In a 24 hour span, starting around 7am on Monday morning, 5 of my ewes lambed. I know some folks lamb out dozens of ewes at a time. But since I usually only have a tiny handful of pregnant ewes each year, this spring felt like a flood of lambies!
Gwilym: Courante x Nhu
Plus, my little barn is set up to handle three or four penned ewes. Clancy had to use some chipboard to improvise a couple of extra pens.
Francesca (moorit) & Jane (black): Ash x Sian
So far Courante has given me 3 ram lambs from his ewes- January & Nhu. My favorite is Gwilym because his fleece is super crimpy. But all the boys are very solid and nicely fleeced.
Ash has given me 3 ewe lambs and 1 ram lamb from his pen of girls- Sian, Vianne, & Leil. All three are wonderful and I just might keep them.
I'm pretty sure Lyneth from Courante's pen didn't take again this year.
And each pen has one more ewe to lamb...Hannah/Courante and Lana/Ash. I'm hoping for ewe lambs!
Ian: Courante x Nhu
My friend with the Icelandics, Mary, made me a whole stack of these wonderful little lamb coats. She modeled them off of a Premier One Supply coat that she had bought. I am SO GRATEFUL to her for this gift. The weather has alternated between cold/windy to cold/windy/wet. So these little coats helped the shepherd sleep so much better knowing her lambs had an extra layer of warmth those critical first days. They do cover up the fleeces so it isn't as easy for followers to see what I got this year. But I am very happy with the fleeces. One thing that is great with this lamb crop is uniformity.
Glisten: Ash x Vianne
All in all, I'm very pleased with the babies from this first round of lambing.
*~*~*~*~*~ SUMMARY ~*~*~*~*~*
S'more Courante:
LRO January: "Sextant" single black katmoget ram
BL Nhu: Twins: "Gwilym" black katmoget ram, "Ian" moorit katmoget ram with head spotting
Little Red Oak Ash:
BL Leil: "Tucker" single gray ram lamb with tiny head spotting
BL Sian: Twins: "Francesca" moorit ewe lamb, "Jane" black ewe lamb
BL Vianne: "Glisten" single black katmoget ewe lamb
7 comments:
Five at once would feel like an awful lot to me as well! How odd to get all rams from one sire and all ewes from the other. I'll hope for you that the last two ewes reverse that trend. Sounds like you will have a lot to choose from at any rate; after getting a more experienced shepherd's hands-on evaluation today, I'm not sure either of my ewe lambs are keepers.... :-(
Here is how tired I am...it took me until just now to realize I have been thinking it wrong since Monday...
Leil gave me a ram lamb (Tucker) from LRO Ash. Good greif, what is wrong with me?
I'll correct the blog post.
I'm sorry you don't know about your ewe lambs. Is the info on your blog? Truth is, I'll probably keep these girls unless they are so unworthy as to get sent to the freezer. I really want some polled genetics out of Sian. And Vianne's little girl is the first AnnaBelle granddaughter I've had. I've been trying so hard to get more solid polled genes out of that line too. So all these ewe lambs are most likely a step forward for me.
No, nothing on my blog about the lambs for various reasons. Both my little girls have a good chance of carrying polled, and both have nice enough conformations. But I REALLY want to move forward (finer) in the fleece department, and I don't think they will give me that critical component.
Oh, that is too bad, Michelle.
Ash (sire of the ewe lambs) had a nice micron report last year. I'm hoping it is still encouraging this year. My hands tell me he is finer than both the dams of the ewe lambs. So I think I have a good chance at moving forward in the fleece category too.
We'll see. I see other folk's numbers and I'm not even close to those fine fleeces yet. But I don't want to scrap everything I've got and start over either. So I'm hoping to improve just a tiny bit each season. Takes forever.
Good luck to you as you make those choices. They can be hard.
Congratulations on all the lambs Sabrina! It's a good thing I went for Ash while he was available since you didn't get a polled white ram lamb.
About the fine fleeces, I've seen firsthand how my coarsest ewe (Bramble Jemma) produced our finest fleeced lamb in 2006.
My coarsest fleeced ewe gave me three promising lambs this year, this fall we will see if my hands and eye are getting better at determining what is fine fleece.
Don't be too discouraged you guys, we all have a long way to go.
What is wrong with me?..... I didn't congratulate you on the new babies. Very nice Sabrina, I love the markings on the last one's face, such a beauty.
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