thought I’d share some sheep hugging photos.
The photos above are all of Farm Club members. If you join Farm Club you will have plenty of sheep hugging opportunities.My granddaughter on a visit out here last spring. This is another cute kid, the age my granddaughter is now, at Fiber Fusion.
Chickens deserve hugs too.
And baby goats. Now we’re getting into the archives. This is my son about 10 years ago.
Another sheep hug.
Running with sheep.
I love this photo. A couple of these girls are in college now.
While I was searching photos I found this one. Doesn’t have to do with hugging sheep, but it’s two of my kids waking up in the dairy barn at the State Fair back in my dairy cow days. My mom drying off a newly born kid.
But today will be all about hugging sheep.
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