Help me determine is my sheep have started “showing” in their pregnancies

[MMGardens]

Full moon tonight, this is the girl that’s been limping bad since last Sunday. Vet agreed it was probably pregnancy related. She’s been having big strings of mucus hanging from her lady parts the past few days and now her udder is rubbing her legs when she walks it’s gotten so wide and her teats finally are looking tight. Her backside around her tail has felt like mush since Tuesday evening and her vulva jiggles like jello when she walks


Hoping for some babies tonight

 

[Finnie]

Full moon tonight, this is the girl that’s been limping bad since last Sunday. Vet agreed it was probably pregnancy related. She’s been having big strings of mucus hanging from her lady parts the past few days and now her udder is rubbing her legs when she walks it’s gotten so wide and her teats finally are looking tight. Her backside around her tail has felt like mush since Tuesday evening and her vulva jiggles like jello when she walks


Hoping for some babies tonight

 

[Baymule]

I keep one of my rams next to the lot of ewes. Cow panels separate them, I have a half cow panel gate between them. No need to block off the cow panels, I’ve never had a breeding through the wire, nor know anyone who has. That gate comes in handy. Ewes in heat will throw themselves at the wire and I’ve opened the gate and shoved them in there!

I have a shared round bale at the end of the divider. Bowed over cow panel, covered with small tarp, half cow panel on side, half hog panel on other side. I’ll get pictures tomorrow for you.

 

[Baymule]

This is my round bale contraption. Not perfect, once the sheep eat in as far as they can reach, I have to pull hay up to the cow panel twice a day.

This is front side, ram on one side, 12 pregnant ladies on the other.

This is back side, the working chute is at the back, I have access blocked off to pregnant ewes on this side, to give access to 7 young ewes.

It’s kinda ramshackledy but it works. Saving up to start a barn.

This is in front field across driveway. 4 cow panels long, covered with tarp. I put split foam pipe wrap on ends to keep from poking holes in tarp.

This is the good side.

This is the side, We had a party and danced all night. Note the duct tape patches. Was a brand new tarp too!

Had to put gates on both sides to keep the idiots off the roof of their house. Who do they think they are? GOATS?

 

[MMGardens]

This is my round bale contraption. Not perfect, once the sheep eat in as far as they can reach, I have to pull hay up to the cow panel twice a day.

This is front side, ram on one side, 12 pregnant ladies on the other.

View attachment 113023

This is back side, the working chute is at the back, I have access blocked off to pregnant ewes on this side, to give access to 7 young ewes.

View attachment 113024

It’s kinda ramshackledy but it works. Saving up to start a barn.

This is in front field across driveway. 4 cow panels long, covered with tarp. I put split foam pipe wrap on ends to keep from poking holes in tarp.

This is the good side.

View attachment 113026

This is the side, We had a party and danced all night. Note the duct tape patches. Was a brand new tarp too!

View attachment 113025

Had to put gates on both sides to keep the idiots off the roof of their house. Who do they think they are? GOATS?

oh my goodness

Thank you so much! That’s really helpful!
I too don’t have a barn, although im not sure I want it in my future plans anyway, I’m more of a natures way kinda gal, so I think I’ll just build them a few good shelters to get under as we do have hurricanes yearly typically where I am, so they need high ground and good wind and rain cover.


I woke up to a baby!!!

A little ewe lamb single and she’s so precious

Mama is being extremely protective and unfortunately my two Pyrenees could not contain themselves of their joy of the baby being born, so they kept trying to get to smell the baby and mama kept ramming them. I constructed a little pen for her and baby so they wouldn’t be bothered and the dogs seem to have gotten over the thrill. I’m hoping she doesn’t stay so protective because the sheep usually love my dogs and aren’t at all bothered by them.

Baby is a strong little girl and was running all over and jumping within 2 hrs of birth


Pics included
She’s a little white lamb with one black spot and little brown markings on her face and a brown tail


I promised my kids if we had lambs on the full moon night we would name them moon type names,

So this is baby Apolla as in female version for the Apollo missions

 

[Baymule]

Congratulations! She is beautiful! Love the name!
Next ewe baby…… Luna means moon. Just a suggestion.

Have to tell you, hurricane Beryl lifted my cow panel shelter, flew it across the driveway and impaled it on a T-post. I had to take it all apart, stomp the cow panels to flatten them out again, then put it all back together.

 

[MMGardens]

Yes, Luna was my first thought, but it’s such a popular name I thought I’d try to go with something a bit more unique, also suggested Laika to my kids after the first dog in space that orbited the earth (like the moon) but we all liked Apolla better for her


Oh goodness!! We plan to set power poles in the ground and build a tin roof on them for the sheep, which is how my pigeon coop is built and haven’t had any issues so far with hurricanes, but we haven’t had more than a cat 3 in a long while now, so I’m sure our time is coming for a bad one

 

[SageHill]

Congrats! She's a beauty!

 

[MMGardens]

Posting this part for other newbies like me who read every single persons account of what happens before their sheep’s lamb and watch for every sign


My sheep came to be potentially bred but with no clue on due date


Looking back at previous pictures I could tell that they were looking more round in the belly starting in mid sept, but honestly even the day before my first one lambed her belly was comparable to my little ewe who isn’t pregnant and just has a big old belly all the time.


Summer (the brown sheep with a red collar)
Lambed on 11/16 and had a single
Her belly looked full and round but def nothing like the giant wide bellies I see pics of (maybe because it was a single)

This is her bag the evening before she lambed (when I woke up she already had her)

It got very tight and full, stuck out behind her legs, and her back legs squished her bag when she walked. About the size of a soccer ball

She doesn’t have pink mucus membranes, so she didn’t get the highlighter pink look to her lady parts, but her teats did start looking “flushed”

I saw that someone said the little tip on their vulva will point towards the ground during the last part of pregnancy, but when they really start loosening up for birth it will face horizontal to the ground and this was true for her

This is her 4 days before and you can see it’s pointing diagonal towards the ground
This same evening she had mucus strings hanging from her lady parts

This is her the next morning (3 days from lambing) and you can see that little protrusion now points out behind her instead of at the ground



Aside from her bag getting super full and big 24 hrs prior to lambing, nothing else specifically changed. She’s one that her belly looked “dropped” for a month prior and her vulva didn’t have any acute changes right before


I checked on her throughout the night on 11/15 at 11, 2, and 5


Aside from that she did choose a spot to lay that was a only a little bit away from the others I didn’t notice anything, she wasn’t getting up and down and I didn’t catch her doing the “stargazing” stare


Also I should add that mine will be lambing on the pasture with my other girls so I didn’t have her separated


at the 5 o clock check she was still laying in the same place as the 2 o clock check and I still didn’t notice anything was up


At 7 I looked out the door and she was laying under my elderberry bushes while the other girls were eating, and I was bummed it seemed she still wasn’t in labor, so I went out to stare at her for a while and lo and behold she had a little baby laying next to her


I could tell she had dug at the ground where she was laying so she must’ve moved from her previous spot to under the bushes


Mama still had the cord hanging out and was still pushing every so often and the baby was still very wet and probably hadn’t stood up yet until I got out there, but can’t be sure


Must’ve barely missed the whole thing


Since after all her pushing no more bags were coming out I assumed this must be a single and a bit later she delivered the placenta and baby successfully nursed


That’s all for summers birth story, I still have two more to lamb so I’ll update what was different or the same for them

 

[Baymule]

You are learning. These girls are your teachers.