Dear friends,
Today is another important day in America as we enjoy the time-honored tradition of a peaceful transfer of power. Regardless of your political affiliation and beliefs, let's all hope our leaders can work together to solve our long list of pressing problems, including the swifter rollout of the vaccine!
With a new beginning in mind, I am happy to share we had a productive and successful lambing season thus far. This note is long overdue, but we have been a little busy ... As planned, due to the miracles of modern medicine, 6 of the 7 ewes delivered over the course of 4 days. Starting with triplets and twins a day early and ending with another set of triplets and twins a day after the expected due dates. I doubt many human mothers enjoy such an accurate prediction (actually only 5% of babies are delivered on their due date).
In total, the ewes delivered 2 sets of triplets and 4 sets of twins, giving us a birth rate of 2.33, which is very high. We now have 13 lambs, including 2 bottle feeders in the garage, remember to say hello when you pick up your eggs. Unfortunately, we lost one lamb after 2 days, which is very typical given the usual mortality is between 15-20% before weaning, with 50% of those the first week. Fingers crossed the remainder reach the finish line and the final ewe delivers very healthy, big twins! Thankfully, I was lucky enough to have my best sheep consultant, Lauren, home for the births and active days thereafter. Lambing can be very tricky and it is wonderful to have my lifeline in the barn with me!
As always, lambing week was a rollercoaster of emotions, from excitement for so many births at once, to apprehension for so many births at once (!), to concern as a ewe labors especially long, to wonder watching nearly all of the births in person (thanks to the lamb cam), to relief as each lamb started to breath on their own, to amazement as the lambs would stand within 10 minutes of birth to feed, to happiness being able to share the experience with several young visitors (sure to ask many questions when they returned home), to utter exhaustion after three sleepless nights checking on ewes and lambs to alarm realizing a lamb was very weak and hypothermic, to action as we worked as a team to save the lamb to sadness realizing the lamb had moved onto another pasture and now back to a more peaceful place as normalcy returns to the barn (and our lives) with the lambs growing bigger each day.
This year we had another helper in the barn, Bobbie the chicken. Bobbie earned her name because she is bald and named after a good friend's husband who after turning bald at a young age, his wife affectionately referred to him as "bald Bob." Unfortunately, if a hen has an issue (e.g., open bald spot) then the other hens may pick on her with dire consequences, so Bobbie was saved and now roams the barn overseeing the lambs (and births), cleaning up spilt feed and waiting for her regular back rubs.
In other news, wood splitting and egg laying continues, the compost is waiting for delivery in the Spring (let me know if you are interested) and we absolutely, 100%, positively are sold out of firewood and can make no more deliveries until this summer! And of course, we continue to enjoy our many visitors, especially the young farmers and those young at heart!
Fun fact: In 1867, the first official inventory of sheep estimated a population of 45mm in the US (at the time less than 38mm people lived in the US). The sheep population peaked in 1884 at 51mm and has steadily declined to an estimated 5mm today. more than two-thirds of the US sheep operations are located in the Southern Plains, Mountain and Pacific regions with Texas and California being #1 and #2. Today, per capita consumption is less than 1 pound from nearly 5 pounds in 1960. The lower US production is augmented by imports from Australia (75%) and New Zealand (25%) where the ratio of sheep to people is 3 to 1 and 7 to 1 respectively.
Fingers crossed for a better, healthy 2021 and shot in your arm soon!
Harry
