Before your lambs are born you need to think about how to lamb proof your barn to prevent accidents from happening. I write this post with a heavy heart after losing a beautiful ewe lamb to an unthinkable freak accident. This guide will walk you through how to look critically at each area of your barn to ensure it is safe for small lambs.
Typical Lamb Behavior
First let’s look at what typical lamb behavior looks like. At about 24 hours of age, sometimes sooner, lambs will find their legs and take off. My lambs usually begin their lamb races around chore times while moms are busy eating, however, I have caught them in their antics on my lam cam doing the same in the middle of the night. Lambs race, jump, leap, hop, twist, climb, launch, and sometimes, just take flight! Their curiosity leads them to try fitting through just about any space and to climb and stand on almost any object. Lambs also mouth things, just like your two legged babies do. All of these lamb antics are fun to watch, but it is these very behaviours which can lead to disasterous results.
A Guide To Lamb Proofing Your Barn
1. Feed And Watering Systems
Lambs learn to eat and drink by watching their moms and by eating alongside of them. Take a critical look at your feeding systems.
- Spacing- Is there enough space to fit the new lambs in with your grown sheep at the feeders? Will the lambs be crowded out, or pushed and shoved by older ewes?
- Construction of hay feeders-Are there any rungs, slats, holes that the lambs could get hung up in or get a head caught in?
- Water buckets – Are the water buckets high enough that a lamb will not be able to fall in?
- Heated water buckets – If using a heated water bucket are the cords wrapped and tied up so lambs can not get tangled in them?
- Baling Twine – Do you remove the baling twine on your hay bales? Where and how do you store it? Dangling twine should be out of lamb reach.
2. Lambing Pen Area
Most farms set up some kind of lambing pen area, either using individual pens for ewes and new lambs or by using a larger pen where all the new moms and lambs are housed together. Here are things to consider in setting up this area.
- Heat Lamps – If using heat lamps, are they secured using TWO differnt methods? Always tie your lamps with two different systems so that if one fails, the other is still holding the lamp up.
- Cords – Are all cords from heat lamps, heated buckets, and lam cams secured up and out of reach of lambs and ewes? If we need to run an electric cord to the other side of the barn, we run it along the ceiling using nails and zip ties to secure the cord to so it does not hang down.
- Lambing Pens – In setting up your lambing pens have you created any small openings between the wall and the pen that a lamb could crawl into and get stuck?
- Drafts – Is your lambing area FREE of cold drafts? A cold draft on a new lamb will cause hypothermia and death.
- Pen Construction – Look at the spacing on the horizontal rungs or slats on your lambing pen. Could a lamb get caught in them or slip through?
3. General Barn & Paddock Space
The last area to look at is your overall barn and paddock area. As the lambs get bigger they will often join in with the rest of the flock and have access to your entire barn and paddock space.
- Electric Fencing – Do you have electro net fencing close to feed and water areas? Feed areas can get crowded and you do not want the fencing too close in these areas. Do you have any electro-net that is NOT ELECTRIC? Either electrify your netting or get rid of it.
- If you have woven wire fencing, is the spacing large enough for a lamb to crawl through? or small enough for a lamb to get a head stuck?
- Look for the same things in your larger area as you did for your lambing pen area-cords, twine, drafts, feed systems, and water buckets.
- Look for anything that could impel a lamb-think out of the box on this one! Sticks, posts, metal bars?
Lambs – An Accident Waiting To Happen
“Aw come on, don’t you think this is a bit over kill?” Absolutely NOT! We have owned sheep for about 18 years. In this time we have only lost a couple lambs to accidents, but every year, we see more areas we need to change to prevent potential accidents from happening. Here are some real life examples that have happened on our farm of near accidents or tragic deaths.
- We have some ground box feeders with horizontal rungs on them. We had to cover the rungs with plywood because a lamb got his legs woven in and out of the horizontal bars and was hanging there. I was standing there when it happened and was able to release him before any damage could be done.
