Early Lambing

A year on the Farm

February 10, 2013

Well, she has been down for three days now.  Number 114; we call her Old Mottle-face.  She is a Cheviot X; a tough old sheep and David would have spared her from breeding this year except for an overly enthusiastic ram.   She is lying by the fence and Dave has fed her water with supplements and grain but she will not get up.  A bad sign.  The interesting thing is that Walter will not leave her.  The rest of the flock has gone into the back pasture but he has stayed with her.  When Dave goes to see her he runs to meet him and escorts him down to where she is lying.  He watches while Dave tends to her and makes no attempt to take her food and then he stands guard all day and night.  Walter is the Romney ram who normally would be quite aggressive with any interlopers although he knows Dave and has no reason to be afraid.  Still, his attentiveness and his apparent awareness of the help Dave is offering is remarkable.

Walter

Lambing will be early for us this year.  Dave usually waits until he is sure he lambs will drop during the school spring break when he is at home.  The gestation for sheep averages 147 days ( or anywhere from 144-151 days).    Walter could not wait this year and the randy young ram broke out of his field and took care of business earlier than was planned.  Dave is a teacher and so is gone from the farm during the day.  If lambing takes place while he is at home he can provide some protection for new lambs and get them into the barn with their mother for the first few days until they are less vulnerable.  This year, I will need to make regular visits to the farm site and take on some of the shepherd duties.  The biggest danger comes from the ravens who wait for new lambs to appear.  They make easy prey and provide a tasty meal for them and other carrion such as eagles.  Dogs ‘out on the lamb’ are another threat and will panic sheep and kill for the sport.   Lambing is a stressful business.

Shepherd Dave chatting up one of the girls

At least this year the weather is mild although it is wet.  The days are grey but getting longer.  I am looking for the first snowdrops and other signs of spring.

February 11

There are snowdrops.  Small clumps of my mother’s flowers are showing their heads above the grass.  They are flowering in Val’s yard too.  I wonder what will happen to that house now.  Val’s death has left it in limbo as the family try sell it on.  Built for her mother, it is a lovely old house but needs lots of work.  The yard will soon be covered by a blanket of white snow drops as these first brave few promise.  Cottonwood farm was once part of that estate but the acreage was sold to our parents and to David in 1990.  It would be wonderful to reunite it and to turn the old house into a studio for our wool products.

Number 411 is still with us and still being guarded by Walter.  She is lying by the fence behind Val’s and lifted her head as I drove by along the driveway.  Dave says she is still quite bright but has not been up on her feet for four days now.  She cannot last much longer.

A few days ago I began knitting a jacket with the grey wool I had processed last year.  I have had some trouble working out a pattern but hope to make it simple and easy to package into kits.  I need to start moving some of the products we have developed so hope to focus on marketing this year.  This means cleaning up the web-site and advertising; both things I am not necessarily good at.  And, of course, advertising costs money.  I have always found this time of year quite depressing. 

My mother used to remind me not to move or give up my job in February.  It is true I feel this great urge to do something very different and stir things up a bit.  The prospect of sitting behind my desk sorting out the business end of my life is not appealing.

Feb 13

The old sheep found her own way to the flock in the sky last night.  Sad.  She was one of our first sheep; bought from Sandi Robley on Sunset Farm.  No sign of lambs yet though the girls have that tired look and their udders are engorged.  It won’t be long now.

Feb 18

I decided not to tackle the computer business stuff on my own so am working with a young woman to set up the web-site to accept payments through PayPal  and to post this blog.  Working with animals is great fun although it is also hard work.  Dave gets the really tough parts; like worming the sheep (no delicate task) and cutting their toe nails and keeping their hooves trim.  He also has to feed them and watch over them, checking for disease and signs of injury.  When lambing begins, the vigil is constant and distressed ewes have to be dealt with immediately.  There can be difficulties with multiple births as lambs present themselves badly and get hung up on their way into this world.  Sometimes a ewe will require human intervention which often includes reaching into the birth canal and turning or pulling the stuck lamb out.  My hands are smaller than Dave’s so I can reach further.  Once, in the urgency of the moment I forgot to remove my watch.  When the lamb was born I realized my watch was gone.  I later found it ticking away in the straw with the afterbirth.
  

