Last Lambing for Spring 2014

Ten inches of lush sweet grass and legumes for our girls to feast on.

We came into our last lambing window yesterday. The remainder of our 2012 ewes are lambing for the first time. It’s not a big number, only eight, so the work will be easy. Yesterday one birthed and so seven more to go.


We bred them twice last year; once in May when they reached about 100 lbs. to see if we had any out-of-season breeders. Because grass conditions were so plentiful then we ended up keeping our ram in with them until the end of July so he had the opportunity to eat well too. As it turned out two bred at the end of July giving us lambs right before Christmas. The other eight were bred before Christmas giving us the lambs we are getting now.


As a breed the Katahdin birth very well and with few if any problems. But we decided a few years ago to lamb the first timers separately so we could watch them a little closer in the event some problem did arise. This works well by spreading the lambing out over a longer period of time with smaller numbers each time, which doesn’t stress us out so much. The other benefit it provides us is having sale lambs coming to weight over a longer period, which means the customer isn’t locked into a small window to buy lamb.

The other thing we decided was to lamb the first timers last in order when the grass conditions are the best so they get the best nutrition we can offer. There’s good and bad points to this, but in the end the good outweigh the bad and so we make the adjustment to our plan.

As you can see from the picture above our grass conditions are very good here in southeast Ohio, so these girls are feasting on the finest and sweetest grass and legumes we can offer.

Once the lambing is finished we'll bring the first group in and combine the two grazing as one flock.