Then there was a surprise! One of the Jacob ewe lambs had a baby, and the most beautiful baby she is. She is the daughter of Friar, the Southdown Babydoll miniature sheep ram and the beautiful Jacob ewe. She did not even appear to be bred, so it truly was a surprise and has me wondering if the other ewe lambs are also bred, even though they do not appear to be. Time will tell. I am thrilled to bits with this new addition and will try to create these cross babies each year to share with others. The Jacobs are a small breed of sheep but not miniature. The Southdowns are minitature, though they evolved to be so and were not bred down to be small. Both are exceptional sheep for their fine wool and foraging and hardiness, so the new breed, Southdown Jacobs, should continue with the excellent traits. Welcome to The Fat Ewe Farm little lamby. Oh and for those who have followed the blog for some time, Little Lamby, aka Niki, is a mother of twin boys, but of two sires. It appears she was bred twice in one day by the two rams. One of her babies is Icelandic in nature with a curly coloured fleece and short tail and the other is Cotswold bred, which is unmistakable. Niki is a wonderful sheep and a great mother and she and her babies are going to a new home shortly to be the pet sheep of a family. Niki and her babies will be well loved there, and she will always be my little lamby.
Last fall I tool a chance when I introduced the Southdown Babydolll ram to the ewe lambs. Although the ram was full grown, he was not as tall as some of the lambs, due to his breed size. Still, if the smaller lambs could become bred and he was tall enough to do the job, the result would be some of the most adorable lambs ever, especially the Jacob sheep crosses. When shearing came along, none of the ewe lambs showed any signs of being mated, so I simply thought it did not work out. The Blue Faced Leicester ram lamb was brought in just at the end of the second cycle, so there was still the possibility that he could breed the ewe lambs who were then around 7 months old. By April, if they were bred late, they may not show as pregnant, so in a month, it will be clearer.
Then there was a surprise! One of the Jacob ewe lambs had a baby, and the most beautiful baby she is. She is the daughter of Friar, the Southdown Babydoll miniature sheep ram and the beautiful Jacob ewe. She did not even appear to be bred, so it truly was a surprise and has me wondering if the other ewe lambs are also bred, even though they do not appear to be. Time will tell. I am thrilled to bits with this new addition and will try to create these cross babies each year to share with others. The Jacobs are a small breed of sheep but not miniature. The Southdowns are minitature, though they evolved to be so and were not bred down to be small. Both are exceptional sheep for their fine wool and foraging and hardiness, so the new breed, Southdown Jacobs, should continue with the excellent traits. Welcome to The Fat Ewe Farm little lamby. Oh and for those who have followed the blog for some time, Little Lamby, aka Niki, is a mother of twin boys, but of two sires. It appears she was bred twice in one day by the two rams. One of her babies is Icelandic in nature with a curly coloured fleece and short tail and the other is Cotswold bred, which is unmistakable. Niki is a wonderful sheep and a great mother and she and her babies are going to a new home shortly to be the pet sheep of a family. Niki and her babies will be well loved there, and she will always be my little lamby.
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Sometimes what man does is not a good thing. As in the case of Angora goats. Gracious, I don't know how they survive. The does picked today to drop their kids, today, because it is minus 4 and humid outside and that is cold. The moms do not clean up their kids and the kids are too weak to move when they are born. It is a rare one that can actually stand to nurse. Both moms had twins and it was a race to try to keep them alive. I was busy trying to warm and feed the first two and the second two got cold. The female expired as I was warming her brother in the laundry sink. I won't breed the goats again. The other kids born to the Pygmy and Nigerian Dwarf does are vigorous and up and nursing in minutes and the mother has them cleaned and dry while they are busy nursing. I did mange to milk the second goat, but the first would not let me near her and it was more important to warm her babies and get something in their tummies, so I used milk replacer. Tomorrow I will tackle her and milk the essential colostrum for her babies. One had to be tube fed, but the second feeding, he did suck the bottle. They are in coats and out with their mothers, but in a few hours, I will be up to feed them again. The poor babies, all for the sake of the best fibre, have been forsaken and the mothering instincts all but bred out of the breed. Sad. The new hay smells of a fresh meadow and has poplar leaves, strawberries, different weeds and lots of green grass. There is a huge difference between meadow hay that nature planted and the farmer planted mix of timothy, alfalfa and brome grass. The latter is dead. I never realized that until today, because the turkey hen and the ducks are right under my feet when I am feeding the sheep and the