Mary Had A Little Lamb (Really!!)

Posted on March 21, 2012 by

Mary just gave us our last lamb for the season.  A very BIG healthy white ewe lamb.  By far the most rigorous of all our lambs.  This one was literally bouncing around within hours of hitting the ground!

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Groucho or Panda?

Posted on March 20, 2012 by

Call him Groucho or call him Panda – either way he is waaaaaaay too cute!

He's 6 days old!

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Weekend Update for March 17th

Posted on March 19, 2012 by

For me this weekend was about getting back to normal.  Meaning NOT getting up for midnight lamb feedings!  The two sets of triplets are doing pretty well with their first time mama’s.  My ongoing concern with these first time overachievers (triplets are a lot for a first birthing) is that they can produce enough milk.  So far, pretty good!  I’m being a bit over-cautious and offering a bottle feeding 3 times a day for whoever is hungry.  There are a few takers, but I think they are all doing well.

I did rearrange the sheep in anticipation on Mary giving us the last lambs of the season soon.  It started by taking Gunther out of his bachelor stall and enclosed paddock and moving him out to pasture.  No reason to pay for hay! I also caught Caroline and drug her bouncing and bucking out to pasture with him.  I used the change to check her udders and all.  She is not pregnant.  Looks like I’ll be selling her as a fiber animal.  What a waste of time and energy to raise her for nothing!

Then I took Luann and her babies out of their small lambing pen and into the paddock and open stall.  So hilarious to watch the three little ones bounce around!  Now I wait for Mary and when she has her lambs she’ll go into the open lambing pen.  When Snowball and her triplets are about a week old (this coming weekend) they will all go into the paddock and stall with Luann and her brood.

I ponder when I feel comfortable turning the ewes and lambs out to pasture during the day (I’ll lock them up at night).  Those babies are so tiny!  Seriously, I’m afraid the local eagles will pick them off.

Mark is finishing up the construction on the refurbished farm stand.  It is AWESOME!  His vision and execution is amazing.  How many farm stands can boast bead board with trim and a 1920’s wood cook stove?  My task is to paint it and we’ll be pretty much done.

Mark also started building the farrowing pens for his two sows.  They are due in about 3 ½ months and then we’ll be flooded with little Berkshire and Berkshire cross piglets!

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Triplets for Snowball!

Posted on March 17, 2012 by

Snowball, Snowball, Snowball…. Ewe of the prolapse, ewe of enormous size and focal point of my pregnancy watch obsession.  You have really out done yourself this time!

I got every shepardess’ worst nightmare – The Call.  My call went like this.  “There is something really wrong.  I walked out and there are feet and a nose poking out.  She not pushing at all and the tongue is hanging out and the baby is all white and dead looking.”  I’ll be right there!!!! But, I work a bus, car and ferry ride away from my farm.  Which means I’ll be there in about 2 hours and many phone calls later.

The next call went like this “your mom is here to help and she’s chasing Snowball all over the pasture trying to get her in a stall.”  Tell her TO STOP CHASING THE BIRTHING EWE!  Next “your mom has her sleeves rolled up and is starting to pull out the lamb”.  Tell her TO STOP PULLING!!  Leave them alone for an hour and see how things progress and let nature do its thing.  Next “the lamb really does look dead.”  When it is born TREAT IT LIKE IT WAS ALIVE and nurture it.

And then the clouds parted… the next call I got I was about a half hour away from home.  “The lamb is out and it’s alive and Snowball is licking it like crazy!”  And my husband got home and started right away sub-dividing the large sheep stall into two smaller areas; one for Luann and her triplets and one for Snowball.

When I hit the farm we moved Snowball and her white ewe lamb into their lambing pen and waited… and waited…. I kept on seeing two hooves come out a few inches and then go back in.  I could tell that they weren’t the right feet!  They were either back feet or front feet upside down.  GROAN!  About two and a half hours after lamb #1 was born lamb #2 came.  I gave a little pull to speed up the process since the large black and white ewe lamb was backwards.  Mom did a pretty good job of licking it, but she was not as attentive as lamb #1.  And she was getting distracted by #1 who was up and trying to nurse.

Then I saw the bag for lamb #3.  I figured I had a few minutes since everything else had taken hours.  I stepped out to get a water bucket.  And then came back to find the lamb on the ground, totally enclosed in the sack (it hadn’t broken) and Snowball not paying any attention to it.  I jumped in, torn open the sack and cleaned out the mouth and nose.  No breathing.  I started rubbing its slimy little ribs and tummy and wiping off the face again and then the black and white ram lamb started to breath.  Mom gave him one lick and was done with him.

And the favoritism started then.  It’s amazing to see how the bonding progression works.  For the first 24 hours I held Snowball 4 times to make sure all lambs got to suckle off of her.  It was heartbreaking to see her head butt the tiny black and white lambs away.  I supplemented them with a bottle every 4 hours.  But Snowball has adjusted way faster than Luann did.  Largely in part (most likely) to the smaller birthing pen that she is in.  Now at a day and a half she will nurse all three, but lamb #1 is still her favorite and the others get pushed some.  I’ll be offering milk multiple times a day as things settle down and her milk production picks up.