- Our lambs and moms were on pasture. We use electro-net in our fields. Our mineral feeder had gotten pushed too closely to the mineral feeder. The sheep tend to crowd around the mineral feeder. A 3 month old lamb was at the feeder, was either pushed or he backed into the electric fencing. In his attempt to free himself, he got completely tangled. We found him dead, tangled up in the electro-net. (Note: This is the ONLY time we have had trouble using this kind of fencing. We train our lambs to it so they know to back away from it. The problem here came in the feeder being too close to the fence.)
- A new lamb crawled between a space between a lambing pen and the wall. In his attempt to get to his mom, he got tangled in the rungs of the lambing pen. I found him in time to free him with no harm done.
- Our paddock area has a woven wire fence. The spacing on the fence was large enough that lambs could fit through putting them outside of the fence and on the road. We attached chicken wire around the bottom three feet of the woven wire to prevent lambs from going through.
- We tragically lost a ewed lamb who got impelled by a metal bar. We have NO idea how this happened. We found her dead.
- We had an older lamb get their head stuck in an empty water bucket and couldn’t get it off. We heard her baaing in the field and were able to get her head out before any harm could be done.
Take Away
Lambs CAN get hurt or killed in most unusual ways. You CAN prevent many of these accidents from happening. PLEASE-if you have had a lamb incident on your farm will you share it in the comments so that others can learn from it?
Amanda Barcenas
We had a lamby last summer get tangled up in our electronet fencing. Our sheep and lambs are trained to stay away from the fence, but it was such a wet summer that it was hard to keep a good charge on the fencing. Fortunately, she was still alive, but her front leg was badly injured. We ended up having to put her down after tending to her for about two weeks. The guilt is horrible. We do all that we can to ensure the safety of our sheep, but sometimes weird things happen and we just don’t get there in time.
Kim Goodling
Thank you for sharing your story. The guilt can be hard to overcome but you are right, sometimes odd things just happen regardless of what we do.
Sierra
I hear this… we’ve lost a few lambs in the 4 years of owning our flock…
Our first was a precious bottle lamb that we were tending. One late night she was due to be fed, I was dealing with a miserable 1 year old little boy so my husband went to take care of her. He had a long day with calving as it was, and he fed her. But the milk was too hot, she drank it to fast and bloated up. My husband called me pretty solemnly early that morning to let me know she had passed 😣
The next year, one lamb just a few days old got caught up with mature ewes rushing out for grain and got trampled. We had to let him go, it was so hard… and a couple months later an older lamb who had become a favorite got tangled in the fence and we found her passed on.
In 2021 lambing we dealt with milk fever in our ewes – they get it prior to lambing. Vet wasnt able to diagnose so they opted to c-section. She had twins but they were premature… shortly after delivery they passed on 😔 after late night researching, as the csection ewe was still in a bad way… i found a remedy, I got Cal-mag (Cal Plus or Calcium Borogluconate) and did SQ injections totalling 125mls, one other ewe had went down as well. We were able to save her from a csection. She lambed a week later, 1 live lamb and 1 that we pulled who had been dead for some time, we assume she was lost amidst the stress and struggle from milk fever.
There are challenges within it all that can be rewarding, while others make me want to quit altogether. Spring 2021 was that kind of year for me where I didn’t think my heart could take much more (we had lost a ram in February tragically as well).
But some how we get through it, albeit with PTSD. I am nervous for this year’s lambing due to what happened last year. We have a better nutritional program and a well armed lambing/sheep kit in hopes we can handle what ever comes next.
Kim Goodling
Thank you for sharing your stories. It’s always heart wrenching to lose a lamb but your comments will help others save their own lambs.
