Well… it’s been a rough week in the sheep barn. Honestly… 0 out of 10. Do not recommend.
You know how every job has that part of it that’s just harder than the rest? For sheep farmers… that part is lambing. And this week has been a bit of a doozy.
You might remember about a year ago — January I think it was — we picked up a group of 30 young ewes. They were only about three months old at the time.
Really nice looking group of ewes. I chose them because they’re a little smaller framed sheep, which makes them easier to work with, and the Dorset breed is known for being excellent mothers and able to breed out of season.
Now years ago, believe it or not, I actually learned something about breeding ewe lambs too early. That time the lambing actually went fine… but the milk didn’t. Those young ewes didn’t have their milk in yet and suddenly we had a barn full of lambs needing bottles.
So this time I told myself I was going to be patient… which, if you know me, isn’t exactly one of my stronger qualities. The saying is they can lamb once they’re past their first birthday, but remembering that experience I figured we’d give these girls a little more time. So we waited and bred them so they’d be almost a year and a half old before their first lambs.
Plenty mature. Plenty of time. It seemed like a good plan. And to be fair… there’s been no milk issues this time.
For whatever reason though, lambing has been really tough with this group. I don’t know if it’s just their size, maybe I fed them a little too well, or perhaps it’s the genetics of the rams I bred them with. Hard to say. But either way… it’s been a long week.
Last night Anne came out to help me with another one of those hard births. By that point it was starting to feel like we were seeing the same thing over and over again. We worked with that ewe for hours trying to help her deliver that lamb.
Even with Anne’s smaller hands helping… we just couldn’t get things to go the way we needed them to.
And in the end it did not turn out well.
Afterward we both just sat there for a bit on the bed pack in the sheep barn beside that ewe. Quiet. Both pretty tired. Disappointed and questioning ourselves… our decisions, our abilities, and all the what-ifs.
I said to her, “I’m so glad you were here to help me. Like the saying goes… a problem shared is a problem halved.”
Eventually we cleaned everything up and headed back to the house around 7:30 for supper. Sitting there at the table we talked about it and both kind of came to the same conclusion.
That was probably about as hard a night as sheep farming gets.
And if that’s the case… well… it’s got to get better from here… right??
Farmer Rod