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."
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!
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.
There have ben 14 lambs born since yesterday morning. What fun! There will be photos and videos when I have time. I’m having a little contest over on the Meridian Jacobs Facebook page. Guess when Summer is going to have her lambs. Tell me day/hour on Facebook and you’ll be entered.
This is a photo of Summer taken today.
This is what Summer thinks of the contest.
Lambing is starting out more slowly than I thought it would. According to my calendar there are over 20 ewes who will lamb in the next 4 days, but I think that some of these may have been marked, but not bred when I first put the rams out. They may be a couple of weeks later.
However I am not disappointed in the lambs. I experimented with breeding to Faulkner, the Blue Faced Leicester ram, to find out if I could produce larger market lambs without having deleterious effects on the ewes. Rusty wrote about the first set of BFL/Jacob lambs in his blog. (By the way, the lambs he wrote about were born to Athena, the ewe standing in the photo in my last post. I called her Summer by mistake, but Summer is the huge one in the photo below.) Another lamb was born last night.
This is a 12.2 pound lamb!
Sparkle doesn’t seem to care that her lamb is so big or that she is not spotted.
When doing chores this morning I saw these ewes that I assumed would lamb during the day.
Summer didn’t show much interest in breakfast.
Laura looked uncomfortable.
This is Summer again, looking even bigger. No lambs yet, but I’m going to the barn now for the last check before bed.
The rams are jealous of the ewes that got to go out in the pasture. That is Hudson, Clapton , and Clint.
Summer is waiting, but that’s not the season. It’s Summer, the sheep.
This is Summer on January 5.
January 17.
This is today, February 5. I don’t have a breeding date for Summer but I don’t think she lost any time after I put Clint in with her group. About a week ago I started giving her a little grain at feeding time, along with Paulette, who I know is pregnant with triplets after an ultrasound.
They both have to share their grain with the chicken who now comes running when she sees me get the grain bowls out.
I took these photos a couple of weeks ago after our one and only January storm.
Dina
Lola
Hot Lips
Stephanie
Faulkner
Amaryllis
Lambing won’t start for 4 weeks but there are some ewes that look as though they shouldn’t wait that long, especially when you realize that 70% of total fetal growth occurs during the last third of pregnancy.
Sparkle was bred as soon as I put her with the ram. She is due February 18, a month away.
I don’t have a breeding date for Summer, but she is obviously pregnant.
I’ll be surprised if she doesn’t have triplets.
Jimmy is out there with the ewes and he is a very luck sheep. Most males that do not make the cut as breeding rams end up in the freezer. When he was a young lamb, I thought Jimmy had breeding potential. In fact I had a buyer for him. She was very disappointed when, after taking a closer look at him at about 3 1/2 months of age, I would not sell him for breeding. I was knew that his lower horn on the left would be a problem, but what was not obvious until I looked more closely was the freckling.
In this photo you can’t see the freckling, but when I parted the fleece I could see it. Freckling in a young lamb is a disqualifying trait for Jacob sheep registration. It increases with age and it is almost as if a spotted sheep turns into an overall gray sheep. Jimmy has a beautiful fleece (although not appropriate for a breeding ram) so I decided to keep him as a wether. The horn issue was dealt with when he was castrated because, without testosterone, the horn growth slows drastically.
Why keep a wether? When you have to separate a ram for whatever reason, he needs a buddy to keep him company. Sheep do not do well by themselves. The other wether I have right now is Jerry (nice fleece, but too much black for a breeding ram)…
…and he is Faulkner’s permanent buddy.
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