When a ewe has more than two lambs it is often difficult for her to feed them all. We will either have to bottle feed one lamb or find another ewe who only had one lamb to adopt one. This is called ‘grafting’. Grafting is the process of assessing milk/colostrum production in ewes and matching lambs to supply. This is not always an easy thing to do as ewes look for their scent on the lambs when their born.
So far Dean has successfully grafted one lamb to a new ewe this year. Here is a video of ‘Tiny’, she is one ewe that has great mothering instincts and she took this lamb and loved it right away! She’s our ‘Rock Star’.
Here’s a photo of Tiny with her lamb and her new adoption.
Why do the sheep have numbers painted on them?
We use a special livestock paint to paint the same numbers on a ewe as we put on her lambs. This is done so that from a distance we can easily spot who belongs to who. Different colors represents the different amount of lambs the ewe had.