Our 4th year of lambing out a flock of sheep has concluded. This year was MUCH smoother than the previous three – the lambs have been generally born healthy, strong, and without complications. There were three ewes who didn’t conceive, one lost pregnancy, one lost lamb, and 42 healthy, bouncing, fast-growing lambs. I don’t know …
Our daughter tried to put a halter on one of our wilder sheep(Belladonna), but was only able to get it looped around her neck before the sheep escaped. She was unable to get near her again to remove the halter, so it hung around Belladonna’s neck as she wandered about the pen. As Dan fed …
Our first ewes are due on the 24th of February, so we have begun preparing for the expected flood of babies. Five are marked down for the 24th through the 27th, and a few I didn’t get dates for look like they might also join in for that time frame, thus the expected ‘flood’. Haha! …
It has been a very wet year, and on top of that, the early winter was unseasonably warm. Our soils don’t drain well, so our place was a muddy cesspool from November until early January. The pigs were impossible to manage, as they take moist soil and turn it into deep sucking mud in short …
Most of the winter is spent languishing in the barn, for the animals, at least. The sheep have a cozy pen with as much hay as they can eat, plus minerals and water they can partake in whenever they desire. The cows are tied in stalls to reduce their tendency to lie in their warm, …