We started this blog because we thought you might like to share stories from the lives of the animals which provide us with this wonderful fibre and learn about the process that fibre goes through to become the yarn you are using in your knitting or weaving projects today.

Feb 26

First lambs!  One of the little brown Romney X’s had coloured twins, one male and one female.  I must have missed her as I was there this afternoon and did not see her in the back pasture against the fence.  Dave found her when he got home and put the three of them in the barn.  There are now 21 sheep left, 18 of them are pregnant.  (The three yearlings were held back because they were too small to breed).  From now on I will count them when I visit and if one of them is missing...........!

First lambs.   Romney X with twins

Feb 28

Triplets arrived this morning.  Dave found the ewe at 6:30 this morning in mild distress as the first lamb had decided to back into this world.  He had to turn her and her siblings arrived all within five minutes.   Of the three lambs, two are white and one is black.   He was able to get them into the barn, safe and dry.  At 10 a.m. all was quiet when I visited although the sheep were under the cedar trees out of the rain.  When I returned at 1:30, one of them had delivered twins, both white.   I left them under the trees since they were clearly healthy and strong.  Dave moved them into the barn this evening as we are expecting a heavy rainstorm tonight.  We are going to have a busy weekend.

Triplets – the two white lams can just be seen lower right

Twins

Yesterday, I had a visit from the Cowichan knitters; women from  Duncan who knit the beautiful Cowichan sweaters.  They have had difficulty locating local fibre and we found each other by chance.  The fibre I  am currently selling is from a line of sheep that have long provided a source of yarn for these traditional sweaters.  Ironically, one of our neighbours who has relatives from the Cowichan  band has provided wool to his Auntie who was featured in the CBC film about the making of the sweaters.  Two years ago, his ram broke through the fence between our properties and bred many of our sheep before we had a chance to separate them – and so we have part of that fleece line now in our flock. 

Before Walter, who is a white Romney, we had a ram called Raven who was black.  The black colour is dominant in both the male and female line and so any sheep bred from Raven’s line are black or brown.  However, it is a rare breed of black sheep that retain their lovely colouring.  With each year the colour fades into lovely shades of grey and silver.  First cuts of fleece from these yearlings is much prized, both for its softness and the black colour.  The many shades of natural coloured fibres are used to knit the Cowichan sweaters.

The  knitters also took away a gift of an Indian Head spinner which was given to me to pass on to them.  Apparently, someone found it in a Thrift Store. It felt good to send it home. This beautifully turned spinner is mounted on a singer sewing machine treadle and is has been used over time by Cowichan knitters to spin the fibre into the yarn suitable for knitting these lovely sweaters.

 The Indian Head Spinner

March 1

The good news today was that one of our brown Romney’s had a healthy black lamb.  The terrible news is that the ewe with triplets lay on them in the night and suffocated them.  She is devastated, and so is Dave who found them in the barn this morning.  The ewe is desperately crying for them.    It has been raining hard and the resulting mud and fog is adding to our dampened spirits.

Romney with singleton

March 2

Dave went out last night in the pouring rain because he could hear a lamb crying.  He found one of the sheep he had brought into the barn because she looked ready had lambed and one of the lambs had managed to somehow crawl out under the gate and was standing out in the mud and the rain, bawling it’s head off.    He returned her to her mum.  The life of a shepherd requires constant vigilance.  

Hard to believe one was out in the rain last night

March 3

The sun shone today and restored our spirits.  I took my granddaughter, Emily back to see the lambs and arrived just in time to see one newly born and being cleaned up and coaxed to her feet by her mum.  She is a singleton and a healthy little ewe. 

Emily watched this lamb being cleaned in the field before the trip to the barn

However, we have one more sheep in trouble.  Dave put her in the barn three days ago as she is very large (triplets?) and looks like she will drop her lambs at any time.  She has now developed a prolapsed although it is only obvious when she is lying down and there.  It is too late in her pregnancy to do anything as she should birth at any time.  The real concern is whether the prolapsed will prevent the birth.  She is eating and drinking and on her feet so all we can do is watch and wait.  

One of the lambs has an eye infection so will need to be treated tomorrow as soon as we can contact the vet.