Quality Ryeland Sheep

Like most smallholders, we are generally juggling the time we spend with our sheep and earning a living. We were curious as to the pattern of what time of day our lambs arrived as this would help us be even more vigilant in watching ewes that were due.

The graph below shows the data for our last 21 lambs. In our case the lambs arrive at two peak times, firstly, a couple of hours after sunrise and then again around sunset. Is daylight a factor? Obviously in as far as we have no lambs during the middle of the night, but interestlingly, relatively few in the middle of the day either.

Some flock owners think the time of feeding can influence the peak lambing times. We don't have enough data yet to draw any conclusions, but have shown our regular feeding times on the graph for your interest. There may be a correlation.

We'd love to hear from you if you have firm opinions on this and especially if you have gathered your own data.