Friday, January 14, 2011

Scanning and Shedding Day

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Scanning for lambs, also how many each Ewe is carrying. The ones with the Red butts are carrying twins. The Blue butts are Triplets!

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Shedding out, seperate  Ewes off depending on the number of lambs carried.  All day job, we are running at 195% potential lambing this year, which isnt too bad.

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Can we go now???  Please?

22 comments:

  1. I had no idea the ewes carried twins and triplets so often. I would have thought it was rare. Do the ones carrying multiples have a much higher mortality rate? Can you tell I've never been around sheep ;)

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  2. Good pictures & interesting about the coloring.

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  3. Sheep, usually carry two, maybe one. But they can accommadate two without problem. However, in the pictures there are some Ewes with Red and Green colouring, they are carrying Quads!!!!!!!
    The mortality rate increases when carrying more than two. But, any over the two and we auto feed, with the "mechanical shepherdess!!"

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  4. Huh! Didn't know you raised sheep. Nice flock! You're gonna be busy pretty soon it looks like!

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  5. Its a part time thing! I also hold down a full time job, like most folk, we need the money!!!!!

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  6. Do you use border collies? I'd love to have a few sheep to keep my dogs busy.

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  7. We use two Collie`s, both Border types. They round up the sheep very well, in fact they are the best! But they need to be kept working, as they can become bored.

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  8. Very cool. Do you ultrasound them to count fetuses? Is it so you can count lambs with ewes and tell if one's down in the pasture?

    I know just enough about sheep to realize sheep are hard. Someone else can raise my lamb for me, thanks!

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  9. My cowboy got in an accident and had his chin kicked almost all off, pieces of his dentures in his shirt pocket, etc. It was bad. I was there when the nurse asked him if he was allergic to anything. He could barely talked but he said one word "Sheep" I laughed but the nurse said:"Excuse Me?"

    I've always wanted sheep but it's never going to happen being married to a real COWboy, I guess.

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  10. Yep!Sheep are hard! But CCC, thats some injury! I guess that he is a real Cowboy, its some thing I would love to have been, but never will, still we can all dream!

    Funder? The Ultra sound are used to count lambs, thats how we look to arrange lambing time. Which have more than one fetus, these multiple lambs need more care.

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  11. Brought back shades of my youth on the farm. I raised a small herd of sheep from lambs, all of them orphaned, disowned, or from multiple births. They would sleep under heat lamps in the barn and get fed from bottles.

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  12. Thats about the size of it Ron, there are always orphaned lambs. Last year we ended up with 20! But its mostly due to the mothers of multiples only being able to feed 2 lambs successfully. So they tend to "divorce" the odd one! But if we have mothers with dead lambs we, take the skin from the dead lamb and attach it to the live "divorced" lamb. The mother then takes the strange lamb! Sounds a bit gruesome, but it works!

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  13. Yes, I know how this works. I've also seen it done in a movie about sheep ranching in Montana, called SWEETGRASS.

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  14. I`ll have to find that movie on cd or tape! People get upset at what has to be done sometimes.But the only other sheep film I am aware of apart from that Broken mountain, is The Sheepman, Glen Ford.

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  15. Don't know if it's available over there in PAL, but here's their website: http://sweetgrassthemovie.com/

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  16. I know a little bit about sheep but only what I've learned from other bloggers over the years. I'd seen triplets but not quads. Didn't know they could do that successfully. Sounds like a lot of work to me. I'll take my babies in single form and a little bit higher off the ground that those sheep.

    Hope you post pics of some of these super moms when their babies hit the ground.

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  17. Interesting Cheyenne. I wondered about the coloring for years, since someone told me it came from the paint put on a ram, to indicate that a sheep had been 'serviced.' I've always believed it too, until now. Well I'll be damned.

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  18. Hi Valance! Yep it is true also that there is a dye attached to the chest of each Ram/Tup, to mark each Ewe serviced. Your right there, but after that, they are marked according to number of lambs per Ewe!
    RR, I will!

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  19. Thanks Cheyenne. I don't feel so stupid now.

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  20. I did not know about this, either! How interesting, and I'm so glad I'm reading your blog! I'll send a link to a herding friend of mine, she would enjoy this.

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  21. Well, I had to come back and say we got the movie Sweetgrass via NetFlix. My husband says to me: 'Do you know that there's nobody narrating this?"

    It was VERY interesting to us...the scenery is awesome...and the places they took those sheep to graze...all I can say about that is "totally crazy." How they kept the sheep fat is still a wonder to me. We watched every bonus feature the DVD had, and particularly liked the deleted scenes.

    We gather cattle out of some pretty rough country, but those folks make us look like flat landers!!! Then the bears, the cold, the unforgiving wind...everyone needs to watch this to appreciate where their food at the supermarket comes from.

    Thanks Ron for mentioning the movie.

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