Hello all, I am sorting out a bit of a mess at the moment and hoped you would be able to help.
I had been having a year off lambing this year... but my ewes thought otherwise. We had a pair of ewe lambs born on Thursday and two other ewes very obviously expecting any moment. I am tearing my hair out as I never lamb this early normally - the weather is against me and I don't have any under cover facilities so have had to borrow a friend's, and I am really busy with other things at this time of year too so it's hard to fit it all in. Plus this year (one of the reasons I decided to have a year off) I don't quite have enough grazing as I lost one field last year - so I have had to run around finding extra grazing too.
Anyway: even all of that isn't quite addressing the main issue, which is the dad. I thought at first it was my next-door neighbours' rams who had somehow got in: she has a Zwartbles and a Charollais (mine are Dorset Downs). But the lambs are rather obviously not black, and now that one has lambed we know the rough timings which aren't quite right for the Charollais - it didn't arrive on her smallholding till mid-September, so my ewe would have had to be a week early at least (plus it's not as likely he would have got out so soon).
So... the most likely candidates are my ram lambs which were running with the flock till they were weaned at about 4 1/2 months - i.e. mid September. I have heard that ram lambs can sire babies as young as 2 months, but I have run entire ram lambs with my flock till 5 months before and never had this problem. Only three of my ewes appear to be pregnant so he didn't get them all, which is another surprise as I would have thought if he was active he would have had a higher strike rate - but then from the timings it seems he was only just getting going before I separated him off.
Anyway - my main question is, what are my options with the lambs? I can't keep them - my flock is already too large and I was going to reduce it this year anyway. Plus if they are the ram lamb's, they are inbred. So how do I sell them? I couldn't in all conscience sell them at the breed sale but would a small flock owner be interested even despite their parentage? Should I sell them at open market instead? And if so as store lambs or breeding stock? Or should I just kill them all out (even the ewe lambs) and sell them as meat?
Apologies for the long message but I'm really upset about all this - I'm so careful about my lines as a rule, and one of the ewes that's pregnant is also my lovely older ewe who had mastitis and I don't breed from as she only has one teat and always has twins. She's got twins again now so I'm going to have to bottle rear for the first time too. I could really do without all this running around when I have so much else going on. But any help would be gratefully received... thank you