It's Time for The Lambing Game

This post will be a little different. I haven’t chosen what I think are my best photos but instead it’s a bunch of photos of sheep rear ends. If you are a Farm Club member you will understand. It’s at this time before lambing that I offer the Lambing Game—a way to test your sheep knowledge and observation skills (really, it’s mostly luck). Farm Club members have a list of breeding dates and potential lambing dates. Based on those dates and these photos I ask people to tell me which of the ewes pictured will lamb first. Tie-breaker 1: The exact date. Tie-breaker 2: How many lambs? Tie-breaker 3: What time on your chosen date? There will be a prize—I just don’t know what yet. I chose to post these photos here so that I don’t fill up the FC members’ emails with lots of photos. Besides maybe the rest of you will be interested to find out what happens. Remember that lambing isn’t due to start until 2/26, but as in people, due dates aren’t exact.

I took photos for this game a couple of days ago and before I could get them posted, this ewe, Zinnia lambed—6 days early. So these lambs are 2 days old already. The rest of the photos in this post were taken this morning.

Anise. I’ll also say here that I just wandered around taking photos of sheep that seem to be bagging up. I did not find all the 15 ewes that are due by March 1 and some of these have dates for after that. Hey, it’s just a game!

Fandango

Alice.

Dimitri

Ginger.

Dilly.

Hilda.

Ears.

Jade

Raquel.

So that’s it for this first game of the season. Now you know what I do when I go out looking at sheep…like I’m going to do now for the 11 p.m. check.

The Lambing Game

Every year about this time I send photos to Farm Club members so that they can play the Lambing Game—guessing which ewe will lamb first and on what date. The Farm Club members have a list of ewes and their predicted lambing dates based on breeding date. (I am doing this as a blog post so I don’t fill up members’ email boxes with lots of photos. )We are still a couple of days away from the first official due date of February 24 but here we go.

This contests will be open to non-farm club members too. The prize is a set of three farm-scene photo notecards . To enter email me he following info:

Whcih sheep, of these in the photos will lamb first?

What Date?

Tie breaker (in case more than one person gets the first two questions correct): Time of birth.

If a woman told you her due date was March 1 you know that you could expect the baby at least a few days on either side of that. Same thing here. My due dates are based on when I noticed that the sheep was marked by the ram but that is not fool proof either.

This is a 5 year old ewe, bide a wee Bea. Official due date is 2/29. Due date:2/29.

This is 5 year old Meridian Ruth. Due date 2/29.

This is 8 year old Meridian Fandango. Due date: 3/4

Meridian Marilla. She is 4 years olf and her due date is 3/2.

Meridian Vixen, 4 years old; due 2/29.

This is 5 year old bide a wee Hallie, due 3/2

Meridian Sumac, 3 years old; due 2/29.

Meridian Estelle, 6 years old, due 2/24.

So there is the line-up for Game #1. We have many more in the barn than this but these are the onesfor which e could get decent photos. Thanks so much to FC member Mary and her daughter, Maggie who came today to take the photos and ID sheep. I’m can go to the barn but I’m still not allowed to walk around the sheep area. Good luck!!