Finished Lambing!!

First off, I would like to apologize for the month and a half long delay in getting another post up. This semester's workload has been significantly greater than previous ones, meaning I have less time to do fun stuff like this blog! Anyway onto the topic of the day: Finished with Lambing!!

No more waking up in the middle of the night to check the ewes waiting to lamb!! (at least for this year.) Our last lamb to arrive was a recessive ram lamb out of one our recessive ewes bred by the black & tan ram, Charlie, we acquired in October. The most wonderful thing about this is that she had the lamb all on her own, without any help from us, and the lamb was up and had already nursed by the time they were checked this morning.

Lambs basking in the sun.

This was the first time that we tried to breed ewes as lambs (less than a year of age). We had placed 5 ewe lambs in with Charlie, the black & tan ram. Generally Romneys do not grow as fast as some of the larger mature sized breeds such as Suffolk, Hampshire, or Columbia, etc. This means that they are generally not at a large enough size to be able to maintain a pregnancy by the time they are 6-7 months like the other larger breeds. However by the time they are 8-9 months they should be of adequate size to be able to maintain a pregnancy and give birth by the time they are just over a year of age. The two ewes that did maintain pregnancy were the older ones in the group, born in Feb, versus the others born in late March - early April.

Most operations wait until the ewes are at least a year of age before breeding to ensure that the ewes will be fertile and cycling when they are placed with the ram. By placing ewe lambs in with the ram it is more likely that they may not get bred since they may be too small to maintain a pregnancy. There are pros and cons to breeding ewe lambs. Some of the pros include: increased genetic progress due to a shorter generation interval and the ewe starts productive life sooner decreasing her costs prior to lambing. Some of the cons include: there may be more problems at lambing because of the decreased size of the ewe and higher nutritional requirements because the ewes are still growing while pregnant. There are several more pros and cons but those are the major ones that play a role in determining if breeding ewe lambs would be beneficial to a sheep farm.

Recessive romney ram lamb

Hopefully I'll get the next post up in a more timely manner.