Win some, Lose some

Sometimes you win and sometimes you lose.

We lost 109 Daron today. She went into labor and I couldn't get the lamb out. It felt weird. I talked to the vet about options, a C-section would be a minimum of $300 if there were no complications but more realistically $500+. It's not economically viable to spend that much money on a 9 year old ewe. I had several options, none good. I tried and tried but I could not shift the lamb, positively identify the parts I was feeling as belonged to the same lamb or have any hope of getting those parts out. We worked for quite a while but Daron went into shock and was losing blood. Per vet instructions we shot her and then I quickly cut her open in hopes we had a live lamb behind the mess I was feeling.

The deformed lamb weighed 31 pounds. Daron was perhaps 75 on a good day. There was no way to have gotten that mass out without a C-section and it was dead a while ago. There was no live lamb behind that one.

But while we were dealing with this disaster 322 Gwenda successfully lambed a set of twins, a ram and a ewe. She had them out, up, dry and nursed before we were done with Daron. Gwenda's lambs are doing fine in spite of our horrendous winds.

We are expecting snow tonight and tomorrow so we loaded six bales of hay into the pasture both as extra food for the ewes and shelter for the lambs. We have two ewes looking close but I think they will wait until tomorrow.

Triplets!

Well I spoke too soon. At this morning's sheep check at 6:00 am we found a ewe, 298 Caridwen, with 3 lambs. All three were out, dry and had nursed. 2 ewes and a ram lamb. Unfortunately Caridwen can only for sure count to two so we put her in a jug on pasture until she learns she has three to care for. She gets good mom points for getting them all out and cleaned off and not tangled. I just wish she'd only had 2 though. I'm not sure she will have enough milk to feed all three. I sure hope the rest of the wooly beach balls are not hiding three lambs inside!

Burning Brush & More Lambs

Yesterday we burned the big brush pile in our field. We have to call the Sheriff to get permission now. In years past agricultural burning was allowed with no restrictions. It's a bit of a hassle but I guess so many urban folks moved in, saw burning and didn't understand the reasons that they had to institute some sort of system so the dispatcher can tell people who call in fires that it's allowed. We burn brush and prunings because there is really no other way to dispose of them. We don't have a chipper and even if we did we can't use that many wood chips. Most of it is not any good for firewood, we salvage what can be used in the fireplace and still have more wood than we or our neighbors can use in years.

With the brush pile gone the only thing left to do to be able to get the front field plowed and planted is to move the sheep and take down the electric fencing. We'd like to remove the small white shed that is in the way but if that doesn't happen we can still plow and plant the field.

We also had another ewe lamb a set of twins. That makes a total of 3 so far. She had triplets last year and I was really glad not to have 3 again this year even though she was able to count to three.