Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Lambs and More Lambs

My goodness since the 7th of April things have been crazy here when it comes to lambs. We still have not sheared the sheep. Our last date was snowed out. We had another foot of snow two days before the date to shear so I canceled. I'm trying desperately to clean up around here since we will be shearing on Sunday the 17th. But the ewe's have other ideas.
I'll start from the beginning. This is Hattie with her two ewe lambs born on April 7th. Sired by Stonehaven Watson.
Hattie (Who)
Then in the afternoon I found Kess with two ram lambs. Sired by WSR Artie. (Whiteoak Shetland Ranch)
 One note for Kess she had a blind lamb last year when bred to Stonehaven Duncan. Good going Artie no blind lambs this year!!!
Kess
April 8th Jorja had one ewe and one ram. Sired by Watson. Jorja had a single lamb two years ago and was bred last year but slipped her lambs a month early. Good to see she's OK this year.
Jorja (Ray)
April 9th I went to a guild meeting in Reno. Before I left everyone, sheep that is,  looked normal out on the field grazing. When I got home I found Stevie and Hazel up on the hill each with their two new born lambs! Stevie below lost her little ewe lamb last year to a predator, coyote, eagle, neighbors dog? still not sure. She had a ram and a ewe this year. It was about an hour before this picture I found her ewe lamb dieing! I'm not sure what happened. She was laying by herself and soon after she was taking her last breath. Stevie's ewe was three days old and doing fine. At least she has her ram lamb. I'd hate for her to go two years in a row without a lamb of her own. I'm leaving her dead lamb with her for awhile so she understands what happen to her. Was she hit too hard by another ewe? Not sure. Stevie was bred to Artie.
Stevie
 This is Hazel below:

Hazel
and her two lambs. A ram in the feeder and her ewe lamb behind. Have you noticed a theme? Most everybody has a black lamb and a dark brown lamb! Hazel was bred to Watson.

On April 10th Valla was out in a snow storm and gave birth to her twins and ram and a ewe! It was not very cold, in the high thirty's, and the snow was not sticking but I was still surprised that they were nearly dry and not chilled! Valla (La) was bred to Artie.
 Now Pepper (Pots) had her two lambs on the same day as Valla another ewe and a ram.
Pepper
 Here she is with her two lambs. Both very black.

It was nice and quite here for two days. I was even able to good to town without coming home to any surprises. This morning Stonehaven Cielia gave birth to two ram lambs! One little guy has some white splashes of color on him. Cielia is marked the same. The sire to her lambs is Watson.
This is not the end of lambing yet. Evie is looking big and ready to lamb but after her God only knows!
Total count 8 ewe's 16 lambs  7 ewes, 9 rams and one ewe lamb died. All eight ewes had twins.

6 comments:

chris said...

they are beautiful! congrats!

Laura said...

Whew! Exciting! I miss lambies, but not the work...

I'll bet you're enjoying the sun!

Sharon said...

Stevie and Pepper have such gorgeous coats this year. Thanks for sharing your flock with us. We loved every minute of it.

Leigh said...

Right about the time you wrote "have you noticed a theme?" I was thinking, gosh that's a lot of black lambs, LOL. Such cute pictures. Such cute lambs.

Tina T-P said...

Holy cow! You've got lambs popping out everywhere! Soon it will be time for the Olampics! :-) T.

DRP said...

very nice post...