By Joyce Weaver

As I write this, the 14 inches of snow that fell in my area of western Indiana is finally melting. I decided to run an errand yesterday and was amazed at the amount of flooding occurring from huge amounts of snow melting causing lakes – not ponds – in many of the fields around me. Water was running across the county roads making it a bit hazardous to drive. You had to slow down to about 20 mph and proceed with caution where the water was running like a river across the roads.

As many of you know, the heavy snow made it very difficult to walk through and the first trip to the barn the day after the snow fell was a real challenge. You couldn’t just swing your leg forward as you walk in a normal gait, but had to pick up your foot each time and raise it up above the snow and then place it down. This created some awkward moments and I almost fell down a few times. I brought out the gardening pitchfork and shepherd’s crook – one in each hand – and finally made it to the two barns. I decided I wasn’t going to deal with that again, so I called the neighbor for help. Fortunately, he was able to come with his large tractor and blade out my entire driveway plus access paths to both barns. Thank goodness for the rescue.

Once inside the barns the sheep were doing just fine. I have water hydrants in both barns and small square bales of hay stacked inside for feeding. Neither barn is heated but it makes a big difference just getting your livestock and yourself out of the wind and elements when caring for them. I learned this after many years of raising sheep. Always look for better ways to make the job easier on you and them. When I first started raising sheep, I didn’t know any better and had the usual outside portable steel huts, sheds, outside water hydrants, outside stacks of hay with a tarp over it. Many of us raising sheep-goats start off this way, with lack of funds and other reasons for starting out this way. But one has to start somewhere and the longer you do it, you begin to realize there are other ways to do it with less work and struggle.

There was a recent article in Farm World about recognizing hypothermia in newborn lambs and kids. It contained a lot of useful information to help new sheep-goat raisers. Hypothermia (chilled) lambs often occurs when your ewes drop their lambs outdoors in cold or wet weather. Sometimes if the mother has multiples one or more will wander off while the mother is busy with the other lamb(s) and when found it is either chilled or frozen dead for lack of colostrum from the mother. The lambs need to be up and nursing very quickly after birth or big problems arise.

That is why I try to contain all my winter and early spring lambing ewes in the barn in a designated area. That way you have much more control over the situation. The lambs are born indoors, and hypothermia rarely ever occurs. If a baby lamb wanders away from its mother, it is easier to quickly find and return to the right mother. You can easily move the ewe or doe to an individual lambing pen to keep the family safe together. I have in the past allowed the ewes to lamb in the outside lot adjoining the barn. This proved to be a mistake as the lambs can still get separated from their mothers with more space to roam. If a lamb gets another ewe’s scent on it by contact with another interested ewe, its own mother may then reject it and you have a bottle baby to raise. (This may require a two-month commitment on your part to bottle feed the lamb to weaning). Plus, when lambing outside adjoining the barn, you have the mud and slush to wade through to bring them in to the barn. It’s a longer walk and when picking up a ewe’s lambs to carry them and have her follow you to the barn you run the risk of the ewe becoming overly protective and butting you or knocking you down. So, a shorter distance inside the barn to carry newborns with mama in tow to their individual lambing jug-pen is a much safer way to do it.

Lambing report on my farm: So far 35 winter lambing ewes have lambed. Most have had twins (which I prefer), youngsters have had singles (which is normal) and three more mature ewes have had triplets. So, it’s a rather busy full house in the lambing barn. I keep the crowd of mamas and lambs in the barn at night and turn them outside in a south facing lot adjoining the barn for four to five hours in the daytime to run and play and work off steam from being penned up in the barn. I put round bales of hay outside so the ewes can entertain themselves eating while the lambs are busy running and playing. They drink a lot of water while they are nursing and eating dry hay so it’s important to fill up your ewes’ water pans several times daily so they can make plenty of milk for the lambs.

When a ewe has triplets I keep the family together in a double-sized lambing pen longer before turning out in the crowd. This helps in keeping the lambs together with easy access to their mother’s milk and they grow better. Plus, they learn to eat hay and grain from the mother eating her daily serving of grain and mineral from a fence-line feeder. Oftentimes it is very difficult to get a bottle lamb to eat lamb pellets or cracked corn because they have not learned this from their mother. I also eartag the lambs before letting them out of the lambing jugs. This helps with identification and saves trying to do it before selling, when they are bigger and more difficult to manhandle.

Having fun raising sheep. lambjoyw@gmail.com