Ewe Watch! (And Snow)

10 days on from our first lamb of the 2023 season I now spend most of my time on ewe watch [or, more specifically, vulva watch!} as we eagerly await the remaining lambs just as the snow and freezing rain hits!

Lamb gets a taste of her first snow

Of our six girls, two of the mature ewes have lambed. Left, we have two in their second year (one of which lambed last year and is pregnant again), and two yearlings (the larger of the two may have caught, the smaller I think not) to go.

As I wrote in my last post, my timing is off this year so I’m relying heavily on observation. While it’s frustrating not to have had time for the ultrasound as we did last year, with one lambing season under my belt I'm not flying totally blind. By my reckoning while we could have one ewe remaining to lamb, or four, my hunch is we have two.

Ewe watch from the warmth of the farm apt

So, here we are on ewe watch. You'll find me constantly muttering to myself 'Is she barreling out or overweight?', 'are her udders dropping?', 'is that a dip under the hips?'.

I feel fairly confident that I can spot the teats dropping and vulva enlarging, and I’ve definitely noticed the “hollowing out” as the lambs get ready to drop, but its still very much a learning curve.

Night checks are currently at around 9pm and 11:30pm, then back out at 6:30am.

Ideally I’d push that to midnight and 5am, but with a 5 month old baby giving us very little sleep - this feels do-able.

2am arrival of twins in the lambing jugs last year

Wisdom (or I should say, data) tells us that the majority will lamb between 5am and 12pm. It's also the case that while we need to be on hand, we only intervene if and when there's an issue.

This has been largely the case to date, so, if no-one is showing signs at the last night check, I feel ok.

That said, we had a ewe that lambed twins at 2am last year, and did need my help in the birth… that is not an experience you forget in a hurry.

For now, we continue to observe and wait and see. There's plenty to be done in the meantime, not least enjoying the lambs, and making sure everyone stays warm and dry as the weather turns. That goes for Sandman (our Guard Llama) and our two rams too. They've been unhappily separated from the girls for a few weeks, and with a little more time to go they remain consummate gentlemen as they put up with light sniffs and nose touches through the fence and the slightly inferior shelter space.

Updates soon.

Jen