goats with the new hay. For a while I thought they were just finding some seeds in it, but there are wild strawberries, dandelions, clover flowers, and best of all, bugs. The bugs are dried and dead of course, but when you are a duck or a turkey, and it has been a very long winter, any bug is good. The turkey jumps up and snatches the bugs in the hay as though they were alive, but the ducks just hunt and munch. I have to be super careful not to stab a duck with the fork because they climb right into the hay - it is that good! And the sheep and goats love it and eat it up. I think the rich hay with too much alfalfa caused multiple births and huge babies for the sheep because it was too rich with protein and too dead with minerals. Next year I hope only to have a fourth of the sheep and a few of the goats, so I won't need to buy so much hay. They waste about half of it when it is too old, too stemmy, has little leaves or blades of grass and when it is the mix of the standard farmer these days. Imagine that the farmer tears up a great field of pasture hay with all the delicious offerings and weeds to plant the un natural hay and then fertilizes it with chemicals. I would not doubt that Round up is used to kill the weeds before planting that hay too. So, my farmer's little helpers are enjoying the new hay as much as the fuzzy creatures too, and I love it. The old hay had mould in it, some bales worse than others, and some so bad they had to be discarded. This hay is fresh and clean and my lungs, as well as the lungs of the animals thank the farmer for it. The duckies do too. I went to Vermillion to pick up a pregnant Tunis sheep this morning from my friend Betty. The Tunis ewe does not fit her program because all the other lambs are two months old, so she was obviously caught on the last day the ram could have bred the ewes. Tunis sheep, originally the red fat tailed sheep from Tunisia, were imported to North America long ago and bred with American sheep to create the North American Tunis, which is quite different from the Tunisian Tunis. The most noticeable difference is that they no longer have fat tails, and they are only slightly reddish now, not the terra cotta of the original sheep. There were no more births today, so the chores got done and so did the dishes. I must go out and close up the chickens, ducks and geese in their pens for the night, though the ducks have figured out how to go through the fence and as soon as I put them in, they scamper back out. There are three geese setting on nests and one of the turkeys. The tom turkey is sick. I gave him garlic and honey for two days, but he is not eating, so today he got a shot of antibiotics. Walter, the Cotswold is sick too, and tomorrow I will go back to the vet's to get him another medicine. He has already been on several and is not responding and he is skin and bones. Poor Walter. Other than that, I am finally getting around to vacuuming. I can hardly believe it myself! Finally, a quieter day is a good day. I had all these fabulous new pictures that I accidentally deleted, so tomorrow, I will have to take more. This morning I had to pull a lamb whose leg was backwards. Lambs should present with the two front feet and nose first. This one had one foot and the nose and the other foot was back. I tried to stuff the baby back and find the foot, but no luck. The only option was to try to pull the lamb out when the mother was pushing. Fortunately, we did it and the little ram lamb was born. He was weak, but not as weak as his sister, who followed shortly. When there is distress in multiple births, the unborn can be deprived a good oxygen supply and sometimes, they are not quite right. The little ram is pure black and the sister a beautiful deep chocolate moorit. Her front and one back legs are not quite right. This is the first year that there have been any deformities or weaknesses in the sheep or goats. Neither twin was strong enough to nurse, so I milked 8 ounces of colostrum from the mom and bottle fed half to each of them. That perked them up to try to nurse on their own. The male is still very weak but the the ewe lamb, despite her bad legs, is quite spunky. I think her legs will straighten out in time. If they have not improved by tomorrow, I will put her in splints. Shortly after that birth, Sharon the goat gave birth to triplets, all boys. What is with the males this year. So far, there is on set of female twin lambs and one of the twins born today is female, and only one out of 9 goat kids is female. There are still a lot of goat babies to come. They are all white Angora looking and all have blue eyes at this stage, and beautiful white curls. That was the last of the Icelandic ewes to birth, but the ram busted through the fence when he had bred his ladies, so it will be a wait and see event now to know how the lambs will turn out. Hopefully Walter will have done his share of breeding before the Icelandic ram got in. The Babydolls were bred Babydoll, but it appears only 3 became pregnant and one has lost her lamb. The Jacobs ewe was bred Jacob, but the Jacob ewe lambs were in with the Babydoll ram until the last when the Blue Faced Leicester ram came in for clean up. I cannot wait to see how the Jacob Babydolls will look and their fleece should be amazing. Tomorrow the Tunis ewe arrives. She is heavy