Farm Club members have spent time here during lambing and helped with cleaning, lamb ID, etc. And of course there is always lamb cuddling.
Farm Club is a great way to learn about raising sheep before you invest in sheep or if you won’t ever have the lifestyle that lets you own a sheep.
Zorra had plenty of cuddling while she was still in the lambing area with her mom. Lisa is a lamb cuddling Pro.
This is pet sheep Jade’s lamb (and me).
This is her again being held by Peggy. We’d really like her to be friendly too.
This is Zorra again with Sumi.
As the lambs get a little older we have other Farm Days. This was Betsy’s first day on the farm and she jumpred right in holding lambs as we ear tagged and castrated. 
I don’t castrate many because it’s hard to know how they will grow out and which might be a great flock sire for someone. Some are easy though–too much or too little color to fit within the 15-85% breed standard. This one’s horns are already touching at the base under that hair. As the horns grow they will fuse and not grow well separately.
Marina and Maggie (no photo) helped catch lambs too and Mary handled the clipboard. The lambs were all tagged with their white ID tags right after they were born but we put added a colored tag on Farm Day. I like to use a second tag for back-up ID if the first one falls out and also to color code the sire. It’s interesting to keep track of that and it also helps to find a lamb when you’re looking for one among 75. You can narrow it down some if you have a color to look for.
This year Cayenne’s lambs got orange tags. Pink tags go in all the lambs that have been castrated.
Green means these are Buster’s lambs.
Blue was for Catalyst.
Peyton’s lambs are obvious so don’t need an extra tag.
After we tagged all the lambs Marina and Betsy stayed to help me set up the pasture for the sheep. I had put the sheep out for a few days but hadn’t cleaned and moved the water trough.
We walked around the pasture and took stock of things. I always point out the issue that I have with the dallisgrass that is out of control. That’s what all that dry grass is. I’d much rather see green grass growing. The whole pasture was looking somewhat dismal from a growth standpoint. At this point we had just had March rain after two very dry and cold months. I wasn’t seeing much growth–at least not enough to feed 55 ewes and 75 lambs. 
We spotted this grass that I don’t recognize.
I took photos to send to a friend of Marina’s who she think might recognize it.
Thanks Farm Club!
It’s hard to imagine now with unseasonably low-70’s daytime highs for the last few days and predicted for the next week, but during most of January we had fog and drizzle. On he morning of our Farm Day this was what the brush pile looked like–a wool flower forest.
I don’t really like to see this because it means the sheep are rubbing on these branches.
We are shearing tomorrow. This is Cindy in full fleece. 
The lilac ram, Catalyst.
I love Shelby’s blue eyes.
We caught each sheep and inspected their fleeces. Farm Club members get first dibs on fleeces on Shearing Day and they can pre-select them on our Farm Day.
We also clean the ear tags so that they will be easy to read on Shearing Day. That’s Carole with the towel working on the tag.
Mary makes sure that fleece reservations are recorded on cards and that the ear tags match the ID on the card.
Another great day with Farm Club.
I noticed that white line in the fleece of Terri, a 2017 lamb. I don’t have an explanation for that.
I love the ability to write on the photos on my phone.
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 
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.
Dona took this photo of all of us as we stopped for a group photo in the barn.
This is Jade sporting her new eartag. The ewe lambs’ small tags were replaced with their grown-up tags. I decided to start color coding again. All the 2015 lambs have orange. There were also a lot of adult sheep whose ear tags were missing, so we replaced those.
We got son, Chris to the barn to take a group shot so Dona could be in it too.
We finished up at the ram pen. I took fleece samples to send in for micron testing.
Time to relax in the shop…
…and enjoy donuts that Mary brought to celebrate Dona’s birthday last week.
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