Flat Andy's Spring Visit

Hello Students,

I bet you thought I forgot to report back on Flat Andy’s adventures on our farm!  But I didn’t forget, but I am very slow getting the job done.

Flat Andy has been busy this spring.  As you may know we raise beef cattle and sheep here in Soda Springs.  So spring on our farm means BABIES and shearing the sheep.

We started calving in mid April, and we started lambing on Easter weekend.  Flat Andy got up with me several times at 3 am to check for newborn lambs in the snow.  When the weather is cold we check every 2-3 hours for babies-day and night.  I found it very hard to take photos of Andy helping to warm the cold lambs with the radiant heater but here is a photo of a brand new set of triplets being warmed up in the middle of the night.

We had a farm record of 12 sets of triplets this year, and a ton of twins and very few single lambs.  Did you know that some breeds of sheep even have quadruplets (4 at a time) or quintuplets (5 at a time)?  We’ve never had more than triplets-thankfully.  Most ewes (mom sheep) need help to feed three babies so many times it is better to just have a set of healthy twins.

On one of those trips to bring new lambs into the barn Flat Andy got his foot stepped on by a ewe and we lost part of his boot. 

Our ewes lambed really quickly this year with 80% of the 100 pregnant moms lambing in just 3 weeks so Flat Andy and I were really busy bringing new lambs into the barn.  We bring them in to separate them for 24 hours from other families so the ewe and lambs learn to be a family, and we can make sure everyone is healthy.  Sometimes a ewe will be so excited about lambs that she will actually steal lambs from another ewe.  We try to make sure the lambs all end up with a mom who loves them and has enough milk to feed them.

Sometimes a ewe will be so sick, or have so little milk that we have to raise her lamb on the bottle.  We call these lambs bummers.  We give them bottles 4 times a day at first and then eventually they are only fed twice a day as they learn to eat hay etc.  We also give them a heat lamb to help them stay warm in really cold weather.  We had 8 bummer lambs this year, and several others that were getting a bottle once a day, or who were drinking from a self feeding bucket.

Normally we shear the sheep before we lamb but it didn’t work out that way this year.  Flat Andy was pretty impressed when he watched the ewes get their annual haircut.  He also thought the wool was really soft!  Most of yarn is sold and eventually ends up in mills that make blankets or coats.  We have a small amount of our wool made into yarn which we sell at farmers markets.  The lambs can find the ewes teats much easier when she is “naked” so I think they like having Mom be shorn.  

Since our sheep do not have to walk on roads (like range herds) or over many rocks which would wear their hooves down we have to trim our sheep’s hooves at least once a year.  Flat Andy thought our “tilt table” was pretty cool, since it just lays the ewes on their sides so we can access their hooves to trim them.

Do you remember getting your shots so you could go to kindergarten?  Well we have to give our ewes two shots a year, and our lambs get vaccinated when they are just 3-4 weeks old, and then again in 3 weeks.  Flat Andy was glad he didn’t have to be vaccinated, but the lambs are quite brave!   We use a “multi dose syringe” that allows us to give a little bit of vaccine to a number of animals quickly.

Fairly soon we will start putting our animals out on our pastures so they can graze and stop feeding hay.  We are waiting for the pastures to get enough growth so they won’t be damaged by grazing too early.

We don’t handle our newborn calves nearly as much as we handle the lambs… they are so much bigger when they are born, and they almost always come just one at a time so unless the weather is really aweful their Mom can  usually take care of things without any human help.  Here is a newborn calf.   This calf is about a month old.   The calves are given their first vaccinations when they are only a few days old, they also get their ear tag at that time.  We will give them another vaccination in mid June, and the yearlings will also get another booster which will last them until they are harvested for meat.

Thank you for sending us Flat Andy, and thank you for your patience.  I hope you enjoyed seeing the baby lambs, and so hopefully waiting for them to arrive was worth it.  If you have other questions you can always ask your parents to let you come visit the farm.  Tomorrow the entire 3^rd grade is coming here for a tour!

Have a great summer!