Lambing for 2019 has officially finished. We bred 36 ewes, and every single one of them became pregnant. This is a first for us! Usually, at least one ewe fails to conceive.
Sadly, we lost two ewes. One was an accident, and the other was pregnancy toxemia. Our lambing percentages were decent – 57 live lambs and seven stillborns. We had five sets of triplets this year and lost one set to the pregnancy toxemia. We do not like getting triplets. Of course, the other ewe that died also had triplets, and we’re hand-raising some of the others, so we have six bottle babies.
Our last bottle baby lambs were in 2011. In over 20 years of raising sheep, we’ve only had 11 bottle lambs in total. This year, we added six more to that number for a total of 17.
The lambs all look good, and we’ve already started to determine who might be available for sale. We have more orders for breeding sheep than we have sheep to fill them, so if you want sheep from us, let me know to get on our list for 2020.
Our AI class students did very well, considering all of the straw failures and other issues. Of the 34 ewes bred via AI, 11 of them lambed, producing 15 lambs (ten rams and five ewes). This is a typical and acceptable percentage for this non-surgical AI. Desert Weyr Wibbly was the star of the AIs, siring 13 lambs (eight rams and five ewes), including two sets of triplets. Desert Weyr Thane and Desert Weyr Sterling each sired one ram lamb from AI, and only Desert Weyr Scotty did not inseminate any ewes via AI.
The live cover backup rams, Desert Weyr Scotty and Desert Weyr Sterling, really did their jobs well. All of the remaining ewes became pregnant. Scotty had 14 ewes to breed, and he sired 22 lambs (13 rams and nine ewes), with one set of triplets. So, in spite of the problem with the AI, we know he works well! Sterling covered 13 ewes and sired 20 lambs (ten rams and ten ewes). He sired two sets of triplets.
