Done Lambing – for the most part

We are done lambing for the year! Our daughter still has one ewe in her flock left to lamb, but our flock is done. It has been a rollercoaster of high highs and one very low low. I will post about the low another time. But for now, let’s focus on the highs!

Here are the statistics for this year:

• Total ewes delivered: 10
• Time frame from first delivery to last: 20 days
• Total lambs born: 20
• Birthing percentage: 200%
• Total ram lambs: 7
• Total ewe lambs: 13
• Loss: 1 ewe and 1 ewe lamb during delivery
• Milk Sheep Statistics-
  • Milk ewes delivered: 4
  • Milk lambs born: 9
  • Milk birthing percentage: 225%
  • Milk ram lambs: 2
  • Milk ewe lambs: 7
• Wool Sheep Statistics-
  • Wool ewes delivered: 6
  • Wool lambs born: 11
  • Wool birthing percentage: 183%
  • Wool ram lambs: 5
  • Wool ewe lambs: 6

It was a year for female! Especially with the milk sheep, which is what we want from the milk sheep. So that was a blessing. It was our first year consolidating the births down to a short time period – 10 births in just 20 days. Did we like that better than having them spread out over 3 months? I can’t answer that right now – I am too exhausted. Ask me again next week after I have had a few full nights of sleep. 😉

It was intense at times, and definitely exhausting. Eight of the ten births had no complications and everything was fine. One of the triplet births the first one came fine, but the second two were mal-positioned and had to be pulled. But it was an easy help and we had them out fast with no problems for the ewe. The other birth with complications was the one that was the very hard loss – more about that later.

Overall, an amazing year! We are so blessed by this lambing season and are looking forward to watching these lambs as they grow and mature. We are keeping a few for our own breeding flock, but most will be sold. We have started working through the waiting lists already.