Down Mulberry Lane

SHEEP!

I asked the girls to stick around all day so that they could help do barn checks and help with the lambing.  Nobody really does anything.  Tonight I finally let them leave to go bowling with friends and I ask my daughter to quick check before she leaves.  She yells in the door... one just had twins (they had checked an hour before and no one was doing anything!).  I sigh and say, OK, I'll get them. 

Since she was doing fine, I gave her 15 minutes to clean up the lambs so that when I went out, I could handle more "dry" lambs.  I bundle up my 2yo and we head out to the barn.  I walk in and see a totally different lamb drop the third of her triplets on the ground.  It was fine, as were the other two who were already cleaned up.  I'm not sure how my daughter missed her, I can't imagine that she had three lambs in 15-20 minutes (it did take me a while to get the little one ready to go out).  

I check the others to be sure all are doing ok.  I don't see anyone else going, although two are very close.  I notice two that lambed this morning have not moved from their lambing spot.  That is totally typical, but that means they probably haven't eaten or drank anything.  So, I go round up hay for 4 new moms who have their "spot" claimed in the barn.  I then get water for the ones who haven't moved from their spot.  While getting them water, I notice the big tank is empty, so I fill that up as well. 

Now tell me, why did I tell my daughters it was OK to leave and go bowling?  LOL.  My little one freaks out over getting hay stuck to her mittens, so off they come, then she is cold, then she holds the flashlight for me, then she wants to come with (which is difficult, because I cannot carry her and lambs at the same time, yet the momma ewes do not like babies in the barn unattended, so I am walking slowly with lambs constantly talking to Paige telling her to hold mommies skirt and to stay close.  What a time I had. 

But it got done.  I hear my kids home, now, so I will go and have them do one more barn check! 

Warmly, ~Melissa

A New Season of Lambing...

Our new season of lambing has begun.  All is going well, despite the cruel weather!  We had one lamb about a week early... in the below freezing weather.  I think the weather was hard on her.  She ended up with mastitis (which we bought 5 ewes two years ago and all have had some sort of trouble... not a good purchase at all!). She lost her ram, but the ewe is still doing well and mom has enough milk on one side to provide for the one lamb.  

Today we had 3 more lamb, all with twins, all large babies and doing quite well.  There is absolutely no sign of selenium deficiency at all.  I am SOOO relieved as is Dh.   Dh prayed with thanks over this tonight and asked that this blessing continue throughout the lambing season... we all agreed.  However, tomorrow we have windchills nearing 40 below again... what is with the weather?  So all these new lambs are out to face a really cold day tonight/tomorrow and tomorrow night.  We will have to keep a close watch on them.  Wish I had some of those goat sweaters that Crystal uses on her goats.  We've never used them on the sheep... they don't need them, but 40 below??? They could probably use them tomorrow! 

We have nearly 80 ewes that were to lamb.  We are selling a few bred lambs, so it will be less here on the farm.  So, you can see, we still have quite a ways to go with lambing.  Our dates are throughout February and March. 

Warmly, ~Melissa

He's Up!

The little lamb that we brought inside, half froze.  Well, we thought for a while this afternoon we might lose him as he had no energy, no spunk, no nothing.  Heart rate was real slow and would hardly swallow when I tried to syringe feed him.  Oh, yah, we could have tubed him, but in our experience, we lose one in five lambs and if we are just patient, and do the syringe, they come around, just not as fast. 

I fed him around 5 pm and got 5 syringes down him (15 cc).  He wasn't doing too great, still wouldn't lift his head.  But he did swallow, so I was encouraged.  I came down shortly before 6 pm to start supper and I asked Dh if he had fed the lamb and he said no, he had been outside doing chores.  Just then we hear a Baaaaaaa and I look back and he's sitting up with his head up and his ears perked out... oh a sight for sore eyes!  As I started feeding him, he was sucking on the syringe... a FIRST... so now I am very encouraged.  I got a bottle, but he was a loss for sucking on that... they always are the first couple feedings.  But while trying to clean off his face, he backs away from me and stands up... Woo Hoo!  He's got enough strength to get up...

