Extreme Sheep LED Art

Click on the title to go to the coolest sheep video I've seen on YouTube yet!

White fleeces are done and posted!!

http://eweifarmfleece.blogspot.com/

Salt

A few years ago we had our first (and only) triplets. Unfortunately, they all ended up as bottle babies. Since Jerry couldn't be home all the time to help feed, he built this feeder for us. When there were three bottles going at once, they were bungee corded in place. It can hang anywhere on the green gates and the wooden arm adjusts the angle. It is set up to mimic mom's teats. Except we use the Pritchard teats instead of the hard black teats, as discussed in an earlier post.

Salt is one of two lambs born to Moose. His twin is Pepper. He was 10#, Pepper was 14#. He appeared to have white muscle, despite the fact that we add Selenium to the feed and minerals, and he was not getting enough milk from his mother. So, we are supplement feeding him 3 times a day. He sucks down his bottle and then goes and finds Moose and nurses from her as well.

We are not keeping him. He is a market lamb, and hopefully we can get him up to weight in time for Easter market.

More Cornelius lambs

Please be warned that some of these pictures are pretty graphic and close up of two different ewes giving birth!!
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Fluffy gives birth. Twin boys. They are Border Leicester/Romney/Columbia X Horned Dorset.

Proper presentation of a lamb.

This is how I usually see a lamb presented. Two hooves and the 'beak', and then the head.

Right after the 2nd is born.

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These are Susan and Cornelius's 'children'. The first 3 are Spot, the ewe that we are keeping. Susan is Maggie and Charlie's daughter. That makes her Dorset/Romney/Shetland X Horned Dorset.

Her twin, Double Spot, may have horns. I don't think she will.

These were taken of Susan, Fluffy and there 'kids' while waiting on Psycho to give birth. Fluffy's children show the Border Leicester ears from their grandfather, Joshua, who is Border Leicester/Romney.

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Fluffy and her twins. Susan and her twins. These were taken shortly after their births. These lambs were born 3/8/09-Susan, and 3/9/09-Fluffy.

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Psycho gives birth to twins. I miss her birthing this one, but caught on 'film' the next one. Pictures are pretty graphic. These lambs were born 3/12/09.

This is the first birth I have seen and documented that the lamb was born totally encased in its birth sack. Usually, as seen with Fluffy before, the sack will start to tear as the lamb is being born. When the head is out the lamb can start to breath. This lamb could not breath on its own until it hit the ground and the sack then broke.

If you click on the pictures, you can see the blood vessels in the sack.

Psycho's second lamb newly born. I cleaned off her mouth and nose and then backed away so she would bond with her.

Jerry was on vacation last week

So, no blogging got done... )o:
But, we did have a good week. We started out on February 28th with a lambing clinic at Wellscroft Farm. http://www.wellscroft.com/ The first two pictures show an interesting (to me) hay and grain feeder, and a mineral/salt feeder. David had about 150 black and 10 white lambs at this point.


There were about 85 of us who went to the school first to get the slide show and lecture. This is the 2nd clinic I've gone to, and Jerry's 3rd, in the 15+ years we've been raising sheep.
Here David is showing how a lamb should present when being born, and one of many possible malpresentations.

In the following pictures, he is demonstrating tubing a lamb. Something we've only done once.

And then he is showing the different types of nipples.

Lambs love the Pritchard teat ( http://www.premier1supplies.com/detail.php?prod_id=32&cat_id=12 ) as they don't have to work so hard to nurse from it. They don't like the black stiff nipple ( http://www.jefferslivestock.com/ssc/product.asp?CID=2&mscssid=AAK9FGBGE50F9N9ARFCPJ21WBR177G76&pf_id=11652&area=sheep ) because they need to work for the milk.

We have a lamb that we are supplement feeding. He would not use the black nipple as he did not have the strenght to suck from it. So, we have him set up with the Pritchard teat. But, we are not feeding him. He feeds himself from the bottle held in place by an adjustable bottle holder that my husband built back when we had triplet bottle babies.

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And then Sunday, we went to a Sugar River Spinner's meeting. Since our group has grown enough to warrant a bigger meeting spot, we are using the local Methodist Church.

My husband and Tom Connary are spinning together here at the meeting. I thought it was interesting that one spins left handed and the other spins right handed. The men spin the way their wives do. (o; Guess who taught them.

I thought Pat's lacey fingerless gloves were interesting.

Now, I did not get my camera out in time to get photos of everyone present before people started to leave. It was watching Jerry and Tom spin that caused me to bring out my camera.

He was on vacation 9 days and not a lamb was born until Sunday the 8th at 12:30 AM. Susan, a Dorset/Romney X Shetland, had a ewe and a ram. Again she had a 10# and a 13#. This time she did in on her own. But the 13# is yellow/orange, so she must have had a tough time of it. I will take pictures later today, before we put on ear tags and band the tails. If I can get rid of some of my adults, I can keep the ewe. When you see her, you will understand why I want her.

TTFN. Off to enjoy the snow fall.