Thursday, March 24, 2011

2011 BFL Lamb Crop so far

After 3 years of my Bluefaced Leicester ewes just having single lambs, this year we got three sets of twins.  All were born without difficulty and the moms were attentive right from the start. The ram lambs were a little slow to figure out nursing, but they did, and now life is easy again.

We got a set of natural colored ewe lambs and a set of white ewe lambs and a set of white ram lambs. We still have one natural colored BFL yearling ewe left to lamb in April, so the fun isn't quite over yet. :-)  Also have one 3 yr old natural colored BFL ewe that looks like she's open, but I'll wait until summer to see if she lambs late.

I'm very pleased with Ward Harwell's performance as the BFL flock sire this year.  I hope all the lambs inherit his fine fluffy fleece.

We've had some nasty weather lately.  The wind was awful on Tuesday and my pole barn's slider is frozen in place (see it in the photo above).  I decided to block it with some small squares before the snow hit.  Stan, bless his heart, tried to bring the bales over in back of the van and it just sunk down into the soaked ground - darn!  The bales really helped to block the wind and a lot of the snow, but Wednesday morning snow covered the hay feeder and even the big round bales I have stored 20' inside the building.
Here's the van this morning.  Hopefully with the low temps we had last night the ground will be hard enough to get it out soon.

4 comments:

  1. Great looking group of lambs and ewes. Not so great that your van is stuck and you got more of the dreaded white stuff.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks Kelly! The van is still stuck and the snow is not melting. It's been pretty cold this week. But even the youngest BFL lambs are doing fine with night temps at just 3 degrees above zero. Lambing in March has been a learning experience for me.

    ReplyDelete
  3. wow, that snow looks awful - I am so ready for spring but guess I'll be thankful that we're just having rain today with an occasional snow flake mixed in. I wanted to let you know I ended up ordering 15 Partridge Chanteclers and 10 Jersey Giants. I'm hoping to find out this weekend when my shipping date will be. I cleaned the chicken coop last weekend, scrubbed down the walls and was able to get the wall behind the roost painted this week. I'm hoping to get the rest painted before the chicks arrive. Chickens have certainly gotten to be expensive.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Oh cool Judy, Partridge Chanteclers! I bet those will be pretty. I've never had Jersey Giants before, I hope you like them. I should go and see how much chicks are going for these days since people have been asking me to hatch some out. Your chicks are lucky to have such a nice clean place to live! I wish I could clean out my chicken barn, it's a REAL soggy mess because I let the geese in there over the winter.

    ReplyDelete

Getting ready for Christmas Markets!

  I'll be doing two Christmas markets this year. The first one is at Sapsucker Farms in Brook Park, MN Nov. 18-19th. And the second one ...