Lambs!

OK, here are our first two lambs of the year. First one is a ram, black grey. Oh, and these are Icelandics:

Second is a black ewe:

AAwwwww..

They are darling! I love the lil splashing of white..

That white flashing is the tell-tale that he will show the grey pattern. He got that from his daddy, who is also a black grey. As he grows his wool will get lighter looking as the undercoat comes in white and blends with the black outer coat until he looks more or less grey all over. Not all grey lambs have the flashing though, some just look solid color except you can usually see a faint hint of white around their mouths - called "sugar lips". :-D

Here's a black grey ewe lamb from last year:

And here is the same ewe lamb (far right) when she was older. You can see how her color changed.

I was waiting to see the new babies, thanks Gallesfarm! They're cuties, how fun!

Oh, thanks for posting the photos! I love them!

Cool!! Thank you! I love learning new stuff! :)

What a wonderful experience, Like ZZ's said, learning more about what we call farm animals is truly fun...I'm no farmer at all but I love the babies of just about any kind. Might I ask what you use the lambs (sheep for) Don't laugh, I know very little about cows, pigs, sheep, goats, and sometimes people...LOL...I'm afraid if I had a little lamb, or goat, it would just grow old here. I could never butcher anything like that...Haystack

Well, ideally I would sell some as breeding stock, but I haven't found any customers so far. There's a fair bit of competition with other breeders of Icelandics in this neck of the woods. And the economy hasn't been conducive to selling purebred livestock.

So, what we don't keep we end up selling as freezer lamb. I've sold some really nice breeding quality stock as freezer lamb. :-( But we can't keep them all. Hay is too expensive now. Thing is, you can't break even, never mind make a profit, selling freezer lamb. At least, not in this area of the country. In places where people can graze nearly all year, and not have to feed hay for those months, they can sell meat lambs and do OK.

We try to do low-input shepherding. We picked a breed that doesn't require a lot of intervention at lambing (some breeds are bad mothers, or always seem to need assistance somehow when lambing), that has a naturally short tail so tail-docking isn't necessary and that matures to slaughter weight before breeding season, meaning you don't have to castrate the ram lambs because they aren't going to be trying to breed everyone at 3 months of age.. That are generally good mothers and produce enough milk to feed their lambs. That are reliable twinners (though we've had our share of single lambs). We select for parasite resistance, good conformation, soft fleece, good temperaments.

I've had people who were potentially interested. I've had people come to visit, or call me on the phone and spend an hour or more in one conversation talking about sheep. But somehow they always fade away. This is no different from what other breeders experience, but it is frustrating.

The photo is one of our most recent lambs. He's out of two of my best sheep. Hopefully he'll go on to make more lambs someday and not end up in the freezer.

Here's the same white lamb, with his twin and their mother. The twin lamb is a homozygous black grey (two copies of the grey pattern gene). Their mother is white, but carries the grey pattern gene, which I didn't know until this lamb popped out!

And just because they are so cute, here's the twins again. :)

Is there a market for their fleece?

OH Gallesfarm: That would be my problem, they are so darn cute, I don't think I could ever butcher them...I hate to admit it but I'm a terrible softie...Hay. P.S. yes what about the fleece? is there a market for it? or do you as Claire used to do, spin your own yarn or what ever it would be called??? Love the pic's...

There is a market for it. Icelandics have a double coat, which makes it very versatile. It can be very soft and we try to select sheep which have nice soft fleeces. I have sold raw fleece, but more of it as roving. They come in nice natural colors but you can also dye it and it dyes very well. In Iceland they actually prefer white sheep so they can dye the wool whatever color they need.

I also spin it myself, and my husband has started spinning too.

This is a very interesting thread! I've been lurking a bit, and learning.. I appreciate you taking the time to explain this stuff... I didn't know any of it! :)

You're welcome! I'm afraid I can go on for several paragraphs if I don't control myself. :-)

Other income sources are pelts (from the freezer lambs), and horns/skulls, or things made from them. I have sold nearly all my pelts. I have started trying to create some buttons out of the horns, but haven't gotten very far yet.

