Misfitmorgan's - Babies 2020

[misfitmorgan]

Maybe you need to take 294 to the sale barn and let her go.

I have thought about it, however ewes are only going for sale for $50-60/head and the closest auction/sale barn is 2.5hrs away. I don't really think it would be worth it. They also only have auction on monday while im at work so I would lose money there too. There is a second auction almost the same distance that has auctions on wednesday but again it is while im at work.

We are finding that our high dollar registered animals aren't performing nearly as well as our mutts so we are rethinking our long range plans.

I am also wondering myself. Our suffolk hold back runt from last year(almost 12 months old) is pretty much the same size as Duke(13 weeks). Duke is half suffolk half polypay. That said the suffolk ram lamb we sold was almost the same size as the runt as well so maybe not the best to compare it too. I do know the straight mutt babies are smaller, Both the bottle boy and the white girl are the same size, and look like teddy bears. Anyhow we might get another large bred to cross with...thats a decision for later though.

 

[misfitmorgan]

308 and her lamb are doing well in their pen. The lamb has started eating solid food.

Yesterday night we also found an aborted lamb in the sheep shed. It was solid black so we believe it to be from one of the mutts. We could not see any evidence of which one. With 3 big brown sheep in pasture it is hard to tell who is who now. Hopefully we will get them sheared soon and get ear tags put in.

So that means the last sheep that could be bred still is Sweetie, it would be odd for her to have a lamb so late though as the other 2 years she has had them in feb/march.

I do not think latte or espresso settled so we might be done with lambs/kids for this year.

Sheep need sheared and evaluated for condition. Goats need pasture/forage and loose minerals. Big Boy looks great but he has had so much corn over the winter in the barn he has elf shoes on. We have trimmed him twice now but just cant keep up.

Desperately need to find/make more pasture.

 

[Baymule]

Boy I do hear you on needing pasture. We have 8 acres, much of it wooded. Never enough grass!

 

[misfitmorgan]

So much to my surprise I got home from work on friday and was looking out the back window at the sheep/goats and a few chickens.....when i realized one of those little things wasnt a chicken!

Phoebe had twin goat kids outside and they were dry feeling when I go tto them so It was a few hours. We put her in her own stall in the barn with a heat lamp. The girl looked to have eatten the boy did not which was odd because he looked like he was born first as he was drier. It had gotten 40F that day but was already down to 34F when i found them. So we tucked them in for the night and figured they would be fine after warming up. I dunno why but no, not the boy. We found him early Saturday morning passed away. What a crumby start to the season he was a beautiful boy too. The girl was doing well as of last night at 3 days old.

Ivy looks about ready to pop and has her udder half made.

Now here is the odd thing. We always thought phoebe took after her 25% nubian side and was a seasonal breeder, same with Ivy looking mostly tog. This is the 5th year for phoebe and this is the first time she has shown us she is not a seasonal breeder, 3rd year for ivy and same deal.

 

[Baymule]

Sorry about the lost little boy. That does suck, I hate to lose babies. At least you have the doeling. I hope that the rest of the kidding/lambing goes better for you.

 

[misfitmorgan]

Sorry about the lost little boy. That does suck, I hate to lose babies. At least you have the doeling. I hope that the rest of the kidding/lambing goes better for you.

I hope so to this is a poo start but we werent at all exspecting any kids of lambs until mid-febuary. Now every day I am looking at the back window worried someone else will have babies. The cold is my concern and having a time frame of....sometime after now isnt ideal. Esp annoying since we specifically pulled the boys to control when we would have babies.

 

[Baymule]

My bet is that you will get it all figured out for the "next time" and after that, the "next time". We learn as we go, getting better at planning these things out.

I now have a crop of lambs that will be ready to go to slaughter just as the winter grasses and clovers wind down. I want to see if that is the best time, because my summer grasses are not well established yet, it will be another couple of years before they catch up to the winter grasses. With me, it is not so much the threat of the lambs freezing to death, but having something for them to eat and parasite bloom, which can be overwhelming in the spring and summer. I am working towards a more parasite resistant flock, but having lambs grow during the dormant time for parasites sure can't be a bad thing. For you it is climate and the threat that the extreme cold brings. We both have a timing thing to work on.

 

[misfitmorgan]

Hopefully this year we will have them in separate pasture from spring on so no more surprise babies. This was the first year we have separated the boys at all but it seems it was futile for some.

 

[Baymule]

Sneaky boys!

 

[Sheepshape]

This was the first year we have separated the boys at all but it seems it was futile for some.

Sorry to hear about the baby......
Separating is the obvious solution to unwanted pregnancies.My rams are in with the ewes for 6 weeks only, or so I would like to think. Every year I have somebody who gives birth who , to the best of my knowledge , has not been within 2 fields of a ram. Last year I had 2 give birth. One of these girls was quite a small lamb herself and had never had a ram with her (????). The other had been with the ram, but scanned 'empty'. She gave birth to twins a good 6 weeks later than any of the other ewes....can't explain that one, either.
Sometimes we lose babies which seem perfectly healthy, due to no fault of our own. A sad but recurrent fact of breeding livestock. All we can do is eliminate those factors which we have control over, and accept that not everything is open to modification.
Hopefully things turn out better from now on in.