[in the hills]

One of our Soay girls lost her lamb last year. She was a first time lamb ..... a shearling. We found the lamb dead in the hedge with her and the tup standing over it. It was still mostly in the bag .... though this was broken around the lambs nose. Farming neighbour came to look and thought it could be a day or two early but not very premature ..... she was the first to lamb and next ewe lambed a week later. Her milk was in. Neighbour felt that possibly the tup had got in the way as she lambed and though the plan was the tup stayed here until June, he was returned before the other ewes lambed. He had we thought been "rough" at times with the ewes at feeding and in general. The ewe recovered quickly.


We started lambing last Friday and now have two good sized single ewe lambs. All the ewes apart from the ewe that lost her lamb last year look heavily in lamb and show different degrees of udder development.  The ewe who lost her lamb does not appear to be in lamb this year. Normal size (or so it seems) and no visible udder development (not caught her and felt but non visible).


Could it be that she has a problem or some damage was done if the tup butted  her last year .... as neighbour suspected?


Could it be that she wasn't caught until a later cycle or is this unlikely?


Oh, ...... not scanned.


Any ideas? 

[OhLaLa]

You will never really know for sure what happened last year.
 
As a comparison, this year our ewes have lambed on average a month apart. Only one of them noticeably bagged up, and another one was actually eating her breakfast when the lamb started to appear, taking everyone by surprise.
 
Your girl may well have taken during a later cycle, as some of ours appear to have done.
 
If you can remember when you last saw the ram tupping, and count forwards (or if he has gone, count the gestation period backwards to get a last possible due date), you might get some idea of if she is in lamb.
 
Here's a handy Gestation Table for you (there's a lambing date calculator at the bottom of the page too):
http://www.tvsp.org/gestation.html
 
If she was mine and didn't lamb this year, I'd give her one more chance next year, then declare her barren if no lambs.

[in the hills]

Thanks OhLaLa - perhaps it is possible that she is in lamb then.


Tup was here for a good couple of months and from the dates,  the ewes that have lambed so far must have been covered when he had only been here for one week ..... so still time I suppose if some of yours didn't catch until later cycles.


Wait and see.