Now he'll need to keep warm.  His mouth is still chilled, so he isn't completely warmed up.  We noticed taking him out to Momma ewe dropped him back into never never land just like that and he came back ice cold in the mouth only being outside less than 5 minutes.  So, we will likely keep him in the house overnight and try to see if momma will take him back in the morning.  (we will try to get him to nurse tonight on mom a time or two).  If momma won't take him back, we'll be calling some on our bum lamb list who will take our bum lambs and raise them up as bottle lambs.  We're just not going through another bottle lamb year like last year.  And we decided we won't keep rams.  We  figured out last years cost for lambs milk was $60 and we got $50 at the sale barn and we lost several at around 2 months of age (of the bottle lambs)...  so we fed them and got nothing out of them.  So, we will sell them for $20-25 and let someone else do the bottle lambing.   I hope this one does ok.  He's a big boy, but the lambs were almost a week early, and with the chilly cold weather, it was just too much. 

Big praise for this year... no selenium problems noted in this years first set of lambs!  That was a HUGE relief to us all.  The precaution is to put a selenium mineral block out and we notice that some just don't use the mineral block, so we worry that we may have some batches needing assistance regardless of using a block.  But we were in fact happy to see early lambs... silly I know, but the selenium deficiency caused long pregnancies... over by 3-7 days, but still premature in development. 

Update:  Out to barn for a feeding, and he went up to mom and mom baa's, he baa's back and gets latched on for a good drink.  Woo Hoo.  Now to keep tabs to be sure he doesn't go down again. 

Warmly, ~Melissa

New lambs have arrived.

One of our ewes gave birth to two 9 pound lambs yesterday.  It was only 33 below zero windchill and blizzard conditions.  We did get them put in the  barn, but even then it was still too cold for a newborn!  One is doing fine, but one is struggling with keeping warm.  We brought one in the house today, as on the morning check it was very cold and hardly moving.  He is warmed up now, but he still isn't alert enough to eat.  I am checking on him every 10-15 minutes and offering 3 cc. of milk.  This last time, he swallowed without as much harrassment on my part (jiggling, rubbing his rear, his throat, his chest to get him awake).  He still didn't open his eyes, but he did swallow.  I am hoping this is the rough spot and it will only improve.  I hate watching lambs die and I know we aren't out of the woods, yet. 

Well, it is time to check on the lamb again. 

Warmly, ~Melissa

On the Farm...Friday

Today the farm is doing well.  The sheep are enjoying some fresh snow.  We are getting more near to pregnancy's end.  We are making bigger steps this winter to ward of selenium deficiency.  We have salt and mineral blocks both with added selenium.  February is when our lambing season should begin. 

 We removed a ram from the ewes yesterday.  He was just too mean and we knew loss of lambs was about to happen as he guarded the water tank and butted any sheep who neared the tank in the side.  So he has a new home away from the mama ewes. 

The chickens all 57 of them... laid 5 eggs for me today.  *sigh*  I am excited though as I hope this means they are getting back into the swing of things.  We had a colder than normal stretch in December and my chickens just quit laying.  We've gotten 2-3 a day for the last week or so.  So getting 5 today was a thrill! 

Warmly, ~Melissa

Monday Madness...

Oh it was such a nice day today!  Warm, but not as windy as yesterday, but a good breeze for laundry.  Today is laundry day and I worked on barn clothes and coats and towels and rags... I hung out what I could during the day, but still have laundry left to do... the dirty barn clothes take prewashes and soaks to get all the stains out and then a good wash after that.  They are long wash cycles.  Glad my machine works so hard for me so I can do something else.

