A Successful Lambing Season

Wow! Where do I begin?! It seems like the whole month of April was a whirlwind of excitment, nervousness, some anxiety, and tons of new, baby lambs! We ended up with eleven lambs total, which is awesome.

And what was even more excellent was each of our ewes all lambed on their own. In fact, we only saw one birth! (Check out my previous post about that incredible story!) The rest of our ewes were stealth-like in their labors and deliveries. On more than one occasion, I would walk up to the barn to feed or fill water buckets, come back in the barn and there was a new set up twins on the barn floor. Even a couple of our ewes lambed out in the pasture, just as nature intended it to be.

After the first couple of births that we missed, we were totally bummed. But honestly, in the long run I'm so thankful that we missed them. It just proved to us that our ewes are more than capable of lambing on their own and most likely prefer it that way. I think they enjoy the quiet and peacefulness of not having anyone around. We would be a distraction and annoying to them! And it just reinforces that nature knows best and my confidence in breeding each one of these girls again, knowing that they will most likely be successful.

Once the high of lambing season was over, came the task of making sure that all of these lambs stayed healthy, happy, and thriving. I'm ecstatic to report that all of our lambs are growing, causing mishief, making friends, becoming independent and finding their place in the flock. It's amazing to see how much they have changed from a month ago.

Just an example of how well they are doing - our third lamb born was a Romney ewe, that we named Abigail. (I'm really into the television series Turn. Our first three lambs were named from characters in the story!) Abigail was a whopping 15 pounds when she was born! She. Was. Huge. And she continues to be huge. She is by far our biggest lamb. Currently, she weighs 60+ pounds! She is a small tank, to say the least. But also, the biggest cry baby! She's the first one to bleat for her mama when she can't find her immediately.

So, Alberto and I have already started planning out breeding season and which rams will go with which ewes. And the thought of more lambs the following year makes me smile. To say that lambing season was incredible, is an understatement. The knowledge that we acquired, the new skills that we now have in our back pockets, and just the amount of confidence and the feeling of "oh yeah, we can do that again", there are no words.