Today was ultrasound day, and a spectacularly beautiful day to be working with the sheep. We had 29 older ewes and 5 ewe lambs that spent most of October and November in 6 different breeding groups, each with one of our rams. The rams came out two weeks ago, and today Dr Dotti arrived with his ultrasound machine to check each ewe to see if she is pregnant.
I make a spreadsheet of all the data and sort it by how far along Dr Dotti estimates each pregnancy to be, and that way we know which ewes we can expect to lamb first.
Today Dr Dotti confirmed that 29 of the 34 ewes and ewe-lambs are pregnant, each between 30 and 60 days along in her pregnancy, and he also saw lots of twins. He can’t see pregnancies that are less than 30 days old, so in a month we will re-check the remaining 5, who may have gotten pregnant in the week or so before the rams were removed, and just not be showing yet.
Melinda was working on every step of the sheep handling today, but as she was the photographer, she is not in any of today’s photos. Thank you for the great photos, Melinda! It was challenging with all the sun and glare.
We are expecting a nice crop of lambs, come March!
