May 9th newsletter

We are in the midst of one of our most busy seasons of the year.  We are about 2/3rds of the way thru our calving, the remaining 1/3 of the cows should calve in the next month or so.  Most of our cows have successfully delivered their calves without any assistance from us.  One cow had twins and didn’t want the second calf so we are raising the extra calf on the bottle. 

We started lambing on Easter weekend and now 16 days later 70 ewes have lambed.  I keep thinking things will slow down but that may not happen until around the 18^th.  Ewes have a 21 day estrus cycle, so most of the lambs should come within about 21 days of their earliest due date.  Amazingly we have had 11 sets of triplets born this year-which has to be a herd record for us.  It looks like we will have around a 200% lamb crop this year, if we can keep them all well.  We have only lost a handful of lambs this year-and half of those we lost when their mothers laid on them.  Several of our mothers of triplets have had health issues, which has forced us to give them antibiotics…so all their lambs will be sold as antibiotic treated lambs.  I have had to play midwife twice this year, once when the lamb had one leg back (they are supposed to come nose and both front legs first) and once when the lamb was just too large for the ewe to deliver easily.  These two ewes also required antibiotic treatment for uterine infections.  I do my best to keep things clean when delivering lambs but that’s not easy when you’re out in the dirt.  If you want to read about our first set of triplets you can find some info at:  http://laufamilyfarm.squarespace.com/farm-news/.

We were finally able to get the ewes shorn a few days ago.  The newborn lambs will be able to find their mother’s teats much easier now that their mothers udders and legs are not wooly.  But I’m sure the ewes are missing their wool coats since it has been raining or snowing all day.  I’ll work on getting the fleeces skirted and down to the Jim & Lynn of Spinderella’s Creations to be turned  into yarn as soon as I can.  In the next week or so we’ll get the lambs vaccinated, and start getting the ewes feet trimmed.  We normally trim feet as we go thru lambing, but we waited until after shearing as the newly trimmed hooves are more likely to hurt the shearer if the ewe kicks during shearing.

We have removed the bull from the cows, so they don’t breed the cows as soon as they come into heat again after calving.  We will get their annual health test done tomorrow and then take them to a friend’s bull pasture until we need to turn them in to breed, in early July.  We will soon need to bring all the cows and calves in for their booster vaccinations as well.

John has been working on getting all of our electric fences up and running so we can keep the cows contained.  The deep winter snows are always a bit hard on the fences, so they all have to be checked, and some insulators may have to be replaced.  In the coming weeks John will be planting grain on the farm he plants for another family, as well as a bit of alfalfa on our property.  Our winter wheat seems to have come thru the winter in good condition.

My time on the computer is greatly limited this time of year so please be patient with me if you place an order for May 21^st.  We have to check for lambs at least every 3 hours, which means we are both a bit sleep deprived.  I spend many hours in the barn caring for the newborns and my bottle lambs.  The beginning of market season has come and I find I have not completed all my winter projects.  We had hoped to have new signage for the yarn and for the meat, the new website completely ready and a Etsy.com store for the yarn created.  I also need some nice weather so I can get some new batches of yarn dyed!  I’m really looking forward to Thursday when warmer weather is supposed to return…I’m already sick of the rain and snow.