Tag Archives: Clun Forest

The Undrama Lamb Drama

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Soooo, yesterday was Tuesday right? That seems to be the day for farm drama around here lately. Must be because it’s one of our two busiest night with piano for the Ladybug and then church coming up on Wednesday. We had to make an extra long loop from school to piano practice yesterday because someone forgot her books, and when we stopped at home to grab them I noticed that our Hog Island ewe was grazing and her lamb was no where in sight.

That is a Clun Forest ewe with a new baby, not a Hog Island ewe with a new baby.

Then I notice that faaaar across the field there’s a Clun Forest ewe that is apparently nursing a tottery little one. And I thought–hmm, she didn’t turn out to be a good momma after all and that Clun went and “stole” her little one right out from under her nose.

Here you can clearly see how hard it is to fence sheep in. Wool is an insulator, so it has to be REALLY hot or they push right through. Someone went right through the middle line. Then everyone else followed, I'm sure.

But as long as he was nursing, we rushed off to piano practice and planned to deal with it later.

So the boys and I got back and headed out there to investigate the situation and low and behold, there’s our Hog Island with her sprightly lamb. That “little” guy is all legs. I think I saw him earlier and just didn’t recognize him!

THERE'S the Hog Island ewe! And look at Mr. Long-Legs here!

But that Clun was still out there with…someone.

His momma is a bit shy, so he's already learned that he has to keep up with her.

Turns out somewhere along the way I must have miscounted and we had one left to lamb. I guess it’s easy to get mixed up when I don’t have my clipboard right in front of me. Since I thought that Hog Island ewe was the last one, I just jotted it down on the calendar and hadn’t gone back to do my real paperwork yet, so I just missed that there was one left. A Clun ewe lamb from last year.

Not only did she breed her first season, but she delivered without help and she’s mothering just fine too. Excellent!

Up close you can see that he's still a little yellow because she's not even done cleaning him off just yet.

What an exciting end to the season! This means that every ewe in the field has at least one healthy lamb with her. We had one stillborn twin and lost one twin. We have 17 ram lambs and 3 ewe lambs. Yes, I went back to my paperwork last night after all this “drama.” We’re not expecting any more surprises. Which I’m sure Mr. Fix-It will appreciate since I’m heading off to the Titus 2:1 Conference Friday morning and he’ll already have his hands full.

20–What a good round number!

What’s your busiest day of the week?

 

It’s Lambing Time!

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Well, I’ve been promising a chalkboard painting post, and I swear, it’s coming. But I’ve got bigger news that I just had to share–it’s lambing time!

Twins! We love twins! (Both rams, too!)

Now isn’t that more fun than how to make a chalkboard?

Well, we think it is anyway.

Things can get a little mixed up at feeding time.

It started with twins on Valentine’s Day morning, and now we’re up to five. It was a few weeks earlier than we were really expecting, but March is just around the corner, so we were already prepped and ready.

The three this morning were all ram lambs. (We like rams because our customers like rams.)

Who's who's, and who are you?

We’re keeping our eyes open for a really good ram and a good ewe or two for our own breeding program, but we’re not pressed about it right now. Our flock of Cluns are all young and right now it’s easier for us to keep one, single breeding flock than to try and track two separate genetic pools.

Do you belong to me?

I’ve posted before about how important careful breeding programs are to maintaining heritage breeds. We have a lot of other bustle in our lives too and keeping it simple right now is the best way for us to keep doing a good job. I’m already behind on my paperwork. (Actually, I have the paperwork, it’s the entering it in the database and turning it in to the breed association where I fall off the wagon.)

These two grays ARE her's.

We’ll be moving these guys (and their momma’s, of course) over to the nursery field this evening. We give the ewes some higher quality, partial alfalfa hay and a protein lick in the early weeks of nursing to make sure everyone’s getting what they need. These Cluns’ are excellent mothers and they give everything they’ve got to their lambs. Twins can drain a ewe pretty quickly if you’re not careful and we don’t have any good, green grass right now.

These guys are only a couple hours old. They'll go to anyone at this age. It's up to momma to keep track of them.

Remember #7 last year that got so sick? We’re trying really hard to avoid that again and hope the protein lick this year might help. And we’re keeping an especially keen eye on her too. She recovered fine and her lambs grew up just fine, but we were never able to determine the final root cause so we don’t know if it might happen again.

Anyway–everyone is doing just fine so far. We’ve got two healthy little calves out back and 5 woolies bawling in the side fields. We’ve got 10 ewes left to deliver.

And we’ve got a chalkboard project up tomorrow.

I promise!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Pregnant Pause…Gearing Up for Lambing Season

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We’re on the verge of lambing season around here. Any day now my highly tuned ears could catch the disturbingly human-sounding baby cries of a newborn out in the field. I’m a little surprised that we don’t feel quite so rushed and anxious this year. A little anxious, yes. I mean, we’re expecting 10-25 newborns over the next two months or so. But definitely not so flustered.

