Friday, April 18, 2008

13 lambs all in a row

So this is a blog about my life on a little farmette. Hubby and I started out living in the suburbs of DC, got a border collie along the way and now we find ourselves out in the country......raising sheep.
This is our first lambing season. Lambs started popping out 3/18/08 and the last one arrived yesterday. Papa Romey is a very fancy registered Border Leicester. Mama ewe Maisie is a Suffolk and had the first lamb - a beautiful BLxSuffolk speckled face ewe lamb - Mutt. Three BL mamas. Bitty had twins, a ewe and ram lamb. Jazzy had triplets, 2 ewe and 1 ram lamb. Bella had twins, 1 ewe and 1 ram lamb. Jazzy's pregnancy took alot out of her and she had a hard time getting up after lambing. She eventually recovered that day but then rejected one of the babies. So little Bubba is a bottle lamb that I brought in initially to warm up and get going, but he is now in the pasture with the rest of the flock and I bring his bottle there. He has to remember he is a sheep.
The rest of the lambs are from my crazy border cheviot ewes. We lost 2 of these lambs, one was stillborn and one we had to put down yesterday because it seemed to have neurological problems from birth (3 days ago). She never did get up on her feet even with NutriDrench, bottle feeding, BoSe and B Complex shot etc. The rest of the cheviot mamas had 1 ewe lamb and 4 ram lambs! These will hopefully be my worker sheep - for my border collies to work. The pure cheviots themselves are way too flighty to work inexperienced dogs on, so as soon as they wean their babies they are going to market. Might keep one or two for one more breeding season.
Since this is my first blog, I'm not sure what to put into it. I'm going to treat it like a public diary - if it's interesting to me, perhaps my family and friends might like to glimpse occasionally into my crazy life.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I have to say I love the photo you're using at the top of your blog, not that I'm biased or anything! LOL!

I started a blog as a way for family and friends to keep up with what was going on in my life simply because I'm not good about phoning or e-mailing. I think it's a great way to keep in touch!