Friday, March 23, 2012

Counting Sheep

Last fall I shared how I was venturing in to becoming a shepherd. Yes, a real live one with sheep. I purchased a small flock of Navajo-Churro sheep and thus my adventure began. My flock consisted of one ram named Lewis and six ewes. One ewe, Pepper, ended up having a lamb just three weeks after they arrived. Oynx is now five months old. So I went from seven sheep to eight shortly after their arrival.

However, now it's spring and there is a reason people say "spring lambs." The other five ewes have all lambed in the last few weeks.

Sadly, I lost the first two that were born. They were a set of twins. I'm not 100% sure why they didn't make it, but one was born and died shortly after birth. The other seemed to be doing well, but wasn't eating well and died twenty-four hours later despite all my efforts. Needless to say I was very discouraged at this point.

Two days later another one was born, a ram we named Augie (short for Augite). A few days later I had another set of twins, both rams, who look nothing alike. We named on Dunkin (as in Donuts) and the other Charlie. And yes, a few days later another one had my one and only ewe that my oldest son named, Spartha. I'm pretty sure that's from the Eargon series. And my last one was born about a week ago, another ram, we named Spot.


The only one you can't see in the above photo is Onyx, my five month old lamb. He's about half-the size of the adults. So I went from having seven sheep to 12 in the matter of two weeks.

I have yet to decide which ones I will be keeping. My plan is to get out of the lambing business. It's too stressful and I simply don't have the necessary indoor space for them. I'll be strictly sticking to wool only. My plans is to keep Spartha and perhaps one of the rams. Since I'm going for color, I'm leaning towards keeping Spot and perhaps Dunkin but they will be fixed so that we don't have more babies.

Having said that, I'm pretty sure Onyx's mom is pregnant again. There is definitely a possibility for it so I'll be watching her.

Watching the lambs play is a lot of fun and we'll be having them all sheared in just a few weeks. I'll be sharing that adventure as well.




1 comment:

  1. It does sound like a lot of work, but it's been fun to watch.

    ReplyDelete

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