Welcome to the joys and heartache. If you don't have a Large Guard Dog or Donkey get one. A female mustang horse works very well too. The best fence to keep out coyotes is an electric fence that you put aluminum strips on and bait with peanut butter. The coyotes lick the peanut butter and get the full shock in the mouth. The natural rock deer salt has trace minerals that help give you really strong lambs. Make sure the lambs can reach the water source and that you don't let the buckets or troughs get algae in them because the ewes will stop drinking water and their milk will dry up. Never use regular hay nets. Lambs and sheep can get their heads stuck in them and strangle themselves. If you want to use nets get the ones with the small grid that are known as slow feeders made to stop greedy horses from bolting their food down. The sheep and lambs can't get their heads stuck in them . If you have cherry trees keep Karo syrup on hand. it is the antidote for cyanide poisoning. Cherry leaves are safe when fresh or totally dry. Wilted they are deadly. They can also be deadly fresh during a drought. I lost a lamb to that and that was before I know about Karo syrup. The lambs are most vulnerable to being poisoned. Learn what Nightshade/Belladonna looks like(and evil thorned purple cherry tomato) and ruthlessly destroy it. The fruit is sweet and can tempt the sheep to eat it. Don't breed tiny ewes. If they are unusually small give them another year to grow. Lows a lamb that way because she was breech and there was no room to turn her. If you have a dog attack search really thoroughly for all the wounds. If you miss doctoring one wound with Neosporin or Triple Antibiotic they will most likely die of infection. Always feed an internal antibiotic to make sure you get all of the infection. If you ever have a sheep or lamb attacked and a major portion of the skin is pulled off (like everything from the just behind the shoulder to the butt) just put the down. They will not survive and you can't afford to skin graft them like a person. Always keep a tube around in case one of the sheep get frothy bloat. Also when you see one start to puke up froth chase them. The bouncing around as they run will break up the bubbles in the stomach so they can belch up the gas. If you see this happen 80 % of the time you have let your salt run out. Salt reduces water tension and makes it harder for the tiny bubbles to form. The other 20% you will have changed feeds to suddenly. It can be as simple as going from cracked corn to whole corn. And if you have one that you can't help by tubing or oil or vinegar or salt water and they begin to die take a knife and stab the stomach and press the hole open to let the gas out. Because they are going to die if you don't and they may survive if you do.
These are my babies, my daughter was helping me feed our ladies. I just started farming so don't know too much about livestock but I do love and enjoy it.
That's my girl fluff she's our only wool sheep. We got all our ladies from the auction so we don't know too much about them. But I know one thing they are so sweet and happy all the time.
This is our first baby lamb joy and she has a sister named miracle which is smaller at the bottom...
Here's is our girl lambing, I delivered our first ram I was excited and nervous never thought in my 32 years on this earth I would be farming , especially delivering a baby ram..
