Nemo's been a busy boy - The Accidental Smallholder

Posted: Monday 19 November, 2012

by Rosemary at 3:19pm in Sheep 4 comments Comments closed

Our Coloured Ryeland tup, Lingah Nemo, went out with our eight ewes and three gimmers on 4th November – and the fireworks started on the 5th! By Friday last week, he had served all eleven, so I’m off to change the raddle to green. I do hope we don’t get any green bums.

The Ryeland yellow bum parade.

In any case, I’m taking him out on the 2nd December. I don’t want to be lambing for longer than four weeks. If they aren’t in lamb by then, too bad. I’ll have them scanned in January so I won’t be feeding empty ewes. I’m going to separate those carrying twins and singles this year again – but will resist the temptation to feed those expecting singles this time round to try and reduce the vet bill.

Six weeks at Barry Mill definitely slimmed them down and I’ve been giving them a bit of bagged feed this year, so hopefully that will increase the number of twins born. Last year, we had thirteen lambs from nine ewes – five singles and four sets of twins born, which was a wee bit disappointing but since we didn’t lose any ewes or lambs so across the piece, it was actually fine.

Our oldest ewes, Juno, Jura and Jinx, will be having their fifth crop of lambs in 2013. All still have good mouths and seem in robust good health (touch wood), so hopefully they will go on for a few years yet.