I don't think we ever settled on a name for this mother ewe. By tradition, she needed "belle" as part of her name, but we never came agreement beyond that. It's her second lambing, and she's looking to be as prolific as her mother.
Five ewes have delivered, meaning our lambing percentage is at 160% so far this year; 150% is the standard we like to shoot for, so we're doing well. Two more ewes have yet to deliver, not counting Dot (who turns twelve on April 21st of this year). We're not counting on the old girl to lamb this year...but who knows?
2 comments:
How about "Cowbelle"? Everyone always needs more cowbell! (Saturday Night Live, anyone???)
Very nice lambs. Do you slaughter ewe lambs or do you breed them all? We got 2 ewe lambs from our 2 breeders this year. We don't have grass to overwinter more breeders so we'll have to slaughter 2 ewes (one is already picked for her skiddish nature), but I think rams, for whatever reason, are certainly easier on the heart to slaughter.
I like "Cowbelle," and will float it with Mrs. Yeoman Farmer.
We used to keep all our ewe lambs, when we were building the flock, but have become more selective in recent years. The flock is about as big as our property can comfortably handle, and we've had difficulty separating breeding rams (i.e. parentage of new lambs is getting unclear, and there is definitely some in-breeding). So, we've lately been keeping the very nicest ewe lambs as replacement breeders but butchering the rest.
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