As I get more sheep, I thought it would be a good idea to go over the history of sheep on my field.
2022
I bought 4 sheep on May 30th, 2022. There were two ewes, an older ewe (EWE 0001) and a yearling (EWE 0002). The older ewe had 2 ram lambs. RAM 0001 was one of them.
My hope was to get used to working with sheep and learn how to rotate them, but the honest truth is there weren’t enough sheep to take advantage of their flocking behavior.
I remember that it was impossible to get the sheep to go where I wanted them to go. No combination of wires could really hold them. In the end, I let the sheep move with the cows, and I had little success keeping the ewes and rams separated.
2023
I lost one of the rams I purchased on February 3rd, 2023. We had an ice storm and the sheep were free to roam the entire property. The ram died, probably due to an attack. By the time I found him, he was already badly mangled and eaten.
On April 12th, 2023 EWE 0001 gave birth to EWE 0003 and another lamb that died at birth.
About a week later, on April 20th, the younger ewe gave birth to a ram.
All in all, 2023 was a good year. I had hoped to double the number of ewes, but a 50% increase is not bad. Losing the ram was bad, but now I had a replacement ram.
2024
My goals for 2024 were to rapidly increase the flock size and really start making some money on sheep.
We started with EWE 0002 giving birth to EWE 0004 on February 4th.
On Friday February 23, 2024 EWE 0001 gave birth to twins. One of them was Rammy, and the other was a ewe, EWE 0005.
Rammy had to be brought in and bottle fed because he broke is leg the next day.
Thankfully, Rammy recovered quickly, but I wasn’t able to get him to feed on his mom, so we bottlefed him the rest of the way.