Goodbye to Meg

It's never easy to say goodbye to a good sheep. But we know that harvesting them, for us, is a better end than any that Mother Nature has in mind. Meg was just over 11.5 years old - the same age as our Shirley - the original Grand Dame.

Meg was a favorite and a very special girl. She was calm and gentle, and did a great job for us. At 11.5, she's pretty old in sheep years. And we know we have some limitations in our set up - that we don't castrate our males and we don't separate them. So the ewes can get bred at any time. My friend who also raises sheep sends her ewes off at 7 years old, because after that, she starts seeing more issues in lambing, mastitis, stillborns, etc. Meg lost her last lamb, and I am not sure why. But she also was not gaining any weight back between births. It was time to let her rest. She was moving slowly, getting up slowly, but never once complained. She really was an amazing ewe.

The day Meg and her friends came to the farm

Meg came to us from a friend, when they shut down their operation. She's on the left, next to tiny Shannon. She came with a ram lamb, named Brody. And until her last lamb, Rolf, all her other births were twins, Except for one single ram somewhere in the middle. In this group were some other lambs that got processed that same year, and a ewe named Juno that stayed with us until we had a grain incident that caused us to lose 4 great ewes. And if you look at the photo - staring at us ominously is the infamous ram, Hercules.

This is Meg's first set of twins in 2016, Prince Blueblood and Princess Cadence.

Meg started out strong on our farm, with a pair of twins, male and female. Now, I usually don't keep lambs from a ewe until I know if she's a good producer. Little did I know she would rarely have ewe lambs on the farm!

Let's look at her stats.

Meg gave us 19 lambs on the farm in the 10 years she produced here. Her average live weight at butcher was 87.3 pounds which is a little above average. She had one still born, and she lost her last lamb after birth. She had 60% males, and thankfully she had a female just 2 years ago that I decided to keep.

Meg was our first tan/light brown colored ewe and she brought some fun colors to the farm. I may have only kept one of her ewes, but she had plenty of rams who brought some color through breeding to other ewes.

This is Meg's second set of twins in 2017, Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru

I always compare everyone to Shirley. At the time, Shirley was our rock star. But one of her ewe lambs was actually an outstanding performer. Shirley's stats are now the LOW bar we hold every sheep to. And in almost every way, Meg just copied Shirley. NOW, Meg never had triplets, but she mostly had twins and they were usually rams, so she did a great job for us.

Meg's performance numbers beat Shirley by just a hair. Shirley had 18 lambs, and Meg had 19. Shirley passed away at 11.55 years of age, and we said goodbye to Meg at 11.59 years. Silly to think that such a solid ewe is now our LOW bar, but I am so glad we got to have her for so long. She was happy, healthy, calm. She set a great example for all the other sheep. We could trim her hooves, give her vaccines, handle her lambs, give her pets. She was just a nice asset on the farm.

This is Meg's single ram lamb in 2018, his name was Maple

I just had to drop in a photo of Maple. We just loved him. And he JUST loved his mama. He brought us quite a few colored ram lambs about 5 months after this photo was taken!

This is Maple at 7.5 Months old. He's bigger than his mama!!

I don't seem to have pictures of all of her lambs, it appears I was a bit busy in 2018-2020 and missed some photos. She had a stillborn ewe in 2021. But here she is in 2022 with Renfri and Stregobor.

She was often the jungle gym for all the lambs on the farm. She patiently let anyone climb on her, sit on her, snuggle up and sleep with her. Just a mama all the time. But you can start to see her face turning white in this photo.

In 2023 she had another set of twins - Ginger and Cumin. Ginger the the sopping wet one facing us. She's the ewe I decided to keep, and Ginger has already had 3 lambs on the farm. She's not as calm as her mama yet, but she's getting there. She IS a good mama, just like Meg

After having Rolf earlier this year, and he passed away for unknown causes, you can see that she is smaller in frame than in previous pictures. She was a stout and healthy girl until this past winter. She struggled a bit with lambing and even with extra treats and snacks, she was unable to gain weight. Even through the Spring flush, she continued to lose weight. Trying to carry lambs again, without having the appropriate body condition to support it, would have been very challenging for her. We knew it was time to say goodbye.

So just yesterday, we took her in with a batch of lambs. She loaded easy, which just makes the goodbyes even harder. She was a good girl, and we were certainly glad to have her. It's time for someone else to step up to take on the role of Grand Dame and take charge of the flock.

To end on a happy note - below is a picture of Ginger, with her first lamb, Layla. Remind me to keep one of her ewes on the farm to continue the legacy of tan colored ewes, who are calm and really good mothers!