# The Good.  The Bad.  And The Sad.



## rockdoveranch (Apr 21, 2011)

I will start with The Bad!

We planned on breeding this year with The Old Man, the ram in my avatar.  But, that is NOT going to happen because  . . . we pulled our last ram lamb out of the ewe herd TOO late as we are having babies now, and we should not be having babies now.  

The Good.

We had one lamb two days ago, and 4 yesterday.  

The In Between the Bad and the Good.

10pm last night we hear a baby crying and have to go out with flash lights to see what is wrong.  I do not like going out at night when it is hot because of SNAKES; copperheads mostly, but we do have the reclusive Timber Rattler, Cotton Mouths and Coral snakes.  

Prior to hearing the cries we had only had two lambs born yesterday.  We found a very small ewe lamb wandering around by itself and three mommas with one baby each.  After about an hour we decide one ewe had had twins and for some reason had rejected the tiny baby.  We placed the baby close by its twin and hoped for the best.

This morning we brought the mom and the twins to a pen and left them.  Mom is letting the tiny ewe lamb nurse SOMETIMES, but not always.  We are supplementing with colostrum and will see how it goes. 

The Sad.

We see a ewe in labor late this afternoon and leave her be only to come back to find three feet sticking out with one nose.  This is NEVER good!  The first lamb was dead.  When I pulled its twin out, it was dead too.  SO SAD!  As hard as this is on me, it has to be so much more worse on the ewe. 

The last time this happened, 3 years ago, one lamb survived and was our very first ever bottle baby.  

Back to The Good.

We have another ewe that I am sure will lamb over night.

Hopefully tomorrow will be a GOOD day!


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## carolinagirl (Apr 22, 2011)

Aw, too bad about your avatar ram not being the sire this year.  How old was the ram lamb? I guess that's something I'll need to keep a close watch on.  These sheep are sexually mature pretty darn quick!

 And I am so sorry about the loss of your lambs.  That is really sad.  Did you get more lambs overnight? Hopefully that all went well?


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## rockdoveranch (Apr 22, 2011)

I would have to look back at my records, but I know the ram lamb was over 3 months old.  We WERE stupid!  I just hate separating the little boys from their mommas.

The black belly is still pregnant.  Her vulva looks totally ready.  Last time she lambed, which was in 09, she had twins.

When I checked the ewe who had the 2 dead babies, her vulva still looked like they do when birthing; smooth and stretched out.  I wonder if she was not totally dilated when the babies were ready to come out.  Her last birthing she had toxemia.  Thank heaven for Karo syrup as she totally recovered in a few weeks.  We started calling her tilt-a-world!  She had a lovely black belly ewe lamb in 09.

The tiny baby is doing okay, but I am not so sure she will make it.  Mom only lets her nurse when she is eating sweet pellets.  We will continue to supplement, but she did not suck well well this morning.  Could be mom rejected her because she was small and weak.

Nap time . . .


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## rockdoveranch (Apr 23, 2011)

The black belly had twins around noon today.

The little tiny twin from Wednesday is still hanging in there.

89.4 degrees outside at 2:30pm.  Miserable heat and drought.


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## jenn (Aug 21, 2011)

My interest is so peaked!! Did the lamb live??? 

It is very hard to come home and find a ewe that has struggled with lambing and then her babies die.   We had a similar situation but both feet and nose were present, we came home from work and found it like that and she was very very tired! We pulled the 1st lamb and let her clean it up some before we removed it and she had a second lamb and she lived!!  Too bad our mama didn't stop pushing and ended up prolapsing. We harassed her and recovered but the baby wasn't getting enough so she was a bottle baby.

But back to your post...


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## lasergrl (Aug 25, 2011)

I would have taken the tiny ewe lamb and given her to the ewe that had the dead lambs.  win win.


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## jenn (Aug 25, 2011)

We didn't have another mother to graph her to so it wasn't that terrible because mama would let her nurse briefly so she was getting some but not enough to sustain her. The mama that lost a baby was this same mama...


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