The gimmers – yearling ewes who we have not yet bred – don’t do this.  They are off in their own pasture minding their own business and enjoying the gradually warming rays of sunshine. You would think they’d be the nutsy ones since they are basically teenagers.  But no, it’s our supposedly “mature” ewes out there making fools of themselves.  We cannot figure it out.  Maybe they are starting to feel their lamb fetuses moving?  Or somehow the lengthening days trigger a goofy response?  Whatever it is, we see it each year.  Back when we were doing AI for the first time and fretting up a storm about coddling our “special” AI ewes during pregnancy, they did the same thing, and a couple of them were carrying hormonally-induced triplets.  Scary stuff, especially when they bash each other from the side.  Fortunately, none of the ewes got up enough of a head of steam to harm their in utero lambs and none of them hurt themselves or their sisters.

I don’t even know how to look for whatever lore exists on this issue.  Imagine the Google search:  “crazy pregnant ewes” or “ditzy sheep”?  Hasn’t worked so far.  If anyone reading this post has a clue what is going on, I’d be grateful for your insights.  Otherwise, we’ll just wait it out, knowing the lambs will be here before long.

For now …

Because we have a large flock and we like to keep detailed and accurate records of data like birth weights, we often are asked by other breeders what an “average” Soay lamb “should” weigh.  Other breeders have asked us if there are significant differences between, for example, twin and single lamb birth weights, differences between conventionally bred Soay lambs and lambs bred by means of artificial insemination (AI), differences between ram lambs and ewe lambs, and so forth.  There is of course no single right answer to what lambs “should” weigh, but we are glad to share the data on our lambs if it will assist other breeders in assessing their own flocks.  Here goes!

Twins vs. single lambs

In three of our last four lambing years, the average weight for a single British Soay lamb was a full 13 ounces more than the average weight of our twins – no surprise there.  In fact, we would have been surprised if the gap had been much smaller, since even with this differential we know the ewes carrying twins resemble furry doublewides; they clearly are carrying more than a single lamb weight.  [based on weights for 65 singles and 40 sets of twins, all conventionally bred].

Lambs from British Soay ewes who are bred for the first time in the same year they are born vs. lambs from ewes at least a year old at the time they are bred

The first two years we had British Soay, we bred all our ewes, including those born that same spring when they were about 6-7 months old.  Although a number of those ewe lambs did not conceive, the ones who did produced offspring much smaller than what the older ewes produced.  The 8 singles from ewe lambs weighed on average 1 pound 5 ounces less than the singles born to older ewes in those two years (19 lambs).  That was a dramatic enough difference to persuade us we should quit breeding our ewe lambs and wait until their second autumn, when they are a year and a half old, to begin breeding them.  Besides giving us larger and more robust lambs, the delay allows the ewe lambs to fully mature and reach their final (or nearly final) adult size, which makes lambing easier for them.

Conventionally bred lambs vs. lambs bred using artificial insemination

The data sets for these weights are both small and not as susceptible to analysis as are some of the other comparisons, but here’s the data for what it is worth.  In 2008 and 2009 we had 21 lambs born using AI.  Of those 21, there were 3 sets of triplets, 5 sets of twins, and 3 singles (one triplet was stillborn, which accounts for the 22nd lamb).  We have no way to compare AI vs. conventional weights in the triplets, since triplets are extremely rare in British Soay in this country, at least so far.  The AI twins (5 sets) weighed on average 3-4 ounces more than our conventionally-bred twins (16 sets)  in those two years, not a significant difference and also a pretty small sample.  Our 3 single AI lambs outweighed their conventional counterparts (32 singles) by 5-6 ounces each, but the sample is even smaller.  The differential may be explainable by the fact that for our AI project, we purposely selected ewes that were twinners and in their prime, neither beginners nor ewes approaching senior status.  And even if Steve had not hand-picked which ewes to use for AI, he would not have expected to see much difference in any case, since lamb size most depends on the size and maturity of the mother and how many lambs she is carrying.  Whether or not the AI lambs and succeeding generations of their offspring turn out to be measurably larger than their conventionally bred counterparts will not be known until there are several generations of adult AI sheep and their adult offspring from which to glean enough data to have statistical significance.

