C'mon January!!!

Ok, I truly never in my life thought I would be eager for January and February to come...and yet that is exactly what I find myself looking forward to these days :)  As I watch the ewes in the pasture, I am beginning to see some of them already showing their "baby bellies" and that tell-tale rolling belly-sway when they walk.  Of course they are only about halfway through their gestation, so I suspect these ewes will be the ones to surprise us with multiple lambs this season.  I know as December closes in, I will see even more of them with round tummies as the yearling ewes get further along in their pregnancies.

I am particularly excited for this lamb crop for a host of reasons.  The first being our ewes are bred to QR rams this year, so we will be anxious to see if any of them give birth to QR lambs.  Our entire flock is QQ... yes we hit the trifecta of failure when it comes to Scrapie resistance!  Scrapie is a bad-news disease in the sheep world, rating right up their with Mad Cow Disease and Johnnes.  They have discovered that sheep that have an "RR" Codon 171 factor (Codon 171 is a particular location in each cell of the body) are resistant to Scrapie.  That means if exposed to Scrapie, they will not contract it.  Sheep that have a "QR" Codon 171 factor are slightly susceptible and sheep that are "QQ" are extremely susceptible, meaning if exposed they will likely contract it.  Boo-hiss!  So we are hoping that this next generation of lambs will improve our Scrapie resistance, in time replacing the "QQ" sheep in our flock.

The other reason I am anxious for the lambs to arrive is that there are very few Fullblood ewes in our flock, and those that are Fullblood are getting up in years.  We can always "upgrade" to Purebred stock, but we cannot upgrade to Fullblood.  Therefore we are anxious for some Fullblood replacement ewes.

I am hoping that when the ewes start to lamb, it will be during a mild spell in January.  They are due sometime around Devan's birthday, and usually most of them will lamb within the course of 2wks (Happy Birthday, Devan....here are 20 lambs to take care of!! *smile*).