At 11:32 AM 12/15/2004, you wrote:
Oh congratulations Mitzi!!!
My flock is just starting. We had 2 born Monday night, then when we went out to feed Tuesday morning. Mid-day Tuesday another one was born!!! So we started our nightly routine of checking every 4 hours since we are in the teens at night. Last night we had 3 born at 11:00 pm so we were glad we started our night checks. Since we have had 6 within 48 hours, the rest of the bunch is probably going to start popping as well. We are expecting about 50 this month. I agree they are really cute at this age. It is hard not to snuggle them.
Sharon
Just a tip I read in Storey's Guide to Raising Sheep, p156:
"Although feeding at an expected time is important for all sheep, for pregnant ewes it also makes a difference what time you feed. in some university trials, regular feeding of ewes around 10am helped to reduce the incidence of night-to-early-dawn lambing. Other recent tests suggest late afternoon feeding, shifting to even later times as lambing approaches. Both feeding schedules concentrated lambing primarily into daylight hours."
I know someone who raises Suffolks who has had good success with the second method.
Julian Hale
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