We Bought a Farm: A Bit o' Fun with Lambing 101

"He who tackles a ewe and comes out uninjured, is a lucky man indeed." 

Farm proverb Wendi made up.

If you ask me what my favorite animal is on the farm, the answer is an easy one.

It's the sheep.

The reasons are numerous. The are peaceful. They are sweet. They aren't dangerous. They are beautiful. They have adorable little baby lambs. They are nearly free for us to care for. 

The list goes on and on.

The other day we decided to do a sheep "collaring day." We don't do ear tags on our ewes. This is more of a personal choice. We just really want to preserve the purity of these sweet animals. But the fact remains, we need to be able to tell them apart.

Why? Well, here's some sheep 101 for you:

• Right now we have about 25 girls ("ewes") on the farm.
• We have about 15 boys ("rams").
• Those 15 rams will be processed for meat sometime in the spring.
• Those 25 ewes have just had a ram ("Captain") introduced to their flock.
• (Captain is very excited bout this. The ladies don't seem too pleased.)
• This means that most likely, in the spring, we'll have 25 ewes lambing.
• "Lambing" means they will birth adorable little baby sheep.

Up to this point on our farm, we have kept every single girl that is born. But this year could be the year that we stop doing that. Here's why:

• The estimated animal load for our farm is about 40 sheep.
• This means that the size of our property would allow for us to keep about this number and successfully rotate them and not need to supplementally feed them.
• (We do pasture-raised sheep which means they eat only what the land provides.)
• So if these gals all have a lamb (and many will have twins) we could end up with at least 25 babies. With twins factored in, we imagine we will probably have somewhere around 40 babies or so.
• Let's say half of those babies are girls. That is 20. Now add 25 of the original moms with the new 20 babies and we are at 45. That's more than the number we want to carry. 
• This means we need to start "culling." This means that we will start processing girls as well. 
• How do we choose who? Well we choose based on how they are doing "genetically." How old are they? How well are they birthing? How healthy are their babies? 

Okay, so all that to say, we had to collar the sheep -- tell them apart from each other. So we took John and Jacob and Uncle Eddie and his son Gabe out, and we spent about three hours separating and counting and checking on each of our sheep.

Jacob and John are very "careful" about how they grab a sheep. But Eddie just threw caution to the wind (as you can see from the picture above) and one of those ewes took him flat onto his back. Gabe actually "rode" a sheep which I have never seen a large boy do. But he caught her front legs and she kept running and he just rode on her.

(I'm chuckling to myself just recounting these stories.)

There are many jobs on the farm that aren't that fun.

But raising sheep is one of my favorite!