Lambing

[Muttley]

I start to lamb about the first of May. I am wondering what things people suggest I do to prepare my ewes for this.
I am feeding good hay, a little grain when it's cold, as well as a free choice supplement.
Do I need to feed differently? Should I be vacinating? What else so that I can have healthy lambs?

[dwilliams]

We start lambing at the end of March, beginning of April. Our sheep get self feed hay and grain. I think they are too fat, so we are going to begin cutting back a bit before lambing because they seem to have trouble lambing when they are too fat. Last year we had alot of triplets born, with one out of the three usually being quite weak. I would rather have 2 strong, healthy ones than three.

[Muttley]

How many pounds of grain and hay should I be feeding each day?

[jensco]

Rule of thumb is 10 sheep per square bale of hay per day. For pregnant or nursing sheep take it back to between 8 or 9. We don't feed our girls any more than 2lbs of grain. I would rather give them more hay. We think ours are a little big too.

By the way, we are mid-way through lambing (8 lambed and 9 to go) with 14 healthy lambs and counting. I agree that twins are better than triplets. Easier on everyone.

Some vaccinate around 3 weeks before lambing so that the antibodies are passed only to the lambs. Saves doing the lambs at three months and putting them off their feeding routine. Having said that, we missed our girls this time and will be vaccinating twice.

Happy lambing!

[peasant]

Always interesting to look over the water. We are English Lowland sheep Farmers . We lamb about a thousand Ewes,during the month of March . We like you would rather have two good lambs rather than three small ones. We vaccinate with Heptavac P about 4 weeks pre lambing. Our feeding is based around hay. All our sheep are fed concentrate(Barley ,ground soya ,biscuit waste,mineral mix) building up to about 2.2 pounds at lambing. We would expect are ewes to raise about a average of one and three quarter lambs each. We would never lower the concentrate the closer we get to lambing for fear of limiting the ewes milk supply Hope lambing is going well. peasant

[cakadu]

Depending on the breed you raise and how prolific they are, cutting back on grain and feeding more hay in the last weeks of pregnancy might lead to some problems. The more lambs the ewe carries, the less room she has for roughage at any one time, so she needs to keep her protein levels up somehow, otherwise there can be difficulties. It's individual choice on how to feed and to know the best combinations, but your ewes will show you that. Roughage is still very important and they must have that available. What we try to do is to make sure the ewes have to walk to get their food and keep some sort of exercise going. That helps as well.

Sometimes what looks like fat ewes can be wool cover, so you need to ensure what body score they are at by doing a hands-on body conditioning. The eye of the shepherd is usually pretty good, but a good old fashioned feel never hurt anything either.

[jensco]

Well, last year's ewe lambs are starting to provide us with lambs. Always a little anxiety when a ewe is lambing for the first time. The first girl "Patches" came through with flying colours. Instinct kicked in with very little interference from us - got to love that!!! Don't know where she was hiding those twins but everyone is settling in nicely.

Let's hope the remaining 6 first time ewes are as successful.

Regards all, jensco.

[Muttley]

We started lambing as well. We weren't due to start till May, but had bought some open ewe lambs at auction last fall. Of course I never even thought to check them lately to see if they had been bred. One of our kids came running across the yard screaming we had a dead lamb. The poor liitle thing had been born and had been up but must never had gotten a suck and we lost it.
I went to a neighbor and bought a two week old lamb and after a couple of days we had trouble getting the ewe to take it.
We had trouble at first then I tried something Cowman had suggest he had tried on cows. I put a pup in the pen with the ewe and she started to bunt the dog, well she stared being protective of the lamb right away after that. It must have helped to bring on a instinct or maybe I just got lucky. Oh! well the dog story sounds a lot better.