Making Lambs!

Okay, mark your calendars folks---we've got sheep breeding happening here as of tonight. It was hard to tell who it was in the dark, with the sheep silhouetted against the headlights of the truck as we were getting hay, but I'm pretty sure Tut bred both Trouble and Paris (in the dark, Paris and Regina look an awful lot alike, but I think it was Paris). That means their lambs should arrive around April 9-11 (Icelandic sheep have a slightly shorter gestation period than other breeds).

This is pretty much prime breeding time right now, so the majority of the ewes should be getting pregnant in the next couple of weeks.

There may have been a few breedings prior to this that I didn't happen to witness. Sarah was looking rather friendly with Taj on Saturday, but I didn't actually see them do anything, so I can't be sure.

I'm greatly relieved now... I have concrete evidence that there WILL be lambs in the spring. I don't know if other shepherds are like this, but if I don't actually see the sheep breeding, I spend the entire winter worrying that they DIDN'T breed, all the way up until the lambs start arriving.

I love raising sheep! It makes the winter go by so much more quickly, knowing that you have lambs to look forward to in just a few short months. It's like having Christmas in April, getting to see all the new arrivals, trying to guess ahead of time how many each ewe will have, what colors and genders they'll be, and what day they'll arrive.

Then comes the fun of naming them all. I follow certain naming practices with my flock, which means that this coming spring all my lambs will be given names that start with the letter "U." That will be a little harder than the "P," "R," "S," and "T" years I've had so far.

So that's your homework: From now until April, start thinking up good "U" names to help me name my lambs!