It has been a busy and joyful month here on the farm. We went through our first lambing season with our flock and I'm delighted to announce our five ewes gave us nine healthy lambs and all are being nursed and cared for by their mamas. The entire experience was new to us and much was learned about what a sheep in labor looks like. We started with experienced ewes and that kept our involvement to a minimum. They knew the drill and were the stars for sure! Now we get to enjoy lamb antics, curiosity, and a bit of chaos when they don't follow their mamas fast enough and get left in the pasture for us to retrieve. We'll be keeping the ewe lambs to breed next year and grow the flock and raising the wethers (castrated rams) for meat & wool pelts.
We purchased two heifers (1st time cow moms) last November and it is looking like only one will be delivering a calf. Hopefully in the next few weeks. We've been watching her udder develop for the past 2 months, so we hope it is soon. We made sure to set up a head gate just in case as heifers typically require assistance about 20% of the time.
Our other herd of cows is on our larger pasture and they have been getting daily to twice daily moves as we strip graze them through the abundance of grass currently growing. We have a butcher date for three beef cattle the end of June and everyone is getting plump on all the Spring grass.