Udder Health

This is a photo of our ewe, Coconut, shortly after lambing. You can see that the teat in the picture is quite large and engorged with milk. This is the story of how Coconut went from having only one functioning udder half to both sides functioning normally.

When we got her in 2003, Coconut was one year old and had twin lambs two days old when we brought them home. We were new shepherds and weren't paying attention to the right things. When we finally noticed something was amiss, one of the lambs was declining. It turned out she wasn't getting enough to eat because Coconut only had milk on one side. We got a crash course in tube feeding a lamb.

The following year, after making sure both of Coconut's lambs had plenty of colostrum in the first few days, we took one of them as a bottle lamb. The non-functioning side of her udder got huge and we could tell it was painful for her but, try as we might, we couldn't get milk out of that half. Our vet tech suggested that the udder was blocked by scar tissue and there was nothing we could do about it. This year I decided to do some research and find out for myself.

Immediately after Coconut lambed, I inserted a sterile 18g needle through the sphincter into the teat. Voila - milk! For the next few days, Jennifer and I had to open the teat with a needle and either milk the ewe or let the lambs nurse. Unfortunately, the opening we made was closing up within hours afterward. The lambs weren't nursing enough on that side to keep it open. The teat remained much larger than the other side and the lambs had a tough time latching on without our help.

Finally, after about three days of this, I made the drive over to PBS Animal Health and bought a box of teat dilators. Teat dilators are small plastic devices that insert into the teat opening and hold it open inside while still allowing the sphincter to close. The idea is to leave the dilator in for 2-3 days, removing it every 12 hours to milk out the udder while preventing the lambs from nursing on that side.

When I got home with the dilators, we noticed that the teat on the closed side had finally shrunken down to the same size as the other side. We tried the teat and got milk. Apparently, the lambs had finally started nursing on that side and the teat was staying open. We ended up not needing to use the teat dilators.

Based on what I've read, I think we will probably have to go through this routine again next year. The cause is usually scar tissue in the teat but since this udder half had never functioned before I suspect that the ewe may simply have had a deformity.

tags: sheep, ewe, lamb, udder, teat, dilator, milk

Feeding Time

This is our ewe, Lambie, pictured with her two ewe lambs. I took this photo on May 12 when these girls were 25 days old. They are monsters. I wish I had a scale to keep track of their growth rates.

For some reason these lambs have been nursing from behind the ewe like this since they were born. The ewes teats don't point back so I'm not sure why they do this. I guess it worked the first time so why mess with a good thing, right?

When Icelandic lambs nurse, their tails often wag vigorously. I'm glad we have lambs that don't require tail docking both for management reasons and marketing reasons. We can advertise our lambs as being unblemished by castration, tail docking or ear tagging/tattooing.

Update From the Front

...low pressure front, that is. We've had this low sitting over us here since last Friday and it's rained every day since. Rain is forecast for the remainder of this week. Yuck!

Anyway, there' s quite a bit going on here. Lambs are growing like weeds, chicks are eating faster than we can fill their feeder and the garden is doing well (to the extent that we've gotten things planted on time).

We've got ten lambs so our original flock of 5 ewes has tripled in size. I need to be taking more photos. That would be a good assignment for my daughter. She's 7 years old and quite a budding photographer. As soon as we get some nice weather I'll ask her to get a clear picture of each of the lambs. These two guys were born on April 19th and this photo was taken about a week ago. They are checking out the chicks through the open door.

We're raising 50 straight run white Plymouth Rock chicks. They will be five weeks old this week. The only birds we've ever raised from chicks have been Cornish cross broilers. These white Rocks are much slower growing. I used to put the hybrids on pasture at 10-14 days old but the birds we have now were almost four weeks before we let them venture outside. They are still sleeping in the barn because I haven't built them a portable pasture house yet.

