It may be necessary to keep obstinate ewes, that will not claim their lamb, penned for three or four days; it is not advisable to hold them longer, as they will dry up unless you have good milk-producing feed. Most ewes and their lambs can be numbered and turned out in small bunches of say fifty head, after they have been in the individual pens 24 hours. They can thus be kept in separate yards around the main lambing shed for three or more days. Here the attendant can watch them; should any of the ewes refuse their lambs, they can be easily picked out by their number and returned to the single pen. After the lambs are four or five days old they can be placed in bands of three hundred and removed to other parts of the pasture, where there is good shelter, or, better, where there are other small sheds that will accommodate such small bunches.
[NIGHT WORK.]
Some owners have one or two men working among their dropping ewes all night when shed lambing. These men remove the new-born lambs and their mothers from the dropping ewes as soon as they drop. This method is very hard on the ewes; it breaks their rest. After being worked this way for eight or ten nights, all ewes not in extra good condition, together with those heavy with twins, will become very weak; many of them will dry up in milk and become unable to raise a lamb. A much better system is to partition the dropping ewes off with panels each night when they come into the shed, allowing about 150 to each compartment or lot. Thus there will be but few lambs to care for in each lot in the morning; these can be readily removed when turning out the ewes. This permits the ewes to conserve their strength for the sick spell, with a good rest at night.
[TAGS.]
During this lambing the sheep generally still carry their wool. This often causes the new-born lamb considerable trouble. Careless shepherds often allow lambs to suck tags until they die. It only takes a moment to remove the tags from the udder, so watch all new-born lambs when lambing "wool sheep" until you are sure the lamb has found the teat. Some flockmasters have all their dropping ewes shorn around the udder just before lambing sheep with the wool on.
[SALT.]
After lambs become two weeks old they will begin to nibble for salt. If you do not allow them the salt they will eat any loose dirt. This may kill a few in any case. Should your pasture contain much alkali, or soil containing small quantities of arsenic matter, you are likely to lose quite a number of the lambs about the time they begin eating, as they invariably nibble for a salt substance first. If convenient, feed the loose salt in troughs only; otherwise use block salt. Allow about three ounces per ewe each week, or roughly speaking twenty pounds of salt for each one hundred ewes and their lambs per week. They will require this amount only where they are on very soft, green feed. Upon the range, where there is considerable natural salt feed, or the water is strongly alkalized, they will not consume that amount. Where they are given salt at regular intervals there is no danger of over-feeding. Salt is good for the wool; it makes good healthy lambs.