Lambs

We let the ram and ewes stay together year round.  This means I have no idea when anyone will have a baby.  During spring when other sheep and goat owners were saying my lamb is due is 3 days I was jealous.  I had no idea.  On the other hand I know sheep owners who take time off of work so they can make sure they are ready for complications during the birthing process. We chose our sheep for hardiness: that means easy to take care of.  So I don't have to keep track of dates and we have had healthy lambs that don't need to be watched or bottle fed.

And the advantages are surprises in the pen in the morning!

March 28th

Dot had these two rams while we were at Senior Son's boat race.  

I was sure Deer would be next.

The next morning Mini-Me had a single ram.

Mini-me is our only first time mom and such a Mama's girl that her mom had a really hard time when I decided to keep them locked in the pen for a few hours before they started roaming the property.  

Then we had an endless 2 days were poor Deer just kept getting bigger and bigger.  

And finally she had 2 ram lambs.

They were big sturdy guys so I let them run with everyone the first day.  

Look at this little guy not even 12 hours old and already trying to steal food from his mom!

He really is a beautiful lamb.

Lambs

It has been a busy year.  Yesterday was the birthday of the first lamb born on our property.  

We have decided to make some changes. 

I sold some lambs in January and that was a mistake.  Right now we have so much grass we had to mow our lawn for the first time since buying the sheep.  

Hot Rod has become too aggressive.  I love him and have learned a lot from him but he is going to hurt someone so he has gone to become my friends ram.  The most important lesson from Hot Rod is not to give lots of love and affection to any future rams.  Let them grow up afraid of humans.  The reason Hot Rod became so dangerous is he loves to be scratched under his chin and if you do not respond fast enough to his desires he is more than willing to ram you.  

We have decided that our baby born New Years Day will be our new ram.

He is a handsome young ram with a healthy cautious nature when it comes to humans.

Beautiful sweet Blackwell had twin girls this spring.  I thought she was too old but she is a wonderful sweet mother and her girls are fun loving and curious just like she is.  

Blackwell seemed to be suffering heat exhaustion pretty regularly and our winter/spring has been really warm so we decided to shear the sheep early.  

Blackwell after shearing is the the gray sheep.  Her poor babies didn't recognise her so they spent the hour and a half after we finished shearing her running around screaming.  Even hours later they would nurse from her and then look at her and "BAAAAAAAA" they would run around frantically looking for someone who looked like their mom.  

We decided to avoid that with Dot and her baby.  So we decided to have Twenty-Something Daughter hold the baby while I held Dot and Teen Son did the shearing.  It worked really well.  

The lamb is sleeping on the shearers that we only use on the finer hair.

Even young sheep enjoy a good red wagon.

We didn't have time to shear Max and that turned out to be a good thing because she gave birth to twins 2 days later.  Sadly one was stillborn but we have a very healthy young ram lamb.  

Tree Fodder

We are always searching for ways to cut down on our feed bill.  Luckiy we have a lot of trees on the property.  So every few days I like to cut a couple branches of the trees. 

 The cattle LOVE certain trees and just nibble on others.  Eucalyptus trees are fast growers and the animals love to eat it.  It also has the advantage of seeming to be a fly repellent.  If I can give the cattle several branches of eucalyptus every few days I don’t worry about flies causing problems for the cattle.  The problem is Darling Husband and I have 2 very different styles of cutting trees. 

I like to cut 1 or 3 branches and give that to the cattle every couple days.

  Darling Husband wants to cut a couple big trees and not have to do any cutting for another month. 

In November I convinced him to buy me a small battery powered chain saw and I happily trimmed trees for the last 2 months trying to cut the trees so that the trees would be more bushy along the property line so our neighbor doesn’t have to look at the storage area on the property or just getting some of the trees trimmed nicer. 

I have gotten to the point that there are only a few trees for me to cut that my little chain saw will go through so I have been asking him to cut the bigger trees down so that when they grow big again I will be able to cut those branches with my little saw.  2 weeks ago we cut down several trees that were not giants and the cattle and sheep were in heaven for about 5 days.  This weekend I was determined to have Darling Husband cut one of the mammoth trees down.  This would provide food for the cattle and cut a tree that looked like it was forming a crack and I felt if we cut it down we could control it’s falling. 