Ram lambs vs. ewe lambs

Over the last three years (after we quit breeding our ewe lambs), our average single British ram lamb and our average single ewe lamb have either weighed the same or the ram lambs average only one or two ounces more.  For the same reasons we do not expect significant differences in the average weights of our AI vs. conventional lambs, we are not at all surprised that our ewe lambs and ram lambs are about the same size.  Again, it is the size of the mother and how many lambs she is carrying that are the principal determinants of the lamb’s birth weight. [55 singles and 40 sets of twins analyzed for this data].  Once the lambs head into puberty, the rams of course rocket ahead in weight and horn size.

Health issues affecting lamb weight

We know of two husbandry practices that have dramatically increased our lambs’ weight — ramping up the gestating ewes’ nutrition in the last month of their pregnancies, and treating both the pregnant ewes and the lambs with a preventative against coccidiosis and other cloistridial diseases, which can bring down very young lambs within a matter of a day or two — but are easily prevented.  See here for why this is so.

In 2007, we had a particularly rainy lambing season, minimal facilities that required our pregnant ewes to be in the wet mud much of the time, and no program to prevent a coccidia outbreak.  That year, our British single lambs averaged 4 pounds 12 ounces and our twins averaged 3 pounds 15 ounces.  Beginning in 2008, we had a completely covered area for our pregnant ewes (The Maternity Ward) with largely dry dirt “floor.” We began supplementing our pregnant ewes with either beet pulp or a little alfalfa hay.  And most importantly, we began adding coccidiostat to the pregnant ewes’ mineral and feeding medicated lamb/kid creep to our lambs until about a month after weaning.  In 2008, 2009, and 2010, our British single lambs averaged 5 pounds 2 ounces and our twins averaged 4 pounds 6 ounces, an increase of half a pound for the singles and almost a half pound for the twins.  If we needed evidence to confirm that heading off coccidia and boosting our ewes’ nutrition pays off, here it is.

Whew – I have fulfilled my responsibility to share weight data.  Now the fun part begins.  Lambing is winding down on our farm, but I can’t wait any longer to share a few pictures of our smallest viable lamb ever — a handsome and  robust ram who weighed in at only 1 pound 15 ounces.  We’ve named him Peanut, not too original but it fits him.  We  have already learned from him that even the miniature Dalton tags are a heavy burden for such a tiny creature, and more importantly, that great Soay things can come in very small packages.  Have a look!

For now …

Lo and behold – the yearling ewes also experience the burst of horn growth, albeit proportional to their overall horn size.  Here are three of our yearling ewes. starting with our British gimmer Darrowby, who you will recall is named for James Herriott’s fictional town in Yorkshire: 

I decided not to interrupt the yearling rams’ strutting and preening so that I could actually measure their horn growth against Darrowby’s, but I dare say her horns have grown every bit as much as the boys’ horns.  As with the rams, her new horn material is somewhat lumpy and gnarly-looking right now, and quite a bit larger in circumference than her first-year, “baby” horns.

Ewe lamb Leyburn, also British, shows a similarly robust pattern of growth:

Compare Leyburn’s horn growth to that of her half brother Grassington (both offspring of Jerry Lee Lewis), shown in my original — and obviously incomplete — posting about horn growth a couple of weeks ago.  If anything, Leyburn has more new horn material.  No wonder people were crabbing about the omission of the girls!

My third example of ewe horn growth is our farm website covergirl, Ellerbeck, she of the assymetrical white nose spot, which I just realized I cropped off in this picture.  Sorry about that.   

Ellerbeck’s new horn material is visually more interesting than the boys’ horns because of her partially white horn.  The portion of her new stuff that eventually will be white illustrates through its pink cast just how “alive” the new horn material really is, with blood and soft tissue at work creating what will harden into a good sturdy horn. 

With hopes that my friends from the good old days of feminist activism will forgive me . . .

Leave it to Tolcarne (who happens to be the first British ewe born here) to lead by personal example and remind us shepherds of our limitations in the lamb forecasting department.  It was not a dark and stormy night, quite the opposite.  Friday afternoon was a peaceful time in the Maternity Ward, with nothing but the sound of 50 ewes eating for two and the muted thunder of 120 little hooves doing laps and wind sprints to break the silence.

Without warning, out of the corner of his eye Steve noticed The Kick, a tell-tale sign of a ewe in labor.  We had not even been certain Tolcarne was pregnant.  She had no poochy belly and no bag, but there she was, lying on her side, vigorously kicking straight out horizontally, not at all the langorous stretching they do all the time, pregnant or not.  I have never been able to capture The Kick on camera, but I promise you, when first you see a ewe executing The Kick, you will recognize it as something new, something different.  It is unlike any of the other gestures in the Soay repertoire.