If you'd like to see more photos and things, our website is birchtreefarm.com.

Thank you so much for sharing your website...Hay

Here's the latest addition. He made us work last night. Mom was having hard time with him, and no wonder - 10lbs and big horn buds meant he was getting jammed and we had to help her by pulling. Well, I did the pulling and DH held her from the front. :-) Took probably 10 minutes to get him out. Then we had to warm him up inside and wait for mom to recover a bit, then took him back out and got them reintroduced and fortunately she accepted him. Then in a couple more hours he figured out how to use his legs. :)

Good save! It would be my guess you are lucky she took the baby! Really nice looking baby.. Looks older than a newborn! LOL

I helped deliver a colt that was too big to stand.. it was horrible.. the mare didn't accept him.. he was a high dollar race horse.. stud fee for that colt cost as much as a house! He didn't make it..

Well, we used a few "tricks". We warmed him by putting him in a plastic kitchen trash bag, and then submerging his body in warm water in the sink. This got him warm without washing the scent off. We had a towel outside which I'd used to get a better grip on his legs, and then we laid him on it after and put him in front of her. We left that towel out there when we came in. The towel we wrapped him in after he was warm, we took out with us, and put it with the other towel. Then we dragged her back over to where the towels were, since she was up walking around elsewhere, and since she'd already responded to his crying, it just took that particular spot, plus the scent on the ground and the towels to trigger the "oh, yeah, I had a baby!" and she started licking him again. He was still wet with birth "goo". :) After that it was just letting her be with him, and his crying kept her interest and she kept licking him and nuzzling him.

We really didn't need a bottle baby, so we are very relieved. Sheep do take their babies back, but it can be tricky sometimes, depending on the mother. Some sheep steal other ewes' babies they love them so much!

We had a pony mare that used to try to steal the new babies from the big broodmares - even though she had never been bred herself.

That is very wise! What a great thing to remember! I might have been so overtaken with the baby to forget those very important details..

One Vet told us (for horses) to smear Vanilla on the baby.. it might help the mom to accept it. Never worked for the ones I was a part of.. but it sounded like a good idea. I was called on often cause I had experience with orphaned foals several times. With horses, it's sooo serious.. cause IF the foal makes it, they usually pick up annoying habits like licking, etc.. They rarely grow to their full potential.. never with race horses.

I remember teaching "Annie" an orphaned foal to graze! I had to go out there with her and act like I was eating it.. LOL She finally got the idea after her owner had a good laugh..

Another pic from today. Twins in the background (they stick together most of the time), and the single large lamb we pulled the other night in the foreground.

Awwww how snuggly is that!!!?? Just looks so comfy!

I know, but it didn't last long - I was lucky to get that shot. I think they had just laid down and she put her head on his back, I snapped the pic, and within a few seconds they popped up and went running off. :-)

They are just precious! Who doesn't want one?

Another one was born tonight! It was dark, so no photos yet, but she is a black grey spotted ewe lamb!

OK, here she is!

And from the other side:

Now how far is Pampa, TX to NH? If I had a pickup, trailer and some extra cash I would love to have one.

She is darling! Is her nose spotted? How cute is that!! She looks like she is wearing one of those old fashioned helmets.. Why is it I think noses are so darling,. LOL

Her head is spotted except for the dark patches around her eyes and nose. And a few freckles peeking through the white spot. There are lambs that are heavily spotted with white except for around the eyes and nose (so they have a lot more white than she does) and some people call it the "evil clown pattern", LOL.

Nothing evil about these babies, even if they had those markings. :)

Here are our last lambs of the year, born Friday night, without any help from me! Yeah!

They are both black grey (we had a lot of that pattern this year), and both rams.

And here's Miss Cutie-face who rarely stands still long enough for me to get a good photo.

Awwww! Good lookin babiez!!!