04/21/2026
Now that our 2026 lambing season has finished I figured I would give a recap. We started on March 8th and ended on April 21st. Kind of long for the number of ewes we have but I'm glad everyone got bred.
By far was not our smoothest lambing year and I'm glad that it's over 😅. We dealt with 3 cases of mastitis (first time ever having mastitis). One lamb that presented head only- I was able to successfully pull but unfortunately the lamb died shortly after birth). And we also had white muscle disease (caused by selenium deficiency). We lost 1 lamb, as the disease affected her cardiac muscles. And one of the triplets born today has some wonky back legs due to the disease as well, but she's figuring out how to get around and is able to nurse.
A little more on our dealings with white muscle disease this year. We had a terrible year for growing 2nd hay with the drought, we barely made any at all. We managed a bit by utilizing pastures until Thanksgiving. But it meant the sheep were eating 2 year old 2nd cut hay. You wouldn't have known by looking at the sheep- the ewes looked great this winter. But alas, our soil in New England is already lacking in selenium so by the time hay is cut and dried it has even less selenium than pasture. And that deficiency affected our lambs this year. But now we have a plan in place to avoid this in the future, including selenium injections.
A total of 18 lambs born, 16 that have made it. Farming is hard but here's to looking forward to the grazing season in just a couple more weeks! If you made it all the way to the end of this long post, thanks for sticking around 😆😊