We are up to 28 bottle lambs.  What a number.  I sat down tonight and made up a feeding chart so that we could keep track of how old and what stage of feeding to do.  Before we always just let them eat what they wanted, but they never grew good, and always were so dirty, and had messy butts... So, I started reading and found out a couple new things, so we are trying it out to see how it goes.  It seems to be going well.  Usually we are lucky for our bottle lambs to even be within 10 pounds of the lambs that were on mom (to the lighter side).  But we weighed one last night and he is nearly 20 pounds already...and a couple are bigger than their siblings still on momma ewe, so we are quite pleased.  Scours always seem to be a problem with bottle lambs for us... and this year we are treating hard for that... the lambs are getting Pepto Bismal at the first sign of the messy poops and they quickly firm back up with their stools... so perhaps that is part of it... they are able to absorb the nutrition better if they aren't having diarrhea!  Duh! 

Another change with the bottle lambs is to feed them way less.  And diluting the milk the first week.  You'd think you want to feed them as much as they want, but that always gave them scours and they never wanted to eat anything else, like hay or creep feed.  So, by feeding them less by bottle, they are looking for food, cuz they are still hungry and they are eating the hay we are offering them and eating the creep feed.  We have 5 stages of feeding and we have 7 on stage 4 and the rest are on stage 3.  Which means all are on milk 4 times a day (6 times if they are in the house (the intensive care unit) since they do not have hay or feed available at all times).  They just have different amounts at the different stages right now.  A couple are at the early part of stage three which is slowly increasing the milk dilution to full strength over about a week... but these are all in the house, so it is fairly easy to keep track of. 

Yesterday we had a lamb die from White Disease.  This was our first loss to the development of this disease.  This is a "stiff muscle" disease, caused by the selenium deficiency.  All our lambs are getting the shots, but this one came down with the disease anyways.  Once they show signs of muscle change... it is not reversible.  We saw this lamb out walking and running and hopping and an hour later, he was stiff as a board, but still alive.  Poor thing.  I guess the disease progresses until the stiffness affects the breathing or heart muscles and then they die.  It was kinda sad.  His momma and bro and sister would lay with him.  It started raining and it was like Chinese water torture... I couldn't stand it, so I put him in the barn... Mom and bro and sis followed and they stayed with him.  He would still baa for his mom, but he couldn't get up, couldn't eat.  His jaw was stiff, his legs were straight out and he couldn't move his neck or head... and it seemed to be hard for him to close his eyes.  We put a towel under his head so that the hay wouldn't poke his eye.  Awful.  I just pray this never happens again.  (the deficiency!)

We had a new mom have triplets that were all hung up together inside.  They all ended up being still born.  Two showed signs of the deficiency as they looked quite small, eyes still closed.  The other one looked fine, but was born dead... not even a heart beat.  We had to untangle the last two.  The lamb presented with just a head.  I was able to find one leg, but couldn't manage to find the other.  My daughter Kate, 17yo,  went in and checked and found a second lamb tangled up, and actually both heads were trying to present and the legs were all tangled together and behind mom's pelvis.  She pushed the second one back and untangled the legs and pulled them out, but they didn't look like they would have survived even if they were alive.  Earlier that day my daughter had been at a friends' house and she pulled two lambs for them as the husband was out of town and the wife didn't know what to do... those both survived, but then they weren't dealing with the deficiency.  Back to our momma ewe, this was her first lambing and I'm sure she's not going to have happy memories... she didn't even cry for her babies... she was probably too tired and too sore.  Sad, sad, sad. 

On a good note, we had two recent births with normal results... Lambs up within minutes and nursing.  We still gave them a shot of selenium as we aren't sure if they are over the hump, since on the same day the other ewe had apparent problems with the deficiency.  We are down to 5 ewes left to go, but dh thinks that they won't go for another two weeks according to his marking harness marks... they actually got marked twice and it's now too late for the first mark and too early for the second... so we are getting a short breather for these last few lambs.  I hope that means we will have 5 good normal births.

Well, I need to get off to bed.  Another day of cleaning awaits me for tomorrow!  

Warmly, ~Melissa

Selenium Deficiency Pictures

Ok, I took some pictures of our problems that we encounter.  Some have been worse than these last two, but I did not get pictures of those. 

The first picture is of the thin hair... it is short and fine, and often not covering the entire body.  You see the pink skin on the ears.  Some we have seen pink skin through the back as well.

