We've had our Romney flock for nearly ten years now, so we're fairly familiar with their management and needs - there is little anymore that totally surprises us in working with them.  That is not so true of the Romeldale/CVMs: we've only had them a few years, and only the last one or two years in any appreciable numbers.  Because of that, every once in a while we discover something new - something different - when we didn't have any idea!

This lambing time has brought just such a revelation....  We have come to that point at the end of the lambing season in which I sit down and begin to evaluate how things went, mathematically.  There was one thing that I've wanted to check out since the first week of lambing - something I started to notice in the very beginning.  Five of the first six ewes to deliver were Romeldales, and I noticed that only Grace, the Romney, delivered her lambs at about 148 days.  The others came later... some much later.

It was many years ago - probably the second or third year with our Romneys - that we determined that the gestation period for our Romneys was 148 days.  Actually, that isn't quite correct....  We originally determined that the Romneys' gestation period was 146 days when we were shearing after lambing.  Then, we switched to shearing before lambing the following year and discovered that it added two days to their gestation period, producing plumper and stronger lambs at about 148 days.

We made the assumption that the Romeldales' gestation period would be the same....  Romeldales include Romneys in their genetic breed make-up, so we just figured - well, we just figured wrong!  In the past couple of years, I don't think we had enough Romeldales to make the difference obvious to us, but this year we have nearly half of the flock delivering late - it's been pretty obvious!

So yesterday I sat down with my handy calculator and looked over the Romeldale flock, determining every ewe's actual gestation period this year - the time from her marking by the ram to the day she delivered - then added up all the time periods, and divided by the number of ewes to get the average gestation.  The results were just as I expected: the Romeldales have averaged 150 days gestation this year rather than the 148 days of the Romneys.

This will be a good thing to know for next year.  I can factor that into their due dates so that I'm not hanging around, waiting for them to deliver for two days before they would even reasonably do so!  When lambs are coming several times each day, it doesn't matter so much; but when there are a couple of days or more between (in the beginning and at the end of the season), then it's easier to know when I can and cannot schedule appointments if I have more accurate due dates.

People sometimes ask me about the similarities and differences in the two breeds.  Overall, they are very similar - other than their fleeces, of course - but they are about the same size, they eat the same, move the same, and have similar dispositions.  I guess the one difference I can now tell them is that the Romeldale gestation is a couple of days longer.  Good to know!

And by the way, speaking of Romeldales delivering, at the early bottle feeding this morning, I was greeted by Ivy and her new little lamb, Joy (who was not so little at over thirteen pounds!).  Although Ivy is not quite yet a yearling, she did a wonderful job cleaning up her new lamb and making sure she had fed - a very nice surprise at the crack of dawn!

It's almost time for the daily battle with sheep here on Peeper Hollow Farm.  For those of you who don't have sheep of your own, you probably have no idea what I am talking about; but those of you with sheep know that I am referring to feeding time.  This is the worst time of year for feeding sheep: the ewes are lactating, feeding their lambs, and desperate for as much nutrition as they can get.  We, on the other hand, are at the end of the hay-feeding year, hoping for grass to begin filling in the pastures. Our hay supply is dwindling, and because we don't want to run out, we weigh the hay that we feed and make sure not to feed more than they need; doing so might cause us to run short.  That is something that we can't allow to happen....

So when we go up to the barn to feed, the sheep all know it and are anxious for their share of the hay and grain - so anxious, in fact, that they will do just about anything to get that first mouthful into their bellies - and I mean just about anything!  It is much easier when there are two of us doing the feeding because the chaos is divided, with about half the flock attacking each of us as we carry the hay to the feeders.  During the week though, like today, I am on my own, trying to do what I need to do while under attack by about thirty desperate, lactating ewes, and nearly twice that many lambs!

To feed the sheep, we toss hay bales down the chute from the loft to the first floor of the barn.  The bottom of the chute is about five feet off of the floor, so the sheep can't get to the hay (thank goodness!) until we pull it out of the chute.  The problem is that we need four bales at each feeding, and can only stack two bales into the chute at any one time.  I usually drop two down into the chute, climb down the ladder, wade in among the frenzied sheep, and pull the first bale from the chute. 

