Farming in the shade

Tuesday we ran errands and came home to a "Guess what?!" from our daughter.  The Farmer guessed. He'd watched one cow stand off a bit, and moo.  First calf of 2015--a heifer calf.

In all the years we've been hosting shearing day, we've never had a live birth. The ewes are rather shy about giving birth in front of people, especially strangers. But (as anyone who has given birth can attest) sometimes there's nothing the mama can do. Those babies will come when they will. Timothy had just quit shearing to go in the house to get some lunch. Many visitors headed over to the shop, but some hung around in the back of the barn, in the lamb area. The Suffolk sheep had been shorn in January in preparation for their lambing. And we had plenty of lambs for people to look at, laugh at, and hold. So it was a popular area. But we couldn't have planned this any better if we'd tried. We had a baby! I'll spare you the pictures of the actual birthing. But as soon as the lamb was out, the ewe instinctively licked it all over. This gets rid of the placenta, and the vigorous licking stimulates the lamb so that it wants to stand up and eat. It is ve...

As requested, the birth story of sheep. Photos are of the birth process, so if you'd rather not see, don't scroll down... One of the things The Farmer watches for is a ewe standing off alone, away from the rest of the flock. If the ewe is pawing the straw, he knows that birth is close. He will also listen to hear if the ewe is making gentle bleating noises, which we only hear when they have lambs. It's a much different noise from their strident "feed me!" baa.  When a ewe is actively laboring, she will lay down. She'll point her nose straight up in the air while she's straining. First comes a sac of amniotic fluid, and then two tiny hooves and a nose. Occasionally, the lamb will not present this way, especially when there are twins or triplets. When this happens, The Farmer must go in and readjust things. It is possible for the lamb to be born breech, but things really go much more smoothly when the two front legs come first and then the nose. If several l...

We're in the middle of a big warm up right now, and almost all of the January snow is gone. We've had baby lambs born in spurts. They seem to be born right as the weather is changing (this would be a great research project for my homeschooled kids--track the barometric pressure and the lambs born). One of the births was caught on camera by one of our daughters. Many of the photos are fairly graphic; after all, birth is a messy business. But here's the one I thought was suited for the blog. Mom is checking out baby #1, who is standing, and looking for his first meal. Baby #2 is resting, and hasn't been up yet, but has been licked off a bit by mom. The babies look shiny because they are still wet (in fact, in another photo, baby #2 is steaming from being warm and wet and just out of the womb). So what do you think? Do you like to see birth photos on the blog, or would you just as soon pass? Maybe I'll do a poll...