how to care for lambs in winter?

[InHisName]

This will be our 1st lambing experience- bought small herd with 2 pregnant ewes (one has died giving birth prematurely- found her dead in barn a week ago)- don't want to lose the other one. It gets cold here in winter (25 below)- and we dont know when the ewe is due. What do you do to protect winter lambs? We put heat lamp on our goat kids, will that be enough in a 3 sided shed? Should we seperate the sheep if we see her starting to lamb?
The 2 sheep and 3 goats live together quite well.....

[Bearfootfarm]

The 2 sheep and 3 goats live together quite well

First thing: Sheep cannot have access to goat minerals. You may already know that

As for lambing, it's best to get them in a small (4 X 4 or 5 X 5) pen to lamb, and to bond for a couple of days.
Watch her closely, and you should see the beginning signs of labor
(seperating herself from the flock, pawing the ground, getting up and down a lot, yawning)

Have your heat lamp or a hair dryer ready, and some clean dry towels.
TRY to let the ewe do most of the cleaning, but help if needed to hurry and get them dry.
Cut the cords off about 2 inches long and dip or spray with Iodine
Milk the ewe just enough to make sure her milk is flowing, and watch to make sure the lambs nurse in the first hour or so.

If they are dry and out of any drafts, they should do OK once they start to nurse

Good luck

[RiverPines]

I let ewes pasture birth. I also separate ewes from does.

I never interfere with any birthing, ewe or doe.
I only go near if a lamb/kid is not presenting right and birth is not possible without pulling the kid/lamb.

I never dip cords or cut them! Thats moms job. I dont wipe off kids/lambs if I dont absolutely have to.

With goats and sheep, the sense of smell is number one in kid/lamb - doe/ewe bondings. A mom uses smell and so does the baby.
A baby that smells like towels and iodine makes a better chance of rejection, IMO.

I have never had any doe or ewe reject a kid/lamb, ever!
I never had a problem from not dipping cords in iodine. Pasture births sure dont have iodine involved.
A clean place for the birth also wouldnt require iodine, which is very smelly especially to an animal with such high sense of smell!

This is just my opinion.

If I were you, I never breed for fall or winter births, I would get the ewe where you can provide a heat lamb for the birth if its near freezing at the time. Once the lambing starts I would stay only close enough to observe the birth is going along ok and just let nature take its course.
Once the ewe has her lamb/s up and dry and suckling, I would let them have a pen of their own with another ewe, not the goats.

Keep any ram away! He will try to rebreed the ewe.

My 2cents.

[plowjockey]

We had 4 Katahdin 1st timers last winter. They were also our first. One dies after I had to pull a dead lamb. Since there was not vet and I did not know what I was doing, I waited almost 24 hours, which was way too late.

The other 3 birthed just fine, completely on their own. One had twins.

The things I learned are.

1. Don't wait to pull dead lambs and try to have emergency medicine (antibiotics electrolites) handy.

2. Check them often, at least morning/evening, but don't fret. They kept looking like they were "due", but may not have birthed until maybe 10 days later.

3. Pen newborn(s) with mom in a small "jug"(pen), for at least a couple of days. They need to stay close, especially if it is cold. I let some out after a day, but noticed that the lambs would wander over an lay down in a cold corner. Back in they went.

Sorry that you had lost one but that happens. Most will probably be just fine.

Good luck.

[Maura]

If you are graining your flock, don't give them grain before 10 in the morning. For some reason this keeps them from lambing at night. Keep an eye on her every morning. As others wrote, when she shows signs of birthing, act. See if she will follow you into the shelter so that she lambs in a convenient place out of the wind. If you have a place to separate mother and child, get her to follow you there so you don't have to pick up the lamb and lure the ewe to follow. If the ewe is having trouble, she will look at you and ba-a-a. When the lamb is coming out, you should see a nose and a hoof on each side of the nose. If you don't see hooves, you have to scrub up and go looking for them. Run your clean hand down the lamb's neck to the shoulder, find the leg and follow it. The leg may be bent, it may be all the way back.

She'll probably drop her lambs behind your back and you will get a nice morning surprise.

[Ronney]

Why are you lambing as you come into winter? This is not something I would willingly do.

My sheep are pastured and that is where they lamb - in the spring. I do a lambing beat two or three times a day, on rare occasions I need to interfere but mostly the ewes do very well on their own.

If you get to below -25 during the winter it might be a good idea to rethink your breeding strategy and organise it so that it happens in the spring when both temperature and feed are in better supply. There is a very good reason why animals give birth in the spring and I'm sorry but I do get tired of people who want to muck around with the natural order of things. In the meantime, good luck with the remainder of your lambings and the advice already given is probably the best to follow.

Cheers,
Ronnie

[Ross]

Why are you lambing as you come into winter? This is not something I would willingly do.

Its fairly common but yeah it's another set of problems. Because you lamb late you have marketable lambs for easter. Great advice the only thing I noted missing we crutching the ewe's ewes stomach and legs to make it very easy for the lamb to get milk. I also get my lambs onto creep feed ASAP but whatever you do for winter borne kids should be enough for a lamb.

[thequeensblessing]

We breed for winter lambs, but we have a completely enclosed barn with running water, electric and a medicine cabinet containing all the first aid/vet supplies we'd need for lambing. It is divided in to lambing jugs, each with a heat lamp.

We try not to intervene any more than necessary in the birthing process, however, we do check new lambs over for any abnormalities, wool eye, and dip navels, etc.

They say that keeping your lambs in barn, if possible, for as long as possible, helps prevent the early infestation of parasites, especially the dreaded barber pole worms. So, we breed for early lambing, and keep the lambs in barn for 5 months, letting them out in the spring.

[WeaverRose]

I second the notion of keeping the sheep and goats separated. Ours are together right now but no one is due to lamb till late March at the earliest, and by then the rams and buck will be removed, the flocks separated, and the sheep have shelter and a place to pen up impending mothers. Goats can be quick to jump on/butt any newcomer to the herd, such as a weak just-born lamb, and there goes the lambing crop.
Plus the mineral thing, goat minerals have too much copper, it can kill sheep pretty quick.

[InHisName]

Thanks for the good advice! Will work on having a seperate pen- as for now, they are all together. As I said in the first post, I bought them already bred, so the timing was out of my hands. I did read that Icelandic have a late heat cycle, but I guess that is not always so.