March 22, 2022

A gross, wet, windy day feels like a good time to do some indoor work like updating farm records, social media pages, and such. We're approaching the halfway point in spring lambing already and so far I am appreciating it much more than our winter group. Today I've been adding new lambs to my lambing record and calculating lambing percentages. The numbers may change drastically since we still have 9 ewes left to lamb and they are all doing it for the first time, but we're currently sitting at an overall 22% higher production rate of live-born lambs in the spring group compared to the winter group. So far there's also a 23% higher survival rate (although that calculation isn't exactly fair as even the oldest of the spring lambs is only just over a week old and anything could happen at any time until weaning).

We've also had an almost even split of ewe and ram lambs this spring, which means we will actually have a decent group of ram lambs to sell in a couple months or so (unless the other 9 ewes decide to have all or mostly ewe lambs and turn it into a repeat of the winter lambing group). So far all but 3 of the lambs are from Brom, our registered Katahdin ram. The other 3 are one Katahdin ewe lamb who is the daughter of Willoughby, our commercial ram, but the granddaughter of Brom, and then 2 adorable little Painted Desert ewe lambs from Jethro and Eloise, one of our prettiest Painted Desert ewes.

I am super happy with how Willoughby's daughter, Bridgette, has turned out. She has all of the qualities I had hoped to get from each ram (except maybe a little more color). She has a nice thick coat of hair that has helped keep her warm and healthy. She is naturally very friendly (helped by the fact that she's a bottle baby after her first-time mother decided birth was too scary of an experience) and is one of the most nicely built lambs we've ever gotten. She's a very long-bodied, tall ewe who's just well balanced, even at only a few days old.

Bridgette is the lamb on the right in the picture below. To the left is her great-aunt. Bridgette's mother, Baby B, is the daughter of Brom and Beatrice, one of our commercial ewes. Beatrice's mother, Agatha, is also the mother of Arwen, the lamb on the left.

Despite being a commercial ram instead of registered, Willoughby is a lot stockier in build than Brom and I think his influence shows really well in Bridgette with how well-muscled she is in comparison to Arwen, but Brom also contributed quite a bit in giving her her height and length. Generally, how their lambs turn out is Will = smaller framed but stocky lambs, Brom = big frame but lean. This will definitely be a repeat breeding.

Interestingly enough, Bridgette is not the only lamb we've gotten that is related to both rams, but the other two are the reverse: Brom's sons and Willoughby's grandsons and they are very different. Both have the same hair type as Bridgette but they are very small and lean, probably about 3-4 pounds each. They seem to have gotten the more negative qualities from each ram. Thankfully they are still very healthy, active lambs and I will have to see their overall growth until weaning. It seems that yearling ewes bred to Brom that have twins tend to have tiny ones since we got a similar set of twins from him last year. Willoughby's twin children seem to be more your typical twin size for Katahdins at about 6-7 pounds. I will see how the rest of the yearling ewes do this year to decide which breeding direction I prefer, Will as the father and Brom the grandfather or the reverse.

Side note after all this sheep breeding talk: we are officially done with kidding for this year! Not as many kids as we were hoping for as we had one of our pregnant does disappear a couple months ago and then our yearling doe miscarried about a week ago. But we have a new doeling and a new buckling! The doeling is a dark brown paint and will be retained to breed to Rilian, our black paint buckling we retained from last winter. The buckling is a red-headed traditional and will be available to a new home at weaning.