Done!

Well, done waiting for moms to have lambs, anyway.  Ginger lambed yesterday between breakfast and lunch all by herself without fanfare or hints that It Was Time.  Sorry I doubted you, Ginger.

"I got it under control.  Chill, already."

So with the last lambs on the ground, I can put away some of the lambing kit paraphenalia, but that just means different work is coming up.  The first part of the lamb crop is almost a month old so we'll be scheduling a day to give first vaccinations and a booster of BoSe.  Andy is working on spreading the stored manure from winter clean-out, but he's been working between rain storms, and even worse, snow storms.  Enough with the snow, already.  As soon as the littlest lambs are strong enough their small mixing pen will be blended with the main flock of moms and lambs and we'll set up the creep area.  The lambs are already nibbling hay, and we always give them their own area to eat at their own pace.  They can't begin to compete with the adults, and sheep. don't. share.   Not even with their own young.

In the meantime, these cold gray days are great for napping.

Mmmmm, heated pillow

Pile o' lambs.  The 3 moorits are triplets.

The lamb in the middle is asleep with her head tipped back.  Kind of the sheep version of falling asleep sitting at the table, or upright in church.

Some friends came over to see the lambs.  Holly and BB (Bottle Boy) were in Heaven.

I like this lady. Can we keep her?  Pleeeeeeeze?

So, the season stats are as follows:

69 ewes put with rams........58 got bred.  Not a great percentage but it's my fault.  I wanted to use my oldest ram "just one more time" and gave him too many girls, so I don't hold it against any of the ewes that they didn't get bred.  Lambing period lasted 30 days - could have been better, could have dragged out another 6 days.  I prefer the lambs to be all close in age, but this isn't too bad.
99 full term lambs born, but 3 were still born and 3 were euthanized for medical reasons.  I'm not happy with the 3 euthanasias, but at least no one died due to overlooking a problem or lack of attention.
Of 93 live lambs, 42 are ewes and 51 are rams.  It's normally almost exactly 50/50, so this counts as "a ram year" and I hear a lot of other sheep people saying the same thing.  Of all the lambs, 48 are Cotswold and 45 are crossbreds.  Forty of the lambs are white and 43 are colored including 5 which are moorit.  The bulk of the white lambs are Cotswolds.  I think I'd like to keep back a nice crossbred white ram lamb to use here in the future.  Colored fleeces are fun, but so is white and a bunch of my whites are middle aged.  Just sayin'. 

Thirteen days till I leave for Maryland, so I'd best get busy.