Category: sheep

Girl lambs pee sitting down !

The days just seem to fly by at the moment. There’s a lot of everyday things going on and like farmers all over France, we’ve loads of paperwork to do this month, then on exactly the date we predicted, the sheep started lambing.

I like it when they lamb early in the year because we have them all inside in the warmth and out of danger. When we let them lamb outdoors there are often mishaps when, for example a new mother abandons her new-born lamb in the field or a fox or badger takes a lamb.

There’s not a lot to eat in the fields anyway and it’s been bitterly cold and windy out there for the past few days.
We’ve some good hay, mineral and vitamin licks and a ration of cereal for each new mum and being closer to them at the moment makes them less scared of us and easier to manage if there are birthing or feeding problems.

We have a lot more water harvested from the roof this year which the goats and sheep seem to prefer to tap water and we keep the storage close to the shed, in a warm area and so they’re less likely to freeze, which cuts down a lot on the work of smashing ice and carrying kettles of hot water. The new mothers drink an amazing amount of water ! All in all it’s easier and more comfortable for us and them and as we can hear what’s going on in the shed from the house it’s certainly more reassuring.

I’m excited because we’ve had a lamb from one of our Basco Béarnaise ewes. He’s a strapping lad and huge despite the size of his sire – a small but obviously very capable Cameroon ram.

She’s not a terribly good mother which is not a bad thing in some ways. It means we can feed the wee fella a bit ourselves and take some of her milk for tea and for making cheese and I’ll feel a lot less guilty about the whole thing.

We’ve one lamb in the kitchen who we needed to warm up and feed quickly because his mother totally rejected her. The poor wee thing chose the worst spot ever to curl up in and got chilled and when we tried to get her to suck the colostrum from the ewe she was already too weak.

We milked off some colostrum and gave it to her gently in drops from a syringe and she licked and swallowed.

She finally got a bit more strength after she was warmed up and with a bit of help from our Dachshund Bonnie who is a real star and licks lamb’s bottoms to stimulate them to pee and feed just like the ewe does. Thanks to Bonnie, the lamb’s sucking reflex started working and she’s now taking tiny amounts from a baby’s bottle and is slowly walking around the kitchen this evening.

The little thing isn’t completely OK yet but we’re hoping she’ll recover and make a strong wee lamb.

lamb five beige and white, originally uploaded by hardworkinghippy.

I’ve taken a break from blogging for a while to concentrate on other things but I can’t resist showing you some photos of some of our lambs born this month. They are from our sheep who are a mixed bunch of “normal” girls crossed with our Cameroon ram. We decided to try this cross because last year we had a surprise lamb who was a Cameroon cross and he grew fast and was extremely hardy – out in all weathers yet big boned and heavy like his mother. This might not be the most appropriate time to say this but the meat was wonderful !

That’s him in the middle of the photo at about five months. His sire is the brown strange looking horned ram top left. We inherited most of our sheep from Fabrice’s family and we kept a small herd going of about thirty through a period of some very low lamb prices. We’ve chosen new rams to improve the conformation and increase the hardiness of the flock as the summer grass has been affected by the droughts we’ve been having for the past few years and winters seem to be getting colder.

Now our lamb is selling well locally and it’s very nice when the work involved in keeping them is rewarded with a decent regular income.

We’ve had the Cameroon sheep for a few years. They’re easy to manage, out in all weathers and graze contentedly where there doesn’t seem to be a lot for them to eat. We decided to leave the Cameroon ram with all the ewes.

Unfortunately, we have Blue Tongue disease in France and were obliged to have our sheep vaccinated early in their pregnancy. We’ve had a lot of miscarriages, so many of our ewes aren’t going to have lambs at what is (for us) the best time of the year when they are inside on straw because of the weather and easy to keep an eye on.

So far we’ve had six lambs, all easy births, all fine healthy lambs who fed easily and quickly as soon as they were on their feet but all singles – which is a bit of disappointment because we normally have a lot of twins and sometimes even triplets. Still, the lambs are beautiful chunky wee things and we should have some more later on in the season.

Fabrice and one of our new Basco Bearnaise lambs, originally uploaded by hardworkinghippy.

We got these sheep as a gift from two women farmers from the Pyrénées who came to Bourrou several months ago with the promise of taking over a farm from a retiring farmer.

They packed and stored their belongings and transported their tractor and farming equipment along with with their herd of 150 pregnant sheep on to their newly rented farm, hoping to start commercial milk production in the spring of this year.

After two months and for reasons known only to himself, the farmer changed his mind, sold his barn and rented his land to someone else. Threatened with expulsion, the girls had no choice but to dry off their ewes, keep the herd off the spring grazing and keep them inside in cramped and unhealthy conditions for several weeks while searching for somewhere to put them.

In desperation, they came to ask for our help and fortunately we found them enough land and a barn on an exploitation just a few kilometres from their temporary accommodation near our farm.

The girls have managed to sell some adults in their herd and almost all the lambs have gone for meat but these two little females from exceptionally good stock were bottle fed and it seems criminal to kill them.

They are big lambs – these two are just over two months old and, with a strange “Roman” face and a good appetite for milk! (We’re still bottle feeding for a while to get them used to us.)

The Basco Béarnaise originated in South West of France, they’re a good all-round breed and give milk for cheese, meat and wool and they’ve been designated a HERITAGE breed.

Heritage Sheep Breeds (HSBs) are defined as genetically distinct, geographically concentrated and adapted to their environments.
Typically, these sheep breeds are “local” breeds, traditionally farmed for commercial use and play an important role in the culture and rural economy of the regions in which they are managed.

Heritage Sheep Breeds are already used to support the environmental and economic sustainability of local rural communities and may reasonably be expected to become even more significant in agriculture in the community as low input farming systems are prioritised. In addition, with the reform of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), breeds such as HSBs that are environmentally adapted to their local geographical regions will become even more important given the de-coupling of subsidies from production, with increased focus on the environmental status of agricultural holdings.

We’ve called the very white one Juliette and the bigger one Coco and we’re hoping they’ll do well enough to provide us with milk for cheese next year, I’ve already started Googling for recipes !