When the sheep first come onto new pasture, there’s a bubbling energy in the flock. Some of the sheep seem to have the idea that there’s one perfect blade of grass, and they have to find it before someone else does.
Travels with Musti
Dogs, nature, photography, and the meaning of life, with apologies to J.S.
Posts from the “sheep” Category
After the recent days’ drama, today I’ll again take refuge in cute lamb photos. This is the last pair of twins born this season, with mom in the background.
Tagged: Barb Eriksson, Bea, blach and white, Border Cheviot, dorper, ewe, Hollow Oak Farm, lambs, north country cheviot, twins
I’m very happy to write that reports of Lefty’s demise were greatly exaggerated. Last night, Bravo was slow coming down for dinner, and when he showed up, his legs were covered in blood. The last two times this happened, it meant the demise of a lamb, and when I took an inventory of the flock, I couldn’t find Lefty and assumed that he was the third to fall. This morning, though, I found him in the field with his mother, alive but missing the bottom part of his lame leg.
I bandaged him and shot him up with some penicillin, and he didn’t seem too much worse off than before — he’d been unwilling to use that leg since his encounter with Bravo on the day he was born. My charitable interpretation of what happened is that the leg had become necrotic, and Bravo felt compelled to do something about it; the medical repertoire of a Maremma is understandably limited. Regardless, I don’t think I’ll give Bravo another crack at Lefty any time soon, but I’m a bit reassured that, absent extenuating circumstances, Bravo will probably behave himself with the rest of the young lambs.
Tagged: alive, amputation, bravo, gimpy, Hollow Oak Farm, lame, Lefty, livestock guardian dog, maremma, not eaten, Romney
Now that lambing is done, I’m starting to plan for summer grazing management for the whole flock. I want to get the two groups back together, and my first step was to test Bravo’s behavior with young lambs. I know he’s not safe around newborns, and I learned that he’s just fine with 7-week-olds, so I was trying to get a better sense of the changeover point.
I spent perhaps 40 minutes with him when I first brought him over, and he was mostly interested in catching up with all the smells that had accumulated since he’d moved to the lower field. I checked a little while later, and he seemed to be relaxed and gentle with the newest members of the flock.
I checked a couple more times, and all was going well until he ate Lefty. Not sure if he was finishing what he’d started (way too anthropomorphic, I assume) or just identified a weak member of the flock as a dinner prospect. Not so cool either way, and still trying to figure out my next move.
Tagged: bravo, eaten, killed, lamb, Lefty, livestock guardian dog, maremma, megabummer
I put the sheep to work on the rapidly-growing lawn below the Fortress today.
I’m thinking that the days of gasoline-powered lawn mowers are behind me.
Tagged: back yard, grazing, happy, Hollow Oak Farm, lawn-mowing brigade, pasture, sheep, tall grass
Today the last of the pregnant ewes gave birth to twins. It seemed fitting that my first and last lambs were black.
Now that lambing is over for 2017 (barring mystical events), here’s a first pass at documenting what happened.
- Of my 27 adult ewes and one ewe lamb, 24 gave birth; 4 ewes didn’t get pregnant for some reason.
- 36 lambs were born between 3 February and 20 May, and 30 are still alive.
- There were 2 sets of triplets, 8 sets of twins, and 14 singles, a “lambing rate” of 150% (where 100% is all singles and 200% is all twins). Many shepherds try for a lambing rate of 185%, hoping for as many twins as possible with few or no triplets (who are more likely to die of something or other).
- Of the lambs who died, 2 were eaten by Bravo, 1 died after a complicated labor and C-section, 2 died of hypothermia in a May snowstorm, and one died from a combination of cold and maternal abandonment
- My lambing mortality rate was a bit under 17%, while the national average is about 15%. I think 4 of the deaths (the Bravo victims and the hypothermic twins) were ultimately attributable to my inexperience and bad decisions, so if I were an optimal shepherd, my mortality rate might have been as low as 6%.
- The 6 winter lambs were sired by a Texel ram. Of the 8 lambs whose sex I could identify, 4 were female and 4 were male.
- The spring lambs, sired by my border cheviot ram, were 18 females and 6 males. I’m not sure that either group is large enough to draw any statistically meaningful conclusions, but one tempting explanation is that the ram influences the sex ratio of the offspring. I’m very curious if this is borne out with the cheviot’s offspring next year.
Tagged: black lamb, Border Cheviot, dorper, ewes, Hollow Oak Farm, lambs, last lambs, newborn, north country cheviot, statistics, twins
I was particularly grateful for the border collies when Musti died. They don’t brook any wallowing, always asking “What’s next?”, and they pulled me through a difficult time. It seems that sheep have some of the same world view (I wonder who learned it from whom…). We lost two lambs during the snowstorm on Saturday night, and the forsaken triplet lamb died some time over Sunday night. But this morning, the Katahdins were back at it, with twins and triplets waiting for me in the field first thing.
These triplets are bigger and more vigorous than the previous set, and the ewe seems to be taking good care of all three. The challenge over the next couple of months will be getting her enough food to nurse all of them without her turning into a bag of bones. The safe decision would be to pen her and her lambs and feed her tons of corn every day, but then I’d never find out if she has the genetics to pull of the trick eating just grass. TBC…
Tagged: border collies, cheviot, Hollow Oak Farm, Katahdin, lambs, Musti, pasture lambing, triplets, twins
We’ve gone from snow and lethal cold on Sunday morning to uncomfortable heat this afternoon… Local friends assure me that this is not typical, but I’m not sure any of us know what typical looks like these days. In any case, part of the flock took advantage of the sinkhole Eversource left after installing a new transmission tower in the pasture last fall. I’m anxious for the power company to fix their mistake, but perhaps not until the temperature moderates a bit.
Tagged: cool ground, cooling off, Eversource, ewes, Hollow Oak Farm, Hot day, hot sheep, lambs, lazy, sheep, sinkhole
The Dude arrives.
My newest ram was born in Petersburg Pennsylvania on Kathy Soder’s K Bar K Farm at the end of October last year, was transported to the Big Ohio Sheep Sale in Eaton Ohio last Wednesday, hitched a ride to Westmoreland New Hampshire with my friend Mike Wright (who sells sheep at the show), and came home to Sullivan this evening. He briefly got away from us as we were moving him from Mike’s trailer to my truck, so I don’t dare transfer him to the barn until I have help tomorrow morning.
He arrives with the hope that his genetics will make more twins, easier lambing, better mothers, and bigger lambs, all without any supplemental grain. The bet on the fancy ram doesn’t start to come due until some time next spring when his first lambs arrive, not the stuff of instant gratification, but better than T-bills.
Tagged: chase, Dorset, Eaton OH, escape, Hollow Oak Farm, K Bar K Farm, Kathy Soder, Mike Wright, Petersburg PA, ram, sheep, Westmoreland NH
A couple of days ago I said something about the magic of pasture lambing. Today I remembered that it’s a really bad idea to tempt fate. We were supposed to get a fair amount of rain over night, and I did my best to prepare for that; it never occurred to me that we would get a mid-May snowstorm.
Two lambs didn’t make it through the night, and I found their distraught mother with their bodies in the morning.
The snow also brought a long day of lamb triage; more stories in the coming days.
Tagged: cold, dead lamb, freak storm, Hollow Oak Farm, hypothermia, lambing, lambs, May, pasture, sheep, snow, triage