By this time, the sheep are not only milling - they are climbing!  They climb each other and they climb me, trying to get to the bale of hay I carry in front of me.  I need to maneuver the bale and myself out the door of the barn and over to the first bale feeder - which I have prepared in advance to accept the bale.  Hopefully, when I get there, there is no lamb in the feeder (they like to jump in and see what their moms have left behind), and I can then lower the forty- to fifty-pound bale into the feeder - avoiding all of the ewes' heads in the process, of course!

Once the first bale is into its feeder, I have to go back for the second bale in the chute.  This one becomes a bit easier because at least eight ewes have decided that they already have a front-row seat at that first bale, so they drop out of the chaos....  The second bale goes into the feeder next to the first. Once I have the first two bales into the feeders, I position grates on top to prevent the ewes from pulling out more hay than they can eat (reducing waste), and I remove the twine that holds the bale together.  I don't pull the twine earlier because there are just too many crazy sheep pushing and climbing until the first two bales are in place.

The photo at right was taken last weekend as Rick was moving the second bale from the chute to the hay feeder - notice the teal grate in one hand and the alfalfa bale in the other....  You need to look closely because nearly all you can see is the crush of ewes trying to get a mouthful of hay!

If I can extricate myself after the second bale, I head up to the loft for the next pair of bales, which go easily into the chute.  Pulling the second pair of bales out of the chute and getting them into the feeders is in some ways easier, but in some ways harder than the first pair.  This time, I have many fewer ewes to fight with (they are all eating!), but this time all of the lambs gather around to see what all the fuss was about....  Trying to manage a forty- to fifty-pound bale of hay while dancing around forty or so lambs (and a few ewes) is another challenge I have become quite proficient at!  It often does feel like a dance, with lambs leading and me following their moves, making slow but steady progress towards the feeders.

Thank goodness, once I get all of the hay into place in the appropriate feeders, I can close the panels across the barn entrance, locking the ewes and lambs in while I spread the grain into the grain feeders.  Until just recently, I had to pour the grain out with ewes underfoot - just like the hay feeding - and it was always a contest to see whether I would get more grain in the feeders (where it belongs!) or on top of the ewe's heads, as they angled for the perfect position under the bucket....  Now, with them safely locked into the barn, I can spread the two buckets of grain into the four long grain feeders at my leisure, opening the panels when I'm finished and getting out of the way.  You can see the eews eating from the long grain feeders in the photo below.

I used to worry that the lambs would get trampled in the frenzy of the ewes getting to their grain, but I have come to realize that it works much like a flock of birds - they are all moving and somehow know how to stay out of everyone else's way.  There is no way I could do that myself, but the lambs somehow manage to avoid being trampled.

Once all of the lactating ewes are fed, the worst is over and I can focus on the ewes yet to deliver, the unbred ewes, and the rams, all of whom are in their own areas with their own feeders.  Because each of these groups is relatively small in size, none of them pose the challenge that I face with the lactating ewes.  I can peacefully move from one group to the next, feeding out their hay, topping off their water, and just plain checking everything out to make sure that all is well.

Every day, as the noon feeding time approaches, I begin to dread the pushing, pulling, and shoving that is so much a part of feeding the lactating ewes at this time of year.  On the other hand, I know they need to be fed to strengthen up their roly-poly lambs.  It is at this time of year that I really look forward to spring - lush green grass in the pastures and sheep grazing in the fields, caring not one iota what I am carrying in my hands as I move among the feeders.  Aah, those will be the days....

I have delivered a lot of lambs throughout the last ten years....  I didn't think there was much that could surprise me anymore, but I was wrong.  Yesterday, when Celeste went into labor, the whole experience was one huge surprise!

