The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Sheep => Topic started by: epherdwicks on April 24, 2017, 12:02:22 pm
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I had twin Herdwicks born last night - a boy who weighs 4.3 kg(I did check that twice!!) and a girl who weighs 2.4 kg. Mum is feeding both, but will the boy take all the milk? Any other problems I should expect with such different sized lambs?
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I had one set of different sized twins this year, kept them in a little longer than normal just so the smaller one was a better size to go out, but apart from that didn't do anything differently. She caught up with her brother though now both about the same size 6 wks on :)
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Provided the dam is a good milker they should be fine.
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Here's a bit of interesting sheep biology that I'm about to explain incredibly badly.....
The ewe's uterus has nobbles on it that look a bit like slices of peperami on a pizza. These are the bits that provide nutrients to the developing lamb. The ewe-end of the lamb's umbilical cord spreads out across an area of the uterus, and covers several of the peperami nodule thingies, to tap into their nutrient supply.
Sometimes, the placement of multiple lambs within the uterus results in certain lambs having access to less than their fair share of nodules. That means that the lamb gets less nutrition within the womb and therefore ends up smaller than its siblings.
If you have a really good look at an afterbirth (turn it inside out so you can see), you'll be able to make out where the umbilical cord spread out as the lamb developed, and also the peperami nodules.
I found all this fascinating when I realised. Your mileage may vary! :roflanim:
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I was under the impression that ewes have 2 uterine horns, so unequal sized lambs, could have been a single in one horn and twins in the second horn, with only one twin surviving.
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perfectly normal you can see differences in triplets a lot more.