Sarah
I am so sorry for your recent loss! I still haven’t figured out what to do about our creep area where we supplement feed lambs on pasture when the grass goes dormant in the summer (not a problem for you out East!); it’s a series of basically high-end hog panels with a creep gate staked out in the field, and we have had a couple of times when a lamb who is really too big has somehow squeezed in but can’t get out and panics and hits the panels so hard it pulls up the stakes. We found a big guy halfway through the gate, on the ground, with the panels half collapsed… luckily he was okay, but I don’t want to see that again. A friend who has a very small flock had a mobile hay feeder fall over on a newborn and kill it—it may have been tipped over by the big sheep who were stirred up because of the lambing drama in their midst. And other friends recently lost a young lamb who managed to get stuck in their salt feeder. There’s so much random bad luck out there even when you think you’ve taken every precaution. 🙁
Kim Goodling
Thanks for sharing this Sarah. I am thinking about your on pasture creep feed. Could you instead use heavy weight livestock panels with your creep gate and not the hog panels? We have fashioned a creep system like this before that seemed to work. My only other suggestions would be to put the creep in an adjoining pasture paddock. Once a day, go out and let the sheep into the adjoining area so the lambs can get in the creep while you are there watching. Give them enough time to eat and then put them back into their other field. My border collie loves to help me do this kind of thing. Just a couple thoughts to ponder.
Ellis from Finland
I had a group of rams on a field and they had self made shadow, like very well stretched tarp. Somehow, I still wondering how, one of them had maybe eaten the tarp, so there was a small hole, ram had put his head through and twisted around and around, trying to get his head out,and get rid of it, I think. I found him dead. It is unbelievable how quick they get themselves in trouble and how quick they could die. I’m sorry for your loss. ♥️
Kim Goodling
Thank you for sharing Ellis! Yes, once they get into a predicament, they panic and can make the situation even worse!
Julie (Leatherwood Creek Farm)
We lost an older lamb (8 months) when a round bale collapsed on him. We have since learned to put the bales on end to prevent collapse and haven’t had any problems since. You’ve laid out excellent points in this post that both new and experienced shepherds can learn from.
Kendra Jaeger
We lost an angora goat kid recently, which I feel absolutely terrible about still. The guilt is so hard to overcome. She was one of two we were expecting in our small herd. My first doe to kid was very obvious and showed all the signs beforehand (udders bagged up, swollen vulva, etc) and I knew in the morning she was acting strange and would likely kid that day. So I checked on her every couple hours. She successfully kidded her doeling in the afternoon, and I was able to help dry her off and get her set up with a heat lamp and pad in their own pen. We are in Wisconsin and this was in February so it was quite cold at the time. That afternoon the temp was around 30F. My other doe however, did not show the same signs before labor and kidded a week later in the middle of the night when it was roughly 5F. I found her doeling the next morning frozen solid. It still brings tears to my eyes thinking about it. If I could go back and change things, I would have set her mom up in her own pen each night with a heating lamp and pad on just in case, and put a baby monitor nearby to hopefully alert me.
Thank you for sharing these tips and your story. It helps with the guilt to know there are others that have lost lambs/kids and that not everyone else or everything else is always perfect.
thecrazysheeplady
I had an older (10 month old) lamb chew on a medium/large hardware store type carabiner attached to a sun shield tarp and it somehow pierced her cheek about 3/4″ past the corner of her mouth. All the way through. Closed back on itself. I found her standing like that in the early morning and she’d most likely been standing there for several hours (!). My fisherman husband was able to remove the “hook” and our vet came out probably mostly out of curiosity of how on earth that happened. She’s okay, but I’m still not over it.
Speaking of not being over lamb trauma, I’ll take this opportunity to once again spread the word to not use Resflor on young lambs or calves under 3 weeks as there is a risk of fatal reaction, not anaphylaxis, but central nervous system (I think I’m remembering that correctly) that can’t be reversed.
Kim Goodling
Thank you for sharing. Oh wow! I never would have imagined a carabiner would be a problem.
Carrie
Not a situation where I lost a lamb, but I very easily could have if I wasn’t vigilant. I had a lamb cut her bottom lip from chewing on the end of a zip tie I’d used to secure something, but hadn’t bothered to snip the end off. It got infected and I noticed her lip swelling and got her some antibiotics, and she made a full recovery, thank goodness. Now I am always vigilant about trimming zip ties if I have to use them, and I avoid them for the most part. Lambs truly will chew everything.
Kim Goodling
Oh good to know!! We just used some zip ties today. We made sure to clip every one!