SheepGirl's 2013 Lambing Thread - Update - July 2013

[SheepGirl]

Ciqala felt a little thin to me yesterday so I upped her grain to 3/4 lb. So we'll see how she feels in a week.

Only 2.5 more weeks! I love baby sheep. They are the most fun creatures ever. I love sitting on an overturned bucket with a lamb sleeping in my lap while I pet their silky soft leg & face wool

I have so many pleasant memories, sounds, smells associated with lambing season musty straw, sweet hay, crisp cold air, birds chirping, sun rising, cold dense wool, soft murmuring bleating, the milky smell of lambs, etc. I love it so much!!

 

[SheepGirl]

Ewes are doing good, two more weeks to go for Ali, three more for Ciqala. Hank doesn't understand he doesn't get fed in the mornings. I only give him a pound of hay in the evenings--he has the field 24/7. Poor guy tries his darndest to get into the ewe pen. Monday morning he managed to slip under the fence and join the ewes. So I put another step-in post where he slipped under. Fixed the problem

It was raining/snowing when I fed tonight so I moved the hay feeder back into the sheep shack. I had it on one side of the pen so that way the ewes have to walk to the hay feeder to the waterer to the sheep shack so they get forced exercise. So once it stops precipitating (I'm not sure if it's rain or snow right now) then the hay feeder will be back outside.

The ewes mob me for their grain. So I have to run from one side of the pen to the other with the sheep chasing me. The lambs are right on my feet so they get their rations first and then because the mature ewes are pregnant and slow it gives me time to set their feed pans on the ground That way everyone gets their own ration and nobody has the chance to steal grain out of somebody else's feed pan.

 

[SheepGirl]

Here is my ewe two weeks from giving birth to Billy and Ali (#51 in front was my old ewe Lily who died in September 2010 She was my favorite sheep ever)

Here is my ewe three weeks from giving birth to Lord knows how many lambs this year LOL -- I took this photo today on my phone. I edited on my phone to rotate it so I guess that's why it's so little? Other photos I've taken on my phone (without me rotating them) turned out much larger on the computer.

How many do you think are in there?!

 

[Southern by choice]

oh my... either two really big or 3 average...that's my guess!

How old was Lily? I know...some animals just stay in your heart forever.

 

[SheepGirl]

Lily was 2.5 yrs old, my first lamb I had born and Ciqala's first lamb. My guess is she died either from parasites or a bacterial infection. I'm leaning more towards bacterial infection though because a couple days later Ali wasn't 'right,' checked her temp it was 105.9. I feel bad I didn't pay more attention to her symptoms because I could've saved her She was great though, she knew her name, she baaed when she heard it. I could also say "Lily come" and she would come to me where ever she was in the 18 acre pasture. She only had one lamb but it was stillborn (she was bred by Billy, her maternal half brother).

The only thing I liked about her death was that she died on Sept. 2, 2010--9/02/10 (Beverly Hills zip code). Makes it easy to remember

 

[BrownSheep]

I'm leaning towards two. I've noticed ewes tend to get larger the older they are even if its the same number of lambs....I guess popping out babies makes it a bit roomier in there. Hoping for triplets for you though. Is this Ciqala? Also how in the world do you pronounce Ciqala?...

 

[SheepGirl]

We've never had very many old ewes, most ewes were in the 3-5 yr old range. Unfortunately when the Montadales were still around, the last couple of them were old (7-8 yrs) and I never did pay much attention to how big their bellies got.

I'm hoping for triplets, too, though we've only ever had two ewes produce triplets. Everybody else has had twins. One ewe was a purebred Montadale and the other was Ciqala's paternal half sister. But she could've been more related to both ewes than that because her dam was a Montadale, and I'm not sure how the Montadale flock was all related to each other (half/75/full sisters, aunts, nieces, cousins, etc). eta: She may just have another set of twins in there though too. She's had one single and three sets of twins so far.

And yep, that is Ciqala. To be honest, I have no clue how to pronounce it, and I am probably pronouncing it wrong, too lol. But I say "key-call-a." I named her when I was 12, when I was into naming things something weird that had a cool meaning. lol. Her name is Native American for "little one" and I named her that because I got her when she was a baby and she was a "little one" compared to all the big adult sheep I had been used to lol.

 

[BrownSheep]

Yay! Now I have a sound to go with the word! Better namer than me! I just stare at them till it comes to me. I have a Squash and Squint from last year....They had better names in the beginning but they just sorta morphed in to those names. Jus lake Mable becoming Mable-tini and Mabeline.....Poor sheep had 1002 names.

 

[SheepGirl]

hahaha squash is actually a cute name. Squish & Squash would be cute names for a set of twins, don'tcha think?

lol don't you just love how you come up with nicknames for nicknames for names? Like my old dog's name was Dr Pepper, we'd call him Pepper, then we shortened it to Pep, and then we started calling him Pepsi Cola. lol

 

[Straw Hat Kikos]

I guess two also.