Where There’s a Ram (Lamb), There’s a Way

Surprise!

I suppose most shepherds have experienced an unexpected lamb or two over the course of their shepherding careers. A ewe lambs out of lambing season - how could this happen?! Immaculate conception doesn’t typically occur in sheep, so there’s really only a handful of ways it could occur. And yesterday, it happened to me! (Actually, it happened while I was in New Mexico, so it happened to Roger, who’s tending our sheep while I’m gone).

On August 18, 2022, I moved the breeding ewes off the dry forage they’d been grazing and back to irrigated pasture (the first step in our flushing process). Rather than keeping them separate from our replacement ewe lambs and feeder lambs (and, I should note, a 6-month-old Shropshire ram lamb), I ran them together for about 3 weeks. I assumed (incorrectly, as I now know) that the ram lamb had not reached sexual maturity yet.

We typically time our breeding so that lambs arrive in the third week of February (when the grass is ready to start growing rapidly). This year, I was especially deliberate in timing our breeding - I knew I would be gone at a conference in mid-February, so I counted 145 days back from February 20 (when I wanted lambing to begin) and turned the rams in on September 27.

I usually start noticing that the ewes look pregnant around Christmastime - they start looking wider and deeper, and their udders begin to develop (shepherds say the ewes are “bagging up”). Over the last two weeks, I noticed that a Shropshire ewe was really bagging up - and I assumed she’d be one of the first to lamb in late February. I was correct about her being the first to lamb; I missed the date by a considerable margin!

Yesterday, Roger texted me photograph of ewe 2094 with a pair of newborn ewe lambs, obviously sired by a Shropshire ram. I went back through my management notes to figure out how this could have happened!

The Shropshire ram lamb we’d kept was born on February 24, 2022 - which means he was barely 6 months old on August 18 - when we combined the ewes with the lambs. I figured that he hadn’t reached puberty yet, and I also figured the ewes wouldn’t be cycling in the heat. Oops!

While it’s not the end of the world to have early lambs, it does complicate our management a bit. The flock while take a little more time to move now that there’s a ewe with new lambs. We’ll have to keep a closer eye on the late January and early February weather, too - luckily we have some grass growth thanks to all of the rain we’ve received, but a cold storm could be tough on these new lambs. And we’ll have to keep an eye out for additional lambs - I haven’t noticed any other ewes with significant udder development, but we’ll look more closely now.

Most of us who raise sheep know that where there’s a ram, there’s a way for ewes to get bred. We joke about rams who are able to breed ewes through the fence. Sometimes, due to our own management mistakes, the ram doesn’t have to work that hard!

Off to fresh feed - thanks, Roger!