Today we changed the raddle on Jack the Lad. He had been wearing ‘red’ and now he is sporting ‘yellow’. (We should actually have done it yesterday as that was the start of the second 17-day cycle for the ewes...). The point of changing the raddle is that if any of the ewes that Jack has so far mated with show a yellow bum on top of their red one, we will know that they have come back into season and that Jack has had his wicked way (again!). ! If we kept the original raddle, the only way we would know if a second mating had occured, would be by seeing if the red colouring looked fresh, which is much harder to see than a different colour. It is not disastrous for a ewe to ‘'return' but not ideal as the question to be asked is why? In theory, a fit and healthy ewe should come into season, be mated with and then become pregnant! If of course, lots or even ALL of the ewes come back into season that could mean that the ram is the problem: he may be 'performing the deed' but could actually be infertile!!
We know Jack the lad was fertile last year as he fathered lots of lambs with his previous owner and of our ewes, four have lambed before and five are shearlings. In theory then we can be fairly confident about half our flock and optimistic about the other half.
Back on 26th we mentioned that all except one of our Shetlands were yet to be mated with. We are happy to report that Ness (pictured with Jack) had a red bum this afternoon (Jack must have had his wicked way just before we changed the raddle), so now over half our sheep have been mated.
Lambing is going to be very spread out next spring: in an ideal world, we would have wanted all the sheep to lamb in a 17(ish) day period, having all been caught in those first 17 days. Next year, based on the fact that Shetlands' seasons don't start till mid October, we may wait a bit longer before putting the ewes to the ram in order to (hopefully) have more due dates closer together!!