Another dense, data filled pictureless post.

Let's talk about lambing twice a year. My flock lambs twice a year, and many of my individual ewes lamb twice a year.

A ewe's gestation period is 21 weeks- 147 days- so she can lamb twice a year. Theoretically.

In order for her to do that she has to breed out of season. The best way to get a ewe to breed out of season is to start with a ewe that was born in the fall, breed her to a ram that was born in the fall and keep all her fall born ewe lambs. Yes, you can keep them under lights to mimic the onset of autumn, or treat them with CIDRs and PMSG and other hormones, but in the long run isn't it better just to pick sheep that have the genetic capability to thrive under your desired set of conditions?

Also in order for her to breed out of season- and especially if she is going to breed twice a year- she has to have the nutrition she needs. This doesn't mean a bunch of high priced, highly wrought minerals and manufactured feeds. It does mean a constant supply of high quality feed.

Constant
That constant part will get you, as will the high quality part. It means figuring out how to feed hay off the ground, and lining up a years' supply of hay at a time, and making sure you have money in the bank during haymaking season just in case you run up on a guy who's got good hay for sale. It means pulling feeders out to fill them when the ground is dry even if your daughter has a soccer game or it's already after dark and you haven't had your own dinner yet.

High quality
Not only does the feed supply have to be constant, it has to be something ewes are designed to utilize. That's part of quality. No grain, no silage, remember she's a ruminant. Feed the rumen! Rumen microflora like structural carbohydrates- plant cell walls. We're talking grass, and leaves, and flowers, and weeds. Are there times when that won't be enough? Absolutely. It's too cold for too long here in Kentucky for a ewe to lamb twice a year even on the best stockpiled grass. How can you provide extra calories and protein for the rumen microbes without killing them with a rapidly fermentable starchy feed like corn? My current answer is soyhull pellets.

You know the skin on a peanut? Apparently soybeans have a similar skin, which people really dislike. So all the soybeans processed for human consumption have the skins- called hulls- removed before processing. These hulls can be pelleted and fed with no danger of rumen upset, as they do not ferment rapidly like grain. In the rumen it acts more like a structural carbohydrate- a cell wall. It brings some much needed amino acids, but has little of the oil so I don't worry about the phytoestrogens that may be present in the soybeans. All the energy of corn, more protein (corn is only 8-9% protein, soyhull pellets are 11-13%), no rumen upset.

Back to constant...
I provide it in a self feeder. That way the smaller, younger and shyer ewes can get all they want just like the bigger, pushier ewes. After all, do I want to select the big, mean ewe with one lamb or the smaller, easy going ewe with twins? Nobody gets banged up in the mad rush through the gate, nobody gets beat up trying to get a bite to eat, nobody's lamb gets trampled or lost coming in to be fed. The feeder can be moved from field to field with the ewes on pasture. Another way of making sure the feed supply is constant through out the day as well as day to day. That's how grazing animals are designed, to take in a constant supply of feed as they graze their way across pasture.


Speaking of pasture
Pature has to be both high quality and constantly available. The more the better in order to cover your micromineral bases- don't limit it to just one grass and one legume in a pasture. Do you only eat the same two foods for all your meals all year? Course not, and neither should she! Put in timothy and rye and bluegrass and orchardgrass and fescue and sudan, white clover and red clover and birdsfoot trefoil and alfalfa. Let flourish the plaintain, crabgrass, chicory, pigweed, blackberry, honeysuckle, dock, poison ivy, wintercreeper, goldenrod, ironweed, bindweed, nettle, ragweed, queen anne's lace, dandelion and wild violet, pokeweed and multiflora rose and all the others I have forgotten or don't know the name of. They'll eat them and like them and be the better for them. This also allows you to have something for them to eat under a wide range of conditions- wet, cold, dry, hot, in between.

Give them access to woods and brush and watch what they do. Sheep like to browse as well as graze, at least mine do. I figure each plant has a slightly different total nutrient profile. If we should eat a wide range of fruits and vegetables, so should the sheep, for the same reasons. This also ups the likelihood they'll have something to eat whatever the weather has been.

Thistles are a problem with this laissez-faire approach, one I don't have a good answer to yet. Sheep will eat them when they are small, and will eat the buds off of them- but only if they're grazed pretty tight. Anybody got any ideas that are working for you?

Last but not least
Mineral and water. Mineral needs to be out all the time. Whenever the mineral feeders get low I refill them. Which means I have to check them on a regular basis- sometimes they eat a lot more mineral than other times. I use a standard sheep mineral I get at the feed store. It works, so I use it. They don't always have a bag on hand- we don't have many sheep around here- so I usually try to keep a bag on hand.
Water needs to be always available, clean and appealing. Get the trough off the ground so they don't poop in it. Put a float valve on it in summer- they're pretty cheap and pretty durable. Don't get a tank so big you never want to fool with dumping and rinsing it out. If you're using a black rubber maid tank put it in the shade so the water stays cool in the summer. How refreshing do you think a drink of hot stagnant water would be if you were pregnant in August?
Whether trough or pond make sure there's no mud to contend with. Lay rock, put in a tank and fence off the pond, stabilize pond banks with fescue, make more of the bank accessible so they aren't beating up one small section with overuse- whatever it takes to avoid mud.

That's all, folks!
That pretty much sums up how I get ewes to produce five lambs a year on mostly grass. The only other area is vaccination and disease control, which deserves a post of it's own.
Watch the sheep, let them be sheep, spend your effort on creating the conditions sheep do well in, and keep the ones that do well. This may mean you end up doing something completely different from anything I have described above. And that's ok! As long as your sheep are producing multiple lambs twice a year, year after year, I am all for it and I'd love to hear how you do it!

 OK, the last ewe FINALLY lambed. Seems like I wait forever for them to start, then forever for that last one to pop. Let's run the numbers:
 

• First lamb came 3/3, last one 4/25; total season 53 days
• Bred 33, had 24 lamb
• 51 lambs born to 24 ewes= 2.13 lambs per ewe
• 4 dead, 7 in the reject pen, 39 in the field, 1 MIA/probably dead
• no ewes died or culled; no lambs ill (the 4 deaths were exposure-2 and predation-2)
• ram went in April 22; fall lambs will start 9/16