I guess we’re getting the hang of this. Last year, though not without it’s hiccups, was definitely our best year yet.

See that belly curving down and that little hollow up by her hipbone? That's a sign of "soon."

We’re gearing up by feeding up. The ladies get extra corn twice a day to help them keep their calories up. And this year we’re also adding a special mineral boost to our regular salt to try and overcome some Vitamin E and Selenium deficiencies we’ve been fighting the last couple years.

I thought giving an adult an injection was unpleasant–I hate needles!  But giving lambs Vitamin E injections is right up there as my least favorite job as a shepherd–and that’s saying something. I can’t stand having to stick them, even if it’s vital for their health and well being. I do it. Oh yes, I do it. But I usually shed a few tears each time. Or con Mr. Fix-It into it if at all possible. And if they need it, it’s usually 2 injections a day for 3-4 days. Ugh!

Look at that round belly! Notice she doesn't have that hollow up by her hip. She's "not so soon, but getting closer."

This weekend I’ve got to run everyone through the chute and double check ear tags and separate out our ram lambs that we’re going to sell so the ladies don’t have to push so much at the feed trough with those youngsters. Besides, they don’t really need the extra corn, they’re fine on hay. They’re not growing lambs.

See how her belly's curving down and she's got a slope in that backline from her shoulder to her hip? She's "pretty soon, but not like tomorrow soon."

These Clun Forest sheep are amazing mothers. In 3 years now we haven’t had a single bottle baby from rejection with them. We did have one who’s mother died in a freak accident. (Seriously freak. Some sheep broke into the feed shed and were rummaging around and a big piece of wood fell on her head. She was never quite right again and we walked out a few days later and she was gone.)

We were working with Hog Island sheep before (and still have some crosses) and we were at 50-60% chance that the mama would just walk away and never come back.  Ugh! Bottle babies can seem fun, but when you work full time away from the farm it’s a bit more like an on-going nightmare.

She gave us twins last year. We have high hopes for this year too, since she's this round and still hasn't dropped yet (No hollow at the hip).

For now, we’re waiting. We’re prepping the newborn kit for emergencies and praying we don’t have any.  And sharing a sympathetic smile when I see them waddling to and from the water bucket or panting as they loooower themselves down or grunting as they heeeeeave themselves up…I know how you feel, ladies.

Shearing Day!

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I wish I had some great, exciting story to tell about how shearing day is so fun, but honestly…it’s really not.  It’s definitely a relief–but that’s about it.

Clun Forest ram, Tiberius. July 2010.

The weather is strange around here.   A lot of people shear early in spring before lambing, but we lamb in Feb/March, out on pasture, which I think is just too early.  We also usually get a wet, rainy May, and we don’t use a fully enclosed barn, so we don’t want anyone to get wet, cold, muddy, and chilled while they’re…well, naked.

I mean, when you go from this…

Ewe before shearing...

To this…

Ewe after shearing.

You’re bound to notice a cool breeze.

So the first week of June would be perfect for us.

But we don’t do it.  We have before.  We may again.  (And I’m using “we” loosely here, ’cause it was all Mr. Fix-It and I think he’d rather get rid of them all then ever do it again.)  But we seem to have trouble finding a shearer every spring (because it’s a horrible job an they’re all busy with people who have a lot more sheep than us) so we just worry and worry and worry until it’s done.

This year we also had a very strange outbreak of live fluke in the wet part of the spring and we were very worried about stressing the animals before we were sure it was passed.  If you’re not a sheep person, that’s probably already more than you want to know about internal parasites.  (And if you are a sheep person…the whole flock popped up with bottle jaw and we had to do two rounds of cydectin and we’re about to follow up with a final round of ivermectin just to be sure.  Thankfully we caught it early and didn’t lose a single animal.  Drop me a note if you want to chat about it.)

But here we are, it’s July, and it’s done.  Yeah!

Oh, and were you wondering what all this process entails?  Well, here ya go!

You start at the top...

And you work your way down...

You twist the sheep up like a pretzel...

Stretch them out like a blanket...

And keep going until it's all off.

It’s hot, dirty work.  I think I drank a gallon of sweet tea just watching him.

The inside of the fleece--right off the sheep.

And you can’t help but think the sheep are a little traumatized.

Let me outta here!

I mean, they have to watch it all too, knowing they’re next.

Shearing Day, July 2010.

And it’s got to be so…so…traumatizing for their flock-y little minds not to match and blend into the crowd.  Little do they realize it’s actually harder to tell them apart once their sheared.  Now I’m back to studying the shape of their eyes or the width of their noses to tell them apart.

And the wool?

We've now got 10 of these!

We bag it up and send it off for the woolen mill.  They’ll sort it, wash it, dry it, comb it, and eventually send us back nice clean packages of roving and yarn to sell.

But we’ll save that for another post!