I finally got around to deworming the lamb group with the poopy butts today, along with the 4 rams, one of whom was similarly besmirched.  The rams were surprisingly cooperative, while the lambs were predictably loopy.

As part of the project, I weighed all the sheep I handled today.  I’m still in the process of staring at my lambing spreadsheet, but the weight data are a little confusing:  Some of the lambs gained lots of weight in the last 20 days, some lost weight or didn’t gain, while very few gained just a little.  I’m wondering if the difference between the gainers and the rest is parasite load, which gives me more motivation to figure out how to do fecal egg counts myself.  I’ll have more to say about the lamb data once I’ve looked at it some more.

It was very interesting to see the ram weights for the first time.  The big black fellow is 188lbs rather than the advertised 250lbs, but I’m still hoping he’s big enough to make market lambs with the katahdin ewes.  The big disappointment was the fancy dorset ram who was supposed to bring genetic magic to my flock, along with sliced bread and free ice cream.  He was born at the end of October last year, and he weighed 97 pounds near the end of March.  He looked pretty small when he arrived here in May, but I figured he’d grow quickly, given the fanciness of his breeding.  Today he weighed in at 101lbs, so I’m very much hoping that he has virtues beyond his size.