But let me set the scene before we get to what happened.  A couple of years ago, two weeks before we began lambing, our shearer brought in a disease, soremouth, that spread like wildfire throughout our flock.  The disease itself is very similar to chicken pox in people, but the lesions tend to come out most heavily around the mouth (hence the name).  Once the ewes got it from the shearing equipment, they spread it to their lambs as they licked them off at birth.  The lambs eventually got it so badly around their mouths that they couldn't suck, but before it got that bad, they infected their mothers' teats with the sores.  Those sores on the teats then caused mastitis (an infection of the mammary tissue).  As a result, that year we lost lambs who wouldn't suck, and we lost a lot of bags (or at least one side) on many of our best ewes.  It was a mess - one I would love to forget!

Last year, we culled out (sent to auction) the ewes who had lost their entire bag in the soremouth outbreak and could no longer feed lambs. Bottle lambs are just too much work and too expensive to make a habit of it.  We did keep, though, three ewes who had lost one side of their bags - they were all good ewes, and we hoped to get another ewe lamb from each one before we sent them along to auction, too.  We figured that they could at least feed a single lamb - or one of twins, and we would then bottle feed the other.  Celeste is in that group - she lost half of her bag to mastitis in the soremouth mess, and milk tends to come in very slowly on the other side.  She carries recessive color, although we have never had a recessively colored lamb from her.  She has also won Grand Champion Fleece at the Iowa State Fair more than once - I would love to have a recessively colored lamb from her, to pass those genes down to more ewes....

So, last fall, we bred Celeste to our new recessively colored ram from California - Goliath.  We had a 50% chance that it would be a ewe lamb, and a 50% chance that it would be colored.  Remembering back to my statistics class in college, I think that meant that we had a 25% chance of getting the colored ewe lamb I wanted - not a strong likelihood, actually.  On the other hand, if we had sent Celeste to auction last fall, we would have had no chance, so she is still here!  We knew she ultrasounded with only one lamb, so there would be only one chance to get that colored ewe lamb - it was a yes or no shot, and whatever it was, I knew I would most likely have to bottle feed it for at least the first few days.

When Celeste went into labor yesterday, things started out pretty typically....  She kept digging like mad to make her labor and delivery nest, and kept lying down and standing up because she couldn't get comfortable.  Usually, after a bit of this up and down, the amniotic sack will break and the ewe will move on to pushing the lamb out - otherwise, she pushes the intact water bag out ahead of the lamb, and you eventually see that instead of the lamb.  One way or another, you see either a gush of water or the water bag.  At least that's the way it's always been - but not yesterday.  I waited for hours, watching her dig less and push more, but all that I could see was an occasional glob of thick, paste-like stuff.  This was definitely not normal!

I decided that the only thing I could really do was see if the lamb was coming down the birth canal by gloving up and going in - something I do without much thought anymore.  I've done it so many times, and the result is always the same: you either feel the lamb, or you feel the water bag (like a water balloon) preceding the lamb.  Yesterday, however, I felt nothing.... further back, more nothing.... and then eventually I got to something that felt like Astro-turf!  I kid you not - it felt just like indoor-outdoor fake grass - kind of crunchy and crinkly.  Definitely not what I thought I should feel!  I decided to call the vet: I had too much riding on this one lamb for something to go wrong.  Of course, my vet was tied up, but they sent out good ol' Doc Robinson, who was helping to cover the office.

The funny thing is that Doc Robinson thought I was crazy - I could see it on his face as I told him the problem - until he reached in there himself!  Even he admitted that this was the strangest situation he had seen in a while!  He finally figured out that the crunchy stuff that we felt was, indeed, the amniotic sack - he broke it and delivered the single lamb: a recessively colored ewe lamb!!  I don't know how we got so lucky, but we did, and both Celeste and Jareau are fine.  I was up most of the night carrying bottles up to the barn for Jareau, but thankfully, we had several ewes deliver yesterday, so there is plenty of colostrum to go around.

So, thank you, Doc Robinson, and thank you, Celeste, for defying the odds and bringing us this beautiful colored baby ewe lamb.  To be honest, it isn't often that I take this kind of gamble, and even less often that it comes out in my favor!