Thus commences the lambing

At last the lambing opens.  A visitor to the farm had the privilege of holding the first birth of the season - a ram born to Teed's Tlingit, by Silvercat Golden Delicious.  We are delighted by the white markings, a trait we wish to breed into our flock, and the fact that the lamb shows signs of health and vigour.

Here we see Tlingit anxiously leading her new lamb away, before wicked farmers can harm him.  His white blaze stands out quite clearly from a distance.  He is still a little unsteady on his pins, but with the care and attention of his devoted mother, his chances of growing into a beautiful ram are excellent.

Sadly he will truly have her devoted attention since it seems that his twin was a stillbirth.  It is hard to find these things, and yet it is a part of the whole truth.  We strongly suspect that the stillbirth was a result of the stress recently placed on our flock by the dog attack, although that is effectively impossible to prove.

As yet we have no other lambs to add to the tally, although the ewes are broad and languid.  Their languour does not extend to when farmers arrive with treats - to help them recover what condition they may, we are lavishly feeding them hay, with robust supplements of alfalfa, in both hay and pellet form, as well as both oats and barley.  Their feeding is so lavish, in fact, that they are turning up their noses at regular grass hay, but given their otherwise precarious situation we're happy to indulge them.

Cool early Spring

We still have frosty nights from time to time, but the grass is starting to grow greener.

We have yet to lose any more ewes, although we have two sheep in the makeshift clinic on our porch, and one of the rams got too wet to survive.

We have lost a couple of ducklings to owls.  We strung up lines to interfere with owl strikes, but this is obviously not a perfect solution; more so because the ducklings like to wander at night.

To help the sheep, we are supplementing their diets with additional alfalfa, oats and barley.  The idea is to keep them going as well as we can for now, and to actively fatten them during the growing season as well as we can so as to maximise our chances of strong numbers over the next year or two.

The trees are starting to show buds, and a number of the trees we first planted are now over six feet in height.  In the next few years we should see signs of our first crops.  We do have more trees on order, but after replacing a few dead trees and filling in a few blanks on our fields we shall rarely need more.