Chronicles of a yarn farmer, shepherdess, and fiber geek!

Chronicles of a yarn farmer, shepherdess, and fiber geek!

February 22, 2010

Six Days and 21 BFL Lambs!

I KNOW!!! Whew...lambing is over! Now I can regroup and take a breather. It all started Wednesday (Feb. 17th) morning at the 5:00 a.m. barn check before I went to work, triplets. Thursday, two sets of twins, unfortunately one lamb was stillborn :-(. Friday ended with triplets. Saturday was the only day of no new lambs, but that was the calm before Sunday's storm. Four ewes lambed: a single, twins, triplets and quads. I KNOW! Quads! Totally unexpected. We knew she would at least twin, but quads? I don't know where she hid them all this time. It was like someone slapped me upside the head. I was blindsided! Then this morning, oh, this morning...!

One ewe left to lamb. Walking down to the barn at 5:00 a.m. this morning we heard the last ewe bleating/bellowing. I knew she was lambing (of course she had to wait until the snow storm was in full force) and expected to see at least twins in the lambing stall. We get to her stall and see one ewe lamb almost completely cleaned off. Few minutes later the ewe passed all the afterbirth. I couldn't believe one lamb was it; she was so big. She did seem a bit anxious, but was concentrating quite a bit on the one ewe lamb so we went about our business feeding, cleaning stalls, etc. After about 1 hour and 45 minutes in the barn, we gathered up our stuff to head back into the house. I heard a lamb bleating quite a bit. I heard it occasionally while doing chores but figured it was one of the 20 lambs. But as we were leaving the barn the bleat seemed a bit frantic and coming from a corner of the barn that was used for the horses. Sure enough I peered in the cold, dark stall and saw the little erect head of a lamb and heard him bleatin' like crazy. Turns out that she did twin. This little guy must have been born first, squeezed through the gate, wandered over to the barn aisle, crossed the aisle, meandered through hay bales, pieces of wood, a dismantled cattle shoot to reach the dark corner where he sat. AND he had to be there for two to two and a half hours.

Once we got him back to his mom it took him a while to settle down. She was very glad to see him and now it makes sense why she was so unsettled. More excitement than I'm used to in the morning. I took the day off of work and am going to try to take a long nap and bake some bread!

But first, the numbers: 16 ewe lambs (10 white, 6 natural color) and 5 ram lambs(4 white, 1 natural color). A few 7 pounders but the rest were between 8 and 12 pounds. All doing very well!

Here's the line up:

Ewe: Bonnara - triplets born 2/17/10 (2 ewes, 1 ram)

Ewe: Magpie - twins born 2/18/10 (2 ewes)

Ewe: Edwina - twins born 2/18/10 (1 ewe, 1 nc ram - stillborn)

Ewe: Mereion - triplets born 2/19/10 (2 ewes, 1 ram)

Ewe: Lorna - single born 2/21/10 (ewe)

Ewe: Tia - twins born 2/21/10 (2 ewes)

Ewe: Annadale - quads born 2/21/10 (3 ewes, 1 ram)

Ewe: Shonah - triplets born 2/21/10 (2 ewes, 1 ram)

Ewe: Gretta - twins born 2/22/10 (1 ewe, 1 ram)


12 comments:

Ebonwald Cardigans said...

YAY FOR EWE LAMBS!! Its finally your year for ewes!! CONGRATS!!!

Cynthia said...

Wow, that is an impressive few days and a very lovely lambing experience. They all look so good.

Kelly Ward said...

I envy your compacted time frame!! I still have @8 ewes & 3 ewe lambs to go. Saturday-Sunday was wild here, too. The quads look very even. Your photos are good, and to think they all have matching coats!!

Carol said...

Three of the quads were 8 pounds and one 10 pounds. I originally had 10 lamb coats that originally came from Premier. When I ran out I used some leftover fleece fabric on my shelf. Once lambs were born I'd run in the house and whip up the number I needed. Took less than 10 minutes to make about three or four of them.

Somerhill said...

Beautiful! Were these AI lambs?

Carol said...

Lisa...no AI lambs here. Three ewes bred to our ram who was out of our original ram from Beechtree Farm. Six ewes bred to a natural colored ram from Ward Farms.

We talk about doing AI but not sure about it, so in the meantime we'll keep using rams :-)

Becky Utecht said...

Wow, what a great lamb crop! And the 5 to 2 ewe to ram ratio is the icing on the cake. Those were some good size quads. I noticed all the lovely lamb coats too. Nice work!

Claire MW said...

Wow, this is so exciting. I'm currently waiting for my first ever BFL ewe to lamb, and there are 6 more potentially pregnant after her, so seeing your BFL lambs makes me nearly giddy with excitement for my first ever BFL lambs....

RMK said...

Excellent pics and story!

Nancy McRay said...

Awwwwwwwww

Beth said...

I cannot get over how cute they are!!!!

Val said...

Hi Carol,
I've enjoyed reading your blog. The BFL lambs are so beautiful. Cute little coats too!
How is your level 3 work coming along?