Sunrise Haven Farm

Tara gave birth to a single ewe lamb this morning.  That means three of my four ewes delivered five lambs in less than a 24 hour period! I’m exhausted, but extremely happy as well. The four born yesterday were up and bouncy, eating and playing, when I first went out to check on them this morning.  Everyone has had their umbilical cords snipped and dipped in iodine, and Tara’s new little girl has gotten up and had her first drink of colostrum too.  On today’s agenda is getting the scale hung and recording the official weights, pics and vital statistics of all the new lambs, and docking their tails. More pics/video when I get a minute to breathe! At the rate things are going, Rosie will probably decide to deliver this afternoon (though realistically I think that is doubtful, she appears to be about a week behind the other ewes… but my estimates haven’t been that great so far so it wouldn’t surprise me too much).

EDIT: everything I’m reading says that elastration should be performed only when the lamb is between 36-72 hours old, so I’m going to wait to do the tail docking until tomorrow for the first four, and Thursday morning for Tara’s new little girl.

EDIT again:  another little video, of the newest lamb.

Violet and Daisy both delivered today. Violet went into labor at around noon and gave birth to twins, one female one male.  Daisy went into labor just after Violet and delivered twin males.  Everyone is doing fine - so exciting!!

A video of Violet and her lambs in their first hours:

We’ve decided to name the first batch of lambs after characters in one of our favorite movies, The Princess Bride. So Violet’s lambs are now named Buttercup and Westley, and Daisy’s boys have been named Inigo and Fezzik.  They are all now bedded down for the night with full bellies, and I will be up early checking on them again.  I’m not quite sure when Rosie and Tara are due but it wont be long.  Sometime within the next couple of weeks the rest of the lambs will be born.

Sheep typically have a 144-151 day gestation period, across breeds. It’s now been 148 days since I posted this picture, but the first lambs have not yet arrived!

Daisy and Violet are the two that had already been marked in the picture above. Right now, Violet looks like a small dairy cow; I thought for sure she was going to be early! Daisy is also very large and could deliver any time now… I will continue to (not so patiently) wait for nature to take its course. I want lambs! I’m sure I’ll be overwhelmed soon enough. Rosie and Tara are also very definitely pregnant, probably a week or maybe two behind Violet and Daisy. Soon soon soon there will be baby lamb pictures to share I’m sure. Stay tuned.

In other news… I attended sheep shearing school yesterday in Westminster Maryland. It was a great class, and actually is continuing today as I write this, but I am not there today. I managed to shear half of a sheep before being unable to stand the pain in my lower back. It was far more taxing on my body than I’d imagined it would be. I simply could not tolerate the right-angle-bend-at-the-waist position used for most of the process, it was excruciating! It was fascinating and fun to learn as well though, so I’m glad I went and tried it at least. Rachel did a much better job of it than I could have, that’s for sure. And the fleeces have been shipped off to the mill for processing into yarn. I think I barely had enough to meet their minimum order by adding in some fleece I had put away from the previous shearing. I have to try to be patient yet again, as the yarn wont arrive back to me for about six months. I’ll report back on that in the fall. Meanwhile, I must move learning how to spin higher up on my todo list. I will at least try every aspect of the process, to see which parts might be possible and desirable for me to do myself going forward. Ah, endless learning. Now… where are those lambs?!?!?!!

Today was shearing day!  I am taking shearing class this year, but it is being held the last weekend of March and the ewes are all due to lamb during the first week of April, so I asked Rachel Summers to come shear the sheep for me.

She sheared Roscoe the ram, all four pregnant ewes, and then we tackled Argyle too! A couple before and after shots of Argyle the llama and Violet, one of the sheep:

Next step: pack up the fleeces and send them off to the fiber mill for processing into yarn.

We have a new farm family member!  I brought home a beautiful ram lamb this morning.  I decided to get a nice fine-wooled male as a companion for Roscoe and a fleece producer, and this little guy fit the bill wonderfully.  He is a four month old Merino-Corriedale cross with a very sweet temperment, and stunning soft moorit (red-brown) fleece, but a bad overbite (”parrot mouth” - hereditary).  I’m going to bring him to the vet to have him wethered soon since we wont be breeding him.  He’s here just for his fleece and companionship.  We have not named him yet - but isn’t he just precious!

He and Roscoe are confined to adjoining lambing quarters to get to know each other.  Roscoe is MUCH bigger than the new little boy and we don’t want him to get hurt.

We’re very excited to have him join the family.  And only one month to go until lambing time!!