Lambing and Feeding Sheep!

Probably, I think, minus six or seven. With the wind, it's probably minus 14. But, uh, could be worse. Almost always could be worse. Okay, that was a good warm-up. So, we got everybody grain-fed and pushed up whatever was left from yesterday. Now, we're going to go grab some bales to feed them. The one side is mostly getting fall rye right now. They're just in earlier gestation. That's mostly this side here. And then, the other side here is mostly alfalfa mixed with a bit of grasses, seeing as they're late gestation and or nursing already. So, that's the scoop. Let's go see if this tractor will start. This New Holland's Old Faithful generally starts without a problem. So, we're just going to go grab a bale here, taking it easy as the tractor warms up. I've got to say, feeding is kind of one of those jobs which is somewhat mindless, but at the same time, it's kind of therapeutic. You're doing something useful. You don't have to think super hard about it, but there's just something about feeding animals that just, I don't know, makes you feel good. It's a heavy bale, partially frozen to the ground, I think. Still got the trailer attached here. So, straighten out. This goes on the net wrap pile. Deal with that another day. It's coming. It's coming. Alfalfa bale. So satisfying. Look at all those happy sheep eating. So, that's everybody fed. For those of you who aren't sheep farmers and aren't familiar with sheep nutrition, the reason I feed these guys the fall rye, which is this lighter colored stuff here, it's not as nutritious as this stuff right here. This stuff's higher in protein, among other things, and because these are all in late gestation and or nursing over there, therefore they need higher nutrition, and that's why they get mostly the alfalfa mix, as opposed to these ones are just in early gestation. Nutrient requirements are nearly as high yet. The reason we give just a little bit on top, I mean, these ones are still young, the alfalfa on top, I mean. These ones are still quite young, so they're still developing. They still need enough nutrition to not only grow the lambs that are growing inside, but also just to continue developing properly. So, we want to make sure they still get good nutrition. They also get at least a pound of grain a day, just to keep them growing well. So, that's the reason we do those things, and so far it's working out. They're in good shape. Last time we had a bit of problems with some of the ewe lambs not having enough nutrition, and then at late pregnancy had a bit of trouble with their energy levels going down. It's called pregnancy toxemia. We're trying to avoid that this time. We're going to try to feed them better all the way through the process, and see if that helps enough. So, that's why we do what we do. You keep tweaking things when things don't work out 100 percent, and see if you can talk to the right people to give you advice on these matters. And yeah, as brainless as it is to put the hay down, there is some management decisions that always need to be made in order to put the right stuff down at the right amounts for the right stage. It's not a completely brainless job farming, believe it or not. Let's have a look at some of the ewes that have recently lambed. Right now, I think we've only got about four lambing pens. So, these three here were the latest born from last night, or yesterday evening. Beautiful set of triplets. They're all nice even size. Hiding back there. She's a little on the skinny side for my liking, but it's probably because she was carrying three triplets, and she must have transferred a lot of good nutrients because we got three really nice big lambs. So, hopefully her milk production will be able to satisfy their needs. And then we got two sets of twins here, also really nice size. Hello guys. These look really well fed. You can see they're nicely filled out here. They're nice and perky. This one's not quite as well filled out, but I find with these bigger lambs, sometimes they don't get the roundish bellies that some of the smaller ones will get, partly because they just have a larger frame size or something. This was just a single right there, which historically is quite unusual for these sheep to have singles. So, here's all the ones that have been taken out of their pens. Most of them are doing really well. As a matter of fact, I don't see any at this point that aren't. We've had a little lower conception rates and therefore we don't have many triplets and that sort of thing where they need a lot of extra help or quads even. Hopefully as the breeding season, when they were bred it was probably August, the ones that are lambing now. So, the ones that start to lamb in the next month is where we'll probably see better conception rates as it gets into September breeding. That's more in season than August and hopefully we'll start to see even a little better numbers because I think right now we're averaging around two per ewe. Last year we were more in the 2.8, so we'll see if things improve in that respect. But hey, we got healthy lambs and that's a big part of what we aim for here, as everybody does. We'll hope that everything continues as it does. These guys are already trying to nibble on some hay. I think we better close this back door where the wind is blowing through. Won't be hydraulic power this time. Anyways guys, thanks for watching. We'll talk, see you in the next one.