2014 lambing season has begun

Lucy, a Scottish Blackface sheep, with her twin ewe lambs.

The 2014 lambing season started this week at Brambleberry Farms. We started the breeding later in the fall last year and we're very glad that we did with it being such a long, cold winter. Some years we have had lambs as early as Feb. 1.
Even though it's mid-March, the weather is still cold and we've had some lambs that have not survived. We bring the lambs in the house to get their body temperature up, but some are too weak to make it. Lucy is one of our top mothers and we're confident that she will take care of her lambs. Nevertheless, we do check them every few hours to make sure that their mouths are warm -- a sign that they have adequate body temperature. When a lamb's body temperature falls, you must warm them up before they can eat. Sometimes we need to hand-milk the ewe and bottle feed or tube-feed the lambs just to make sure they have enough nourishment.
With plenty more lambs on the way, we're waiting for Mother Nature to catch up with the calendar and give us some mild spring weather.

A tough winter for people and animals

It's been a long, cold winter at Brambleberry B&B. The challenge of winter construction (we are building our winery) has been tough, as we've had to endure water freeze-ups and many delays.
But it's also been hard on the wildlife. The farm's deer have herded up and they paw through the deep snow to try to get to any alfalfa fields.
The deer also eat any hay bales stored outside and are now coming into our yard. Sherry took this photo from our side porch of three deer in the yard munching on a rose bush.
As long as we can keep them from jumping into the back of our pickup truck where we store hay for the sheep, then we can peacefully co-exist. But we're sure that the deer look forward to spring just as much as we do.