Most ewes proceeding through labor get up and down a number of times in a restless Birth Dance.  But not so Tolcarne.   In obvious discomfort, she just lay there grunting and whimpering, frightened and in pain.  Steve managed to nudge her into a jug, concerned about her immaturity and inexperience and wanting her in a relatively clean, dry place with no distractions.  And in fact, she did have an uncommonly hard time getting her lamb out, to the point that Steve took the nearly unprecedented step of intervening, gently rolling back enough skin to ease it over the top of the lamb’s skull.  Unlike the body of the lamb, which can be squeezed out and is quite malleable, its skull and front feet, which come out together, do not give at all.  Anyway, once Steve helped get the lamb’s head moving, the rest of the package plopped right out in a few seconds.

We were startled.  Given how much exertion it took Tolcarne to give birth, we could not believe how small her lamb actually was.  And Tolcarne had so exhausted herself that she lay immobile for a long 5 minutes.  This is most unusual for our ewes, who either birth standing up or immediately get up, licking and gurgling, and get right to work on the lamb.

Fortunately for the lamb, Steve had rubbed her nose just enough while she was coming out to break the membranes, allowing our miniature Soay creature to start bellowing like a miniature Soay bull or, more accurately, a miniature mezzo soprano.  Gilbert and Sullivan, here we come!  At first we worried that we had a preemie on our hands, with the attendant lung problems, in particular the possibility that her lungs, which are collapsed in utero, would not convert to “balloon mode,” as must all babies right at birth.  To our relief, we concluded a preemie with lung problems could not possibly make this much racket.  It was a very encouraging sign and just plain funny in an otherwise somewhat tense situation.

Tolcarne, on the other hand, was not as impressed as we were with her squalling, slimy bundle of joy.  Her life had just taken a dramatic, irreversible, and from the look on her face, not entirely welcome turn:  “This is not the career path I had in mind.”

Other than dipping the cord in iodine, we elected to leave Tolcarne alone for the post-birth cleaning and first meal.  Steve does not like to “work” lambs with gloves on and it seemed too soon to handle the tiny lamb with bare hands.  By this time Tolcarne had roused herself and was starting to get down to business, so we decided it was safe to leave the two of them alone for their ancient, instinctive rituals.

Back to the house we went for our own dinner (Note to self:  do a blog posting on the realities of human meal planning during lambing).  Turns out we need not have worried about this little lamb’s resourcefulness.  When we returned to the Maternity Ward to work her it was dark.  All forty-plus lambs, having found their mothers, had with one exception turned in for the night.  You can guess who the holdout was.  Once again she was bellowing, but this time from amidst the general population of bedded-down ewe-lamb pairs.  Somehow she had managed to crawl out of the jug through the bars of a Shaul panel and had marched right out into the fray, where I found her surrounded by – in relative terms – elephants and dinosaurs.  No baby Mozart this lamb; she was in full Wagnerian coloratura, waking everyone up with her high notes.

Back to the jug she went.  Up went cardboard, plywood, anything we could find to secure the four sides of the jug.  We were not about to lose a precious little British ewe lamb to sleep-walking.

Working her started uneventfully enough — Good temperature (102.4), easy tagging, injections without undue wiggling.  Then came the weigh-in.  Even carrying her back to the jug could not have prepared me for seeing a mere 2 pounds 6 ounces register on the scale, almost a full pound less than the smallest lamb we have ever had, and at least two pounds smaller than average.  Where did all that lung power come from?  How could she possibly have had the strength to start a cross-country trek at the age of two hours?

Now it is three days later and little Otley (named for a small town in Yorkshire) is to all appearances doing just fine.  She has not managed to get out of her cardboard-lined nursery again and she gets up and feeds regularly.  Little mama’s brand new bag also is functioning just fine, thank you.

We remain concerned that Otley’s small size may present problems over the next few weeks, but at this point, she is every bit as robust as her larger cousins.

Meanwhile Tolcarne has, to our great relief, concluded that motherhood may compare favorably with a career outside the home after all.  And besides, with Otley’s musical talents, she may yet support her mother in Tolcarne’s dotage.

For now …