Styx likes to play in the sticks as his mom eats near him.

Darling Husband was reluctant.  I said fine! I went to cut one of the small trees that I can cut.  Darling Husband heard that Fine! And thought he better cut a big tree.  Wonderful Husband cut the tree I was hoping he would cut then we started cutting up the branches to give to the cattle. I picked up a branch to throw over the fence, the branch didn’t budge, I realized my foot was on the branch so I lifted up by foot while I was still pulling on the branch and BAM

Darling husband and I had a nice Friday night Date in the local Emergency Room.  I scratched the retina of my right eye with a eucalyptus branch.  

Cycle of Life

This morning I was distracted and let the turkeys out while the House Ding Bat was out. 

He attacked 2  the turkeys and it looked like so much fun Oakley joined the chase and the dogs killed 2 Red Bourbon Turkeys.  

So my stupidity has killed a bird AND undone weeks of training on Oakley. 

To show that the cycle of life is never ending on the ranch this morning we had twins.

  I have been saying for weeks we could have lambs any day and that day finally came. 

Shelby had twins this morning.  

Hot Rod

When we bought our Pelibuey Sheep they were a price I was willing to pay and the right size to help the other sheep keep the weeds down.  I sent Darling Husband and the 2 oldest girls to pick out the lambs.  I wasn’t ready for a ram and repeatedly told Darling Husband and the girls NO BOY SHEEP.  They brought home Dragster, Dodger, Shelby, and Hot Rod.  Hot Rod was a sweet girl until after a few days of owning her I flipped her over and discovered Darling Husband had bought a boy!  Hot Rod was the sweetest little ram lamb you ever saw!  He quickly learned to walk on a halter, would walk beside me while I scratched under his ears. 

  The problem is rams are dangerous. 

  Rams ram things.

I kept reading about how to raise a ram.  We free range our sheep and that makes life with a ram complicated.  Experts have to schools of thought:  your ram should be afraid of all people – it’s too late for this, or work with it regularly keep the ram in a pen and when you want it to go somewhere walk it on lead. Ranches with a lot of sheep will keep a ram in a separate pen with withers (neutered male sheep) so they have company, and always ALWAYS watch your ram. 

Hot Rod is almost 2, his second batch of babies will be born soon, BUT all of a sudden his ramming has increased.  The cows all move out of his way if he wants their food, they do not want to experience another of his head butts.  This weekend I was working on sprinklers and he kept circling me.  I scratched behind his ear and he wanted more when I turned back to work he rammed my hand.  I grabbed a piece of firewood and the next time he ran at me I hit him on the side of the head with firewood.  He looked like I had hurt his feelings but Hot Rod has to learn not to hit anyone.

I am worried we will soon be having a BBQ with Hot Rod as our guest of honor.   For now we are watching his behavior and I hope the firewood has stopped him from ramming anyone soon.

Late Night Phone Call

It has been a crazy few days.  Yesterday Darling Husbands phone rang at one in the morning.  We both shot up in bed and about 329 bad, horrible things went through my head in the seconds it took him to answer the phone.  His brother’s voice cheerfully says “What are you doing up so early in the morning?”  Maybe people who have no kids or animals can turn off their phones at night.  Since we have kids and animals we sleep with the phone by our heads.  My brother in law was stuck at the Emergency Room at the Hospital.  He had crashed his dirt bike and dislocated his shoulder, was dropped off at the hospital and needed a ride home but he wanted to have DH pick him up on the way to work and take him home.  We looked at the clock.  Darling Husband said I can’t leave my brother in the waiting room for 3 more hours.  So he left to pick up his brother.  Darling Husband finished the night sleeping in his truck at his work. 

When Darling husband came home from work he was understandably exhausted.  Our 9 year old was the only one home when it was time to take care of the animals.  It took poor Stick Boy and me almost 2 hours to do the fodder, feed the chickens and put them away,

attempt to put the sheep away,

get 11 sheep put away, feed the cattle, put 4 more sheep away,

walk the dang dog because we still have Maxwell and her baby out, go back and get Max and the lamb in.

Lambs

Sunday afternoon Dragster had her lamb. 

Look how big the chickens are already.

 When I was at work Monday morning, Deer had twins.  

When it was time to put the animals away for the night we found another baby.  

Then a lamb was born every day until Thursday.