in lamb, so will give birth to one to three babies in a day or two. Tunis are naturally reddish sheep with somewhat fat tails left over from their original breeding and they have moderate wool. Time to snooze....zzzzzz. Tomorrow is another busy day! I woke up early to check on the sheep and goats who are in the midst of having babies. Little Rosey Babydoll Southdown, was not doing well. She was trying to birth a huge lamb, a little coloured girl, but the lamb had died from stress and Rosey was upside down and still straining. The second foot was locked back so I got it out and then pulled the lamb from her. I was shocked at the size, the lamb being twice as big as the Icelandic that was born to a sheep three times Rosey's size. It was sad for the mother sheep. All day she cried for her baby. I was hoping another sheep would give birth to twins and I could graft one on to Rosey, but there were no more today. There was a goat though, who had triplets. I arrived just as she dropped the third, but she was aspirating on amniotic fluid so I turned her upside down and cleared her mouth and nose. A weak little cough and she was gurgling and attempting to breath. She is the only little female goat born so far, but she has problems. She cannot use her back legs. She dragged the tops of them raw, so I made her some splints and gave her a coat. I did help her nurse from her mother and was going to milk the mother, but when I arrived to do so, she had dragged herself on her front legs and was nursing on her own. I have left her with her mother at this point, but the two brothers are much stronger and will likely push her away. I have a bottle ready just in case. Celia had twin boys today too, two little bucklings. All the kids look like miniature Angoras with white coats and the typical round Angora kid head and curly coats. I was hoping for coloured babies, though so far, they have all been white because the colour and coat are so dominant. So, so far, Celia has twin bucklings, Taffy has a single buckling and Sherry has triplets, two boys and a girl, but the girl is crippled. I did give her a vitamin shot and looked for selenium and Vitamin E, but I am out. Tomorrow morning I will go to town early and pick some up, plus some more nipples, just in case. Then Rosey had a little girl but lost her and Leda has twin boys and so does Red. It seems to be a boys year. I hope tomorrow is a better day for the little mothers. Bless you sheepies and goaties! The babies have started to arrive in full swing. Today, this morning, I was greeted with a baby cria (llama), a sweet little girl with a red coat and black mask. She is so beautiful. Lucy Llama, her mother, is a quiet, halter trained llama, and is very protective as is her Aunty Karin. The ewes all came over to inspect the new arrival. Then in the early afternoon, I was surprised by Leda, a young ewe, when she delivered twin boys, one black and one white, but they weighed only about 2.5 and 3.5 pounds each. It is not unusual for Icelandic ewes to birth twins and even triplets, but she is young, only a year and a bit herself, so this was quite difficult for her. She had the boys cleaned up and nursing quickly, then moved them inside for the evening. In a day or two, when she feels they are aware enough , she will bring them back to the flock. The twin girls born two days earlier have already joined the adults, though Mamma Red keeps a close watchful eye on them. Then late this evening, Taffy did not come out of the small shelter when I checked the goats. It was nearly dark and I thought for a moment I saw something small and white near her. Sure enough, there was a tiny blue eyed buckling, half Angora and half Nygerian. He appears to be healthy and robust. I will check on him before bed to be sure he has nursed. Sometimes new mothers are not quite sure what that is all about. If his tummy is full and his mouth is warm, he and she will have figured all that out. Nigerian Dwarf dairy goats are great, but Angoras are terrible, because the mothering instinct has been forsaken for the best fibre. These babies are only the beginning of an estimated 60 lambs and goats that will be born on the farm this year. It is the most exciting and heartbreaking time. Sometimes nature takes its course and for whatever reason a young one does not make it. The mother cries and so do I, but for the most part, we have been extremely fortunate at The Fat Ewe Farm and the babies and mothers have gone on to see tomorrow. How blessed I am to be the stewardess in all of this. It is pure bliss and I am grateful to our Creator that I can share in the new lives. Thank you. Leda is a yearling Icelandic ewe out of my beautiful leader sheep, now living at another farm. Leda has twin boys, the tiniest lambs I have had so far, with the white one at just under 3 pounds and the black at just over. Leda has the boys mostly cleaned and they were attempting to nurse when I left them for the evening. Icelandic sheep have not lost their strong maternal instincts and seldom require any interventions. They are very milky and make superb mothers.
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AuthorFluffy writes daily about the experiences on the farm and with the bed and breakfast patrons. Archives
October 2020
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