Today when Jennifer came home from a dentist appointment, the rambunctious lambs had knocked down the netting that was confining the chicks. I didn't have it hooked to the electric fence (doh!). The chicks got out and were all over the barn and the pasture. It started raining pretty hard around 5:00 or so and the ones outside went right back into their pen. They're clearly much smarter than the hybrid birds we've had.

The pasture is already growing much faster than our small flock can graze it. I'm buying a half-share in a rotary mower from my brother-in-law. I need to get the overgrown parts mowed as soon as things dry out so it will regrow before the spring flush is over.

Our next big task is composting the bedding pack. I'll write about that and I hope to post about our garden soon, too.

Last of the Lambs

Frost delivered the last of our lambs for this year. The little guy in the photo by himself is taking his first nap after filling his belly for the first time. The other photo shows mom with her ewe lamb. I think both of these lambs are white but the ram lamb has a lot of tan pigment in his wool (the name of this pigment escapes me and I don't have time to look it up now). He could be a spotted moorit, though. We'll know for sure when he's completely dry.

2006 Lamb Count
10 lambs from 5 ewes (200%)
6 ewes - 4 rams

We learned an important lesson from this year's lambing season - Don't let the ewes get fat during gestation! Out of the ten lambs that were born here, I assisted with six. A couple times I just had to stretch the ewe's vulva but at least four of the lambs had to be pulled and two of those were difficult. The lambs were probably above average in size (note to self: buy a scale before next year at this time) and a couple had pretty good-sized horn buds. The primary cause of this, though, was fat ewes. We didn't have lambs last spring so the ewes didn't lactate last summer. Add to this the alfalfa hay we fed this winter and you end up with overweight sheep. I calculated weights of between 160 and 168 pounds after shearing this spring.

I'm not certain that my assistance with these births was absolutely necessary but I'm sure in most of the cases it made the difference between a vigorous lamb with dry lungs and a weak lamb with fluid in the lungs. Next year, we will buy hay with more grass and less alfalfa. Not to mention we will be feeding much less hay because of the good quality pasture we will have stockpiled going into fall.

Bottomless Buckets of Taters

My friend, Henry, gave me these bottomless buckets for growing potatoes in the garden. I'll thin to 2 plants in each bucket and fill with soil and mulch as they grow. Harvest should be a cinch. I've never grown potatoes like this and I'm anxious to see how they do. We've got Yukon Golds in the buckets and a row of something red next to them.

Lambs

Last night, our ewe, Coconut, had twin ewe lambs. She is pictured here with one of them. The lamb in the photo by herself displays the badgerface pattern. Her legs, belly and head show her actual color, moorit, while her sides and parts of her face are lighter. We think the other is black.

This brings our lamb count to the following:

8 lambs total
5 ewes - 3 rams
3 white - 5 colored

tags: sheep, ewe, lamb, icelandic, badgerface, moorit

Gardening

Remember last week when I wrote about the UPS man delivering strawberries that I hoped to plant the following day? Well, they were finally planted today. We also put in the first succession plantings of lettuce, spinach, beets, radishes and chard. The berries are to the left of the rowcover in the photo and everything else is planted in short rows across the bed under the rowcover.

We are definitely behind where we could be in our zone 5 garden. These seeds could have been planted 3-4 weeks ago here but instead of the fabric rowcover I would have used greenhouse film. The rowcover pictured is Agribon fabric - AG-15, I think. It provides moderate frost protection, buffers drying winds and keeps most flying insects out. I don't bother burying the sides so the insect protection is not as good as it could be. The supports are 1/2" ID (12.7 mm) PVC pipe and the cover is attached using snap clamps.

tags: garden, strawberry, lettuce, spinach, beet, radish, chard, Agribon, rowcover, PVC

Bunny's Lambs

Bunny had two lambs this evening - one boy and one girl. That brings our lamb count to 6 - 3 boys and 3 girls born to 3 ewes. Two ewes are left to lamb. We're not sure yet if these lambs are black or brown (moorit). They appear to be dark brown but may darken to black as they age.

tags: ewe, lamb