[Jacob-list] 2001 problems and two new lambs

[Heather Hettick]

We had a rough start to 2001 as we lost our old ram Tobias.  He was losing
weight and coordination in his rear legs in December and seemed to be
getting better with some extra food and reduced competition during feeding
when he just died one night in January.  The scrapie people examined his
brain tissue and found no evidence of scrapie, so we think it was a
combination of age and an incident in October where he knocked the top horn
off our yearling ram.  AT the time, Tobias didn't seem to have any injuries
other than a sore shoulder from this and continued with his breeding job,
but we think he may have had head or other injuries that took time to
develop and his age didn't help either.  He would have been nine in
February. My husband was very disappointed because he really liked Tobias
because he used to eat Canadian thistles as his preferred forage and,
although difficult for me to catch or handle because of his strength, he was
a very unaggressive ram with people as well as his ewes.

We had a 2 horned Tobias son born February 21, but he probably won't be a
keeper because he doesn't have a lot of color, and I kept his full brother,
Brutus, last year to breed a couple of my ewes.  His birth coat looks really
nice but I'm planning to wether him anyway.

I was about to give up on Brutus actually siring any lambs this year as they
would have had to be born no later than this weekend and the three ewes I
had with him didn't look ready, but it was hard to tell for sure because I
hadn't shorn them yet because of my own hand injury and only just got the
rams done last weekend.

This morning at feeding time I was happily surprised to see a beautifully
marked, (I like lots of color), still wet, ewe lamb with one of Brutus'
ewes.  Thistle is a first time mom with pretty long wool and I had to
quickly shear her belly to help the lamb find milk and penned them in my
extra stall to help them bond and not have to deal with some of the other
more dominant or curious ewes for a while.  I checked them before leaving
for work though, and the lamb was happily nursing and Thistle seemed much
more relaxed.  I'll probably put them with the rest of the ewe flock when I
check on them at lunch today.

I have 5 more Jacob ewes left to lamb and one Tunis/Romney ewe lamb.

Heather Hettick
Moonstruck Jacob Sheep
Creston, OH
hettick.1 at osu.edu