Babies are here!

Wouldn’t you know that winter weather and lambs would show up at the same time. We were so excited to see the lambs from our new Dorper ram this year, because they are so darn cute. We had 16 Katahdin ewes bred this year. So far, we have had 11 ladies give birth for a total of 20 lambs - 11 girls and 9 boys so far.

Most of our ewes prefer privacy to lamb and give birth with no problems. What happens when we see some happy little faces appear in the morning? Typically we weigh them as soon as we get to them. Then we bring them indoors with their moms to spend some time in our “jugs” (smallish stalls). That way, we can make sure that the moms and babies bond with each other, which sometimes doesn’t happen, especially if there is some physical problem with the lamb. We make sure that the lambs are able to nurse. If not, we have to put the baby on a bottle and hope it can thrive until the mom accepts it. As cute as they look in pictures, bottle babies are a lot of extra work and often a source of sorrow.

In their first week, all lambs get an ear tag so we can keep track of their weight, health issues, and various other things. The boys get tags on the right, girls on the left. Remember what it felt like to get your ears pierced? It’s about the same for lambs, a startling moment, then on to something more exciting like nursing or playing.

More lamb stories next time… the woolies were bred later, so we still have all of them to come.