This second picture shows skinny lambs.  They have not an ounce of fat on them, just like most babies, we develop our fat in the last week or two of gestation... these never got their fat.  You can see the rolls of skin on the lamb laying down.

This one shows a lamb very wobbly on its feet.  If you look at the hooves, you can see they are not strong enough to support it's weight, so they stand on rocked back hooves.  This has been more pronounced in some lambs.  On the back legs, we have one that walked all the way up to that first main bend from the floor (walking on about 6 inches of leg).  Another picture is below of some back hooves.

From the bend where the tail ends on the legs, down to the hooves, that should be all straight.  You can see much better how the lamb is rocked back on its hooves. 

The two white lambs above were the ones born yesterday, both with their eyes closed, but Dh did get them open.  They just began to stand in the wee night hours to which we are excited to see.  I'm not sure you can exactly see how skinny they are compared to normal.  We didn't catch one of the good lambs to compare, but maybe we will if we get a chance. 

Warmly, ~Melissa

Baaaa!

Ok, I admit it.  Last night was a crusher for me.  I am so tired of lambs dying.  I had gotten up at 4 am that morning to start working with the sheep.  I was tired and so were my girls.  Dh was at work.  We had 4 momma ewes lamb at the same time in the morning, each with it's own perplexitites.  Then it took us until nearly 2 pm before we even ate breakfast.  We knew a couple more might go, and that added to my frustration.  After a short supper break, we go out to check and find another stillborn, the sack was not off the face, so the lamb couldn't breathe... and we had been out there an hour earlier and momma ewe hadn't been doing anything.  Then my oldest stays up until nearly 2 am... I got an hour nap and got back up at 2:30 am and took over caring for lambs in the house.  We lost two more in the night.  I stayed up until 5 am double checking for my daughter's ewe to see if she was going to go... she was not showing any active signs, so I went to bed.  At around 7am, my oldest again gets up and takes over, goes outside and she found my daughter's, Megan, ewe had lambed... and one was already frozen and the other was cold and not doing well... so she runs him in the house and gives the lamb a warm bath to warm him up and awakens the rest of the house to another day of lambing. 

All the frustrations, there are apparent things going on.  We have a few with extremely HUGE udders and no milk.  We have ewes that are lambing at 150-152 days by the marking harness and the lambs appear premature, not able to walk on their hooves, eyes still shut, but they are anywhere from 7 to 12 pounds each... They are really slow to get up this year and sluggish for nearly a week after birth.   Last night at 4am between barn visits, I start looking up lambing troubles... we've had our share, but this is different and we can't figure out what it is.  I started reading about OPP, ovine progressive pneumonia and alot of the symptoms are glaring me in the face.  Symptoms such as:  labored breathing before death.  Lambs that appear to eat fine, but are actually starving to death.  Udders extremely large and hard, but not hot like mastitis.  Milk looks normal, if they have it, but can be very deficient in nutrition.  I look at the management for it and it is nearly 3 years with harsh culling and nightmarish lambing practices... 24 hour observation, isolations, pulling lambs before mom can spread the virus to the lambs... then bottle feeding in isolation.  Testing every 6-12 months for the disease as it doesn't show up right away and it takes time for the antibodies to produce that they can detect the sheep have been exposed.   

Everything about how the lambs died, fit with the OPP.  Everything about how the momma's udders are bigger than basketballs and having no milk.  In the ones we've had trouble with, it is just very evident.  We did have a couple lambs with coccidosis (blood in the stool caused by the infection), as well.  But what we weren't getting was the lack of vigor in the lambs, the premature appearance of full term lambs. 

Dh called the vet this morning and he evaluated everything... said that a few udders do look like the OPP udders, but not exactly.  He said with what he could see we have a selenium deficiency... caused by something in the soil or lack of something in the soil that it does not get to the feed.  That has never happened to us... and we are wondering what did we do differently?  Well, for the first year, we did not cut our own hay, we bought it from someone who did not live near us at all, in fact, we had it trucked in by semi.  The vet said... the biggest problem is the lack of vigor in the lambs and that was caused by a deficiency.  So, to treat, we can do two things... give momma ewes a shot... but catching them can cause early labor for momma ewe with us chasing them and trying to catch them.  It also needs to be given 1 week ahead of the birth... and we don't have many that fit into that category.  So dh opted for the other option which was to give a shot of selenium/vitamin E to the lambs at birth, which will, I guess work fairly quickly to develop some vigor.  We can also give a dextrose solution for extra energy subcutaneously.  We are also supplementing the momma ewe's feed with extra selenium, with mineral blocks.  We actually started that on Monday before we knew what was going on. 