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Triplet Update

Posted on March 14, 2012 by

Triplet lamb 2 days old

So far, the triplets are doing well and we’re beating the odds against premies and mortality. After four days of wrestling Luann she won’t take to the two white lambs.   Luann is 100% bonded and feeding the smallest black lamb.  And the biggest white lamb is TOTALLY capitalizing on this fact.  He won’t take a bottle feeding anymore since he “steals” milk whenever blackie nurses or when Luann is distracted.

That leaves Blinky; the small white lamb.  He might get the occasional sip from Mama, but he is basically 100% bottle fed.  That is, by hand about 6 times a day because he is so small.  “How small”, you ask?  The average quad Finnsheep lamb weights about 6 ½ pounds.  My smallest triple weighs in at 3 pounds 2 ounces!  The next one up from that about 3 ½ pounds.  The big white lamb is the only normal sized one of the bunch.

The fact that they are all thriving is pretty amazing.  Especially with two bummers.  So what is my action plan?  Leave them all together in a stall for most likely another 2 weeks.  Those babies are small!  Monitor blackie and the big white ram to make sure both are getting enough milk from Luann.  Continue to bottle feed Blinky.  This weekend I’m going to switch over from hand feeding to having milk available round the clock.  That means I’ll have hand fed him for a week and I’ll train him where the bottle is and how to help himself.  That shouldn’t be too hard!

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Luann and Her Triplets: Day Three

Posted on March 12, 2012 by

I’ve got a new farm work out!  If you want to get this:

Then all you have to do is this:

But it really only works if you do it at 12:00 midnight and then again at 4:00 in the morning.  Here’s the scoop!

Luann has decided to claim one of her lambs.  The smallest little black ram.  Which is great, but leaves me with two other ones to feed or get grafted onto her.  The small white ram now has his eyes open which is another good thing.  There is a lot less bleating without him blindly walking around the pen looking for other sheep.

Mark and I had been wrestling with Luann multiple times a day to let the white rams nurse.  Mark had been trying to hold her while I would put the lambs on.  This would work for a very short time and then she and Mark would start to struggle, the lambs would lose their latch and we’d start all over again.  So, it wasn’t working well and it was a two person job.  One of the last times Mark was (understandably) getting tired so I said “let’s switch” because I wanted to try a different technique.  I had just thought back to my ole equestrian days and the motto “where the head goes the horse will follow”.  Or, what is the easiest way to get a horse NOT to buck?  Keep his head up.

With this epiphany I straddled Luann around the neck (like a stanchion) and put her rump against the wall.  Then a lifted her head up high and started rubbing her jaw and ears to relax and distract her.  She pretty much stood still while both white rams nursed!  And this is something I can do on my own without help.  It does get a bit dicey when I have to reach around backwards to make sure the lambs are attached and nursing well.

Now that they are getting more of mama’s milk hopefully she let them nurse on their own.  So far, not.  They are also waaaaaay less interested in bottle feeding.  They are relentless in following her around and trying to nurse.  Why won’t she just give up?  We’re about 48 hours into it….

The rest of the farm workout for the upper body this weekend was unloading 1,000 pounds of chicken feed, hauling 300 pounds of chicken manure and 400 pounds of hay.

Yes, I am tired!

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Luanne’s Lambs

Posted on March 10, 2012 by

Cailinn and our first black ram lamb

I looked out my bedroom window this morning and saw all our animals except for Luanne.  I bit odd, but no big deal.  As I was feeding the chickens all the white ewes were bleating at me and still no Luanne and then I heard it!  A lamb’s bleat and I saw a little white head poke around the stall door.

Awesome! She had a lamb during the night. Nooooo, she had THREE!!!  Two white and one black ram.  One of the white ones is gigantic and the other two are pretty small.  They must be a few days early since two had their tightly shut when I went up there.  One’s eyes have since opened.

It’s pathetic to watch “Blinky” bumble blindly around the stall.  Even sadder is that Luanne is rejecting her lambs – HARD.  I got Mark out there to hold her still while I stripped her.  This is pulling on a teat until the plug comes out so the babies can nurse.  Then he fought to hold her while I got each lamb up to nurse that first precious milk.  They had gone too long from birth to about 7:30 AM without food.

Blinky and one of his brothers

Sometimes first time mama’s with multiple births can have a hard time so I’m hopeful she’ll change her attitude.  So far today we’ve wrestled her 3 times to force nursing and I’ve bottle fed them 3 times.  I’ll be going out there about every 4 hours to feed them for the next 6 days unless Luanne becomes more maternal.

She does seem to have warmed up to the black lamb.  Which is good because he worries me the most.  He doesn’t bleat much and his suck is weaker than the others.

And, the other ewes are progressing quickly so we should have lots of lambs very soon.  Anyone looking for some great Finnsheep genetics give me a call!

Bryn - she is more excited then this picture depicts!

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