The trials and tribulations of being novice sheep ranchers

It’s probably time we address the elephant in the room – the lack of lamb pics and videos that you have seen. We had a lot of challenges breeding this season, and we’ll tell you about them and our solution in a two parts.

Part one: the problem

We don’t have a ram of our own, so we worked with a couple breeders to get our few ewes bred for this winter – our older ewes were sent to one operation, and our four ewe lambs were sent to another. Of the four ewe lambs, three were bred, which we were happy with since it’s a little harder to get the lambs bred. (One was killed by a coyote, which is another issue.)

Our older ewes were all marked (which means they were getting the loving they were supposed to get by the ram) before they came home to us. They weren’t gaining much weight, though, and after having them sheared and seeing their actual bodies without a bunch of wool, we were worried they had all been bred a lot later than we thought. When the first one missed her due date by a few days, we gave the breeder a call to check on their lambing. Turns out their entire flock was also open, despite being ultrasounded by their vet who declared them all bred except a few.

We knew we might have a real problem, so we hurried to have our own local vet come out to ultrasound them. Every single one of ours was open. We had two bred ewes on the whole place, setting our program back at least a year. We scrambled to find a solution not just for our own lamb showing adventures this year but for other 4-Hers who had spoken for lambs with us this year.

We didn’t want to leave them open until the next summer breeding period. It’s not great on the ewes, and we didn’t really want to feed open ewes. At the end of the day, they’re cute, but they’re a lot cuter when they have babies. Plus, while it’s not really a money-making endeavor, we still need to see a little revenue to help offset feeding and breeding costs. That comes from selling the lambs.

Part 2: Solutions and Ongoing Challenges

Sine we can’t go back in time to get the open ewes bred, we knew we had to come up with a solution. About two weeks ago, we put CIDRs in the ewes to get them to come into heat. After injecting them with PG600 last night, everyone should be in the baby-making mood today. We’re taking them to the operation who actually has a functioning ram, for who we can’t offer enough appreciation.

That’s just part of the journey, though. If the ewes are marked in the next 48 hours, which is the plan with the CIDRs and the injection, we should have lambs on the ground the first part of July. Once we wean the lambs, we’ll give the moms some time to recover their girlish figures, and then plan for a regular breeding season and have everyone bred for late January and early February lambs in 2024. That is, if all goes to plan. If we’ve learned anything in this process, it’s that things don’t always go the way you want.

Here's what we’ve learned so far:

1. From here on out, we’re going to ultrasound all our sheep instead of relying on other people.

2. You have to maintain a solution mindset to move out of any bad situation.

A few ongoing questions we still have:

1. What are we going to do with July lambs?

2. Can we get the ewes turned around physically for breeding in early September?

Needless to say, it’s been a rough situation, but we hope you continue to enjoy the hundreds of calf pictures and videos we’ll continue to post until our lambs arrive.