We aren't out of the woods yet.  We will still have lots of bottle lambs, we will still have deaths, most likely as the lambs are coming out looking premature, even if they are full term.  One thing they do is not get a good breath of air, you can swing the lambs and poke them, pinch them, but they never breathe.  They look like fish out of water.  We'll still probably have a few more of those.  But, thankfully, the vet says... it is not OPP... the second flock we bought has problems of mastitis, yes, but it is not OPP, we have such a wide variety in ages in that flock that something else in the list of symptoms would have manifested if it was OPP... weak legs, shortness of breath for momma ewes, thin ewes... of which we have none in those categories. 

So, I praise God for the mercy that it is NOT OPP.  The management would be a 3-6 year big issue, not to mention very costly to us to not be able to sell lambs at all for such a long period... and if we are honest with people... who would want to buy sheep from a flock with OPP??  It just would not have been good and I was so worried.  But God is good.  He knows what we can handle and is with us even in this huge trial. 

Well, need to get some last minute cleaning done.  We will have company over tomorrow afternoon to feed some bottle lambs.  To us it is like... ugh... another bottle to feed out, but everyone else loves to feed them.  But one feeding is different than what we are doing each day.  LOL.   I'm hoping the momma ewes cooperate with our plans.  We are having some things calm down... sometimes just knowing what to expect is easier to handle than wondering what is wrong. 

Warmly, ~Melissa   

Another busy day...

Lambs, lambs, lambs and more lambs.  There are so many we are having trouble keeping track of them all.  We are having a really hard lambing season.  This has to be about the worst we've seen, yet.  But having a second flock with little or no milk sure doesn't help matters.  We're starting to see a trend that the lambs with a particular sire ram are really struggling.  This was a new ram for us and he had great EPD numbers, but his lambs are just struggling to get going.  Plus the ground is wet from melting snow and causing the lambs to be cold as they just soak up the water when they lay in it.  We lost two today from getting too cold and just not getting up enough.  We watched and watched and nudged, but it wasn't enough.  We had another die just after birth, never could take a breath.  Hate those and this year we've had several do that. 

We had an odd birth two days ago.  Lambs whether born single or multiple only have one placenta.  Well we had a momma ewe have a huge ram, then two tiny lambs that looked very premature.  Well, then she passes two afterbirths.  This isn't very common, but it appears the momma ewe had been bred on two different cycles, that would make the second set at least 17 days behind.  Their lungs just weren't developed.  The one never could get a good breath and died shortly thereafter.  The second while she could breathe and eat and poop, LOL.  She ended up dying as she couldn't keep herself warm.  Her temperature regulator just wasn't working as of yet. 

Of the lambs that are alive, we have 8 or 9 bottle lambs at the moment... and we expect that number to grow.  The girls are cheerfully working hard at bottle feeding, knowing that Dad is going to give them each a ewe lamb for all their hard efforts.  We had a rule that they can only each have two lambs, but Dad is reconsidering and thinking it to be three... we will see.  We're not going to make that decision until after this lambing season.  We need to see where we end up with how the lambs do this summer.  We're unsure that we want to have this many sheep lambing at one time again... so, we may downsize.  We upsized primarily to pay off bills and put some towards college expenses for our oldest daughter.  I guess we will see how many sell and what we are left with. Anyways, the lambs are slow to get going.  The larger ones are slower this year and the little ones for the most part are more vigorous. 

