starting to happen? We seem to have a couple ewes that are looking pretty uncomfortable with their current state of health. We have gone to a “lamb” watch every 4-6 hours.
I would expect to have some babies on the ground in the next couple days, but I have been wrong before.
Will post pictures as soon as they are available.
Cindy
Since we live in and area that has an abundance of sun and wind, we are seriously looking into solar power. We have just under 10 acres here in our little corner of Utah.
We are actually living on less than 1/2 of that. The rest of the land is open. It would be a good place for a solar panel farm.
If you are interested in getting a free estimate for solar related construction, or would just like more information, check out this site.
Cindy
This guy sits in a tree a little ways from the house. Sometimes in the morning there are 2 sitting there.
We tried to get a little closer and he didn’t like it and flew the coop.
Cindy
but it’s still early in the day. Not even noon here yet. We spread a bale of straw in the lambing jug and the shelter. We thought maybe the power of suggestion might prevail. None of the girls look overly anxious to welcome the lamb stork.
We took the tarp off the cow shelter as it was pretty well shredded from the wind. The tarps covering the hay stacks are about ready to come off also. They also took a beating, but not really shredded.
We keep the hay covered for the winter so it doesn’t get wet and moldy. Moldy hay can cause colic in horses, but can be fed to the cows and sheep because they have 4 stomachs and can handle moldy hay well. Cows and sheep are ruminants. That means the food goes into the first stomach (ruman) and is softened. It becomes cud at that time and is further transferred to the other series of stomachs. So essentially the mold never gets thru their systems.
So much for the lesson of the day lol.
Still only in the day watch mode for the sheep. Sigh!!!!!!!
More later
Cindy
I think this is a Long Eared Owl. Was sitting in our trees next to the vehicles. He was very patient while taking pictures.
Oh and we are still just on day watch for our sheep, as it looks like none of them are in a big hurry to have the stork visit just yet.
Cindy
Clyde and Amber had another little one get deserted. Mom had no milk and refused to accept her baby, so they have another “house baby” to feed.
They were going to be gone for noon feeding so they called and asked if we could take care of it. Naturally we jumped at the chance. They brought over the bottles and a canning jar of Lamb replacer for us.
Here are the results:
If there is anything cuter than a lab puppy, it has to be a new lamb.
In reply to a comment left yesterday: Yes our animals are safe and sound. We were told when we first moved here that a Coyote will not go anywhere that he is hemmed in. In other words, they will not go into an enclosure or fenced in area. I am not taking that as gospel, but so far we haven’t had any problems.
The fact that we have 5 dogs that are outside a lot may have something to do with not having Coyotes real close to the house also. The dogs don’t have free roam of property. We have never seen Coyote tracks in the snow either, and we do keep a watch.
The last 2 may be a little fuzzy due to the zoom, the wind, and it was cold.
Later
Cindy
As of tonight, we officially go on our late evening lamb watch. Boy Oh Boy !
The pictures below were taken earlier this afternoon out our front door. This is the first Coyote we have seen this close to the house.
Cindy
Not much going on here yet. We are on daily lamb watch, will go on the night watch in about 4-5 days.
Lambing continues at Clyde and Amber’s and for most part going good. They had a “springer” (a lamb born last spring) that had twins. She started off real good and was nursing both of them. Then for some reason, she booted one of them out. She refused to let it nurse and head butted it away when it came up to her.
Clyde’s 8 yr old grand daughter is living with them, so they gave her something to do. They took the little guy in the house, warmed him up and their Grand daughter started bottle feeding him. He is doing great.
Baby with adorable face markings
Mom and sister of the one above
The abandoned baby, it's mother and brother
Abandoned baby with the horse
The horse, Patches, is in the pen right next to the sheep pen. She was so attentive when the babies started being born. It seems she sensed something was not just right with this one. Yesterday I took this baby over to the gate for Patches to investigate. She was so soft and gentle while sniffing the baby.
As I was leaving, Patches started going crazy. She ran around the pen, bucked, whinnied, pawed at the fence and looked like she was contemplating jumping the fence. She watched the baby walking behind me and continued to carry on.
After we got back to the “staging” area, she never took her eyes off the baby. To watch interaction of other animals when babies are born is very interesting. We witnessed that when our calf was born. The cow pen had the attention of all the sheep and all 3 of our horses. The chickens even got louder than normal.
