Legamin
Loving the herd life
I’m no expert but I would say you should expect ’lamb song’ within the week. we just liquidated our goat herd and our original sheep herd and moved to a specialized rare breed (endangered species) sheep herd and I discovered that not all sheep are alike! So technically this is our ‘first lamb season’. The learning curve has been steep. But one of the things that seems fairly universal is that when the udder fills out (have you checked for active milk?) and the behind bits look amount to unfold…it’s time to grab clean towels and boil some water (or so they would order the husband to do on a 60’s T.V. Show!). I would organize your lambing pen and fill it up with fresh hay in anticipation. Put your vaccines and banding equipment, betadine solution, etc. etc. all organized on a shelf so that when the hollering starts you’re not looking for the birthing bag. If she makes it more than three days you might need to watch to see if she starts laying down too much or is acting slow. A sterile gloved internal exam might be in order to make sure everything is lined up and not wrong side forward. My experience (with the sheep I’ve had and the information I have on our new flock) is that they are particularly reliable and easy ‘lambers’ but not all breeds or breed mixes are this way. Also if you mixed the species like we did on our ‘meat flock’ you might have lambs much larger than usual and have to help them more than normal. I’m sure I’m a nervous sheep dad ‘preaching to the choir’ but from the images you posted that’s my experience viewpoint from the last five years of ’sheeping’. There are so many different breeds and so many different difficulty levels it is hard to give specific advice.We are new to lambing, though our two ewes are not. Rue, this brown ewe, I suspect will go first. I’ve had an eye on her for a while. How close do you think she is? Days? Weeks? Christmas lambs?!!
Good luck and happy lambing! To me, even though it’s a week with wet arms in subzero weather it’s just like a second Christmas!!!