We are all losing alot of sleep.  We seem to have one wanting to lamb in the middle of the night and then one or two right at dawn.  A couple during the day as well.  It just seems there is hardly a moment to rest and catch up.  Kate is working hard with the lambs.  She and I take turns staying up at night.  I try to check between 2 and 4 am, she gets up early to do the morning checks.  She is our saving grace!  She had to pull a couple lambs already and yesterday even maneuvered a stuck lamb and still had to pull for all she was worth to get him out... he was 12 pounds, but a very large bone frame.  She heard crackles as she pulled the lamb out, but he had to come out.  He appears to be fine, no broken bones, must of just been the back or neck cartilidge popping.  He had both legs stuck back, she was able to pull one leg out, but could not get the second.  I was on my way to check her myself, but the lamb started coming out before I got off the phone with my dh.  I'm so proud of her that she can make those hard decisions without us there by her side.  Her little sisters are truly looking up to her this year.  Kate wants to have her own farm.  In talking of what she wants to do after she graduates, she said teaching would be ok, but she really would just like to farm... to raise sheep and have her horse... be a wife and mom.  I think she'd do a wonderful job!   She's been posting on her blog about her trials with the sheep.  Well, enough mom bragging.

Tonight we have two lambs in the house.  They were born as triplets to a mom who barely has enough milk to raise one.  It was sad to pull them from mom, but they will learn to eat from the bottle quicker if we pull them early.  We milked colostrom from another ewe who has enough for 5!  LOL  We pulled the two who seem to be a bit slower to get on their feet.  They are now starting to stand up... a few hours after the birth... usually they are up on their feet within minutes.  I still have a couple loads of laundry to get done before bed.  I'm doing around 4 loads of dirty barn clothes each day, not to mention our regular laundry on top of that.  Diapers are ready to be washed and towels, too.  I'm finding I have to prioritize the laundry... barn towels and rags and barn clothes are top on the list, diapers and towels second, then our regular clothes if I have some spare time.   Well, I should get going on the laundry and I'll catch up on my reading between loads. 

Warmly, ~Melissa

Little lambies...

The two little lambs are now housed in our dining room.  Tarp on the floor, baby's supergate keeping them in.  Not ideal, but they have to be somewhere.  *grin*

After several investigations, we found the mom was dry on one side and the other was coming out just blood.  Pretty yucky and momma was really tender... poor thing.  The babies are a bit ummm tentative... not as perky as most lambs and I wonder if they were nursing on the blood and now they don't feel real well.  One is nursing well from a bottle and will nurse from a donor mom if we hold her down.  The donor mom doesn't have a whole lot of milk, though, as I discovered after trying to milk her.  Sooo, we most likely have two bottle lambs. 

Now, I hope the little brown one will start sucking better.  She has only taken an ounce at a time and then quits.  The white one drinks quite well, drinking 4 ounces at a time.   The brown one seems more stable, however... she is less shaky.  The white one shakes as if it is feverish.  Neither want to stand for very long at a time... They just have no energy.  I hope they come around. 

Just wanted to update you all... we decided not to drag them out to the barn.  I may milk the one donor mom a bit here and there to get what milk I can from her, even if it isn't much... those nutrients are just so precious. 

On a side note... I was just telling dh that it would be fun to have a milk goat, BUT he laughed as he said it would never get milked... and everyone said, Mom can milk it.  LOL.  Well, I have had my hands frostbitten and I just hate being outside in the winter it just hurts so bad... I used to do sheep chores when dh wasn't home and the girls were smaller and I would literally cry on some of those cold days trying to get it all done... so milking a goat... don't think it will work... But tonight I discovered that momma's udder was so warm that my hands didn't ache at all and it is 7 degrees out... she kept my hands warm enough to avoid the frostbite ache.  Now, I'm pondering... Hmmmm, what could I do with goat milk?  LOL.  I'd for sure need a plan and need to learn more before I jump in... but it is looking up.  I was wanting to get going making soaps again and I know many who use goat milk for soap... Ahhh, the possibilities.  I guess I have my next research project ahead of me.  For us the biggest deterrent would be finding someone to milk the goat when we take vacation.  *sigh*  Much to think about! 

Warmly, ~Melissa