Catch u’all tomorrow
Cindy
Mom went in for her heart cath today (I thought it was going to be an angioplasty) and everything is A-OK. Nothing has changed in regards to her heart in the last 5 yrs. Phew. But that didn’t solve her problem so we will call her Dr. tomorrow and set an appointment for an upper GI ( think that is what it is when they refer to using a “scope”) But as far as my thinking, the heart was the worst case scenerio.
Clyde's 2 little heifers
Heifers moms
Mom and Baby
These are Hereford’s and they are just as BIG as they look in the pictures. And the heifers are as cute as a bug in a rug.
Have a few more pictures of them in the gallery found here
Cindy
Check this little guy out. He was born sometime after 10pm Tuesday evening. This isn’t our’s, it’s one of Clyde and Ambers. About 5 days early according to their calculations. But they were on lamb watch and checking about every 2 hours thru the night. On the midnight check, he was already up, dried off and nursing. So it was born after the 10pm check
Here he is with his proud momma. Still a little unsteady on his feet, but is getting it done.
Here is another Ewe that is due soon also, just in case you couldn’t tell lol.
We are officially on lamb watch at our place also. Just daily checks thru the day right now. Will go on the night watch in another week probably.
And on that happier note, will catch you tomorrow. I have a couple pictures of Clyde’s 2 little heifer calfs that are about 3 weeks old or so.
Cindy
I think I mentioned a week or so about Clyde and Amber’s Ewe that was due the first, but went down almost 3 weeks ago and they hadn’t been able to get her up to stand. They moved her from the pasture to the sheep shelter and she continued to eat and drink, just not get up.
A couple days ago she started getting weaker, and not moving a lot and not resisting when Clyde and Amber would rolled her over everyday.
Today we stopped over to see if she lambed yesterday. Amber came out and said, “how did you know I needed and OB team”. Thus started our experience for the day. (if you are expecting a happy ending, don’t finish reading this)
To say this was a dilemma is an understatement. They were going to loose the ewe eventually no matter what. They would loose the babies also. We discussed the situation, and how we could help if needed.
The decision was made to put the ewe out of her misery and try to save the babies. Amber is a nurse so she decided she would take care of the babies if they were still alive. Clyde didn’t think they were. We decided to try anyway.
Shari and I came home and got our coveralls on and boots and our lambing kit and went back over. Everyone was ready to start. Clyde put the ewe down. Basically I did a ” C ” section on her. Everyone knows what that is so I won’t go into details. I might mention here that Amber made 3 phone calls to area vets while Shari and I were home gathering things up, and couldn’t find any of them that could come out, or even talk to her.
I found the first lamb and it was alive, but didn’t feel real strong. I delivered it to Amber who was waiting with a towel. I found a second one and handed that one to Shari who was waiting with a towel also. The second one was in the same physical shape as the first.
We cleared mucus from their mouth and noses and rubbed them vigorously with the towels. The first one was breathing but in gasps. That eventually stopped and he was breathing but not real well. Shari and Clyde were working on the second one with the same results.
We decided they were about a week premature and the lungs weren’t fully developed yet, and the procedure of coming thru the birth canal with the contractions to help with the breathing part was missing so they were having a hard time clearing their lungs. Their little bodies also felt very, ahhh, I guess disconnected is the best word here. They felt like little rag dolls.
We worked on the little things for almost 2 hours before we had no heart beat. Chest massages, mouth to mouth, nose to nose etc. We used syringes to help clear mucus, and to blow air into them.
Looking back on the experience, as we often do, there wasn’t anything that could have been done differently.
Did we feel badly, certainly. Did we feel we did everything we could? Yes. When you think about what would have happened if the mom died during the night, the little ones would have also. We tried to give them a chance. I think the cards were stacked against them from the start.
I really hate to refer to this as a learning experience, but it was. It just would have been so much better if the ending had been different.
Their next ewe should lamb in a few days. Hopefully that will go better than this one did.
Will keep everyone posted.
Cindy
Whoo Hoo, 62 degrees here today.
We got a couple “need to be done” things done outside today. The little man gate at the barn got replaced. The full sized door also got put back on. Last week on a very windy day, the wind caught the door as Shari went to feed the horses in the morning and away it went, almost taking Shari with it. Oh well, crap happens. It’s all better now though.
We also got more hay down and re-secured tarps on sheep and cow hay. Supposed to have some more high winds tomorrow, and don’t want to try chasing tarps down.
Our neighbors, Clyde and Amber have a Ewe due today, haven’t talked to them to find out if she had them or not. Will check tomorrow, and will post here maybe with some pictures.
Till tomorrow,
Cindy
