Lambing Round Table with Brian Reilly, Mike Stitzlein & Nicole Allen

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Championdrive Podcast | Lambing Round Table with Brian Riley, Mike Stitzline & Nicole Allen

Introduction

In the November 28, 2024 episode of The Championdrive Podcast, hosted by Kaitlyn Sister Urban and Steva Robinson, listeners are treated to an in-depth Lambing Round Table discussion featuring industry experts Brian Riley from Wisconsin, Mike Stitzline from Ohio, and Nicole Allen from Oklahoma and Iowa. Building on the success of their previous management roundtable, this episode delves into the nuances of lambing, offering valuable insights for both seasoned breeders and those new to the industry.

Pre-Lambing Management

The discussion begins with an overview of pre-lambing feeding strategies. Brian Riley shares his approach to feeding ewes based on yearly variations in pasture quality:

“We’ll start them on a grain mix of corn and soy hulls about a month before they’re due. It’s simple and effective.” – Brian Riley [06:12]

Kaitlyn echoes a similar strategy, emphasizing the importance of sorting ewes by body condition to ensure optimal nutrition:

“We sort them into groups based on body condition and adjust their feed accordingly to maintain a good body condition score.” – Kaitlyn Sister Urban [08:18]

Nicole Allen adds regional nuances, highlighting differences between Oklahoma and Iowa:

“In Oklahoma, we use a pelletized feed, whereas in Iowa, my parents grind and mix their own feed, tailoring it to their specific needs.” – Nicole Allen [10:07]

Feeding During and After Lambing

Post-lambing feeding practices are critical for ewe health and lamb growth. Nicole outlines a gradual increase in feed:

“After lambing, we start with a quarter to half a pound of pelleted feed for about 24 to 48 hours, then increase to a pound per ewe per feeding.” – Nicole Allen [22:28]

Brian emphasizes the role of genetics in lamb size and feeding intensity:

“Genetics primarily determine lamb size, but we ensure ewe lambs receive more grain to support their growth.” – Brian Riley [14:59]

Mike adds practical tips for maintaining gut health during feed transitions:

“We provide baking soda and lime to help manage gut acidity when we increase grain intake.” – Mike Stitzline [26:47]

Barn Management

Maintaining clean and well-ventilated barns is essential for preventing respiratory issues like barn cough. The panel discusses various barn setups and cleaning routines:

“We clean our barns every three weeks and use an advanced ventilation system with temperature sensors to ensure fresh air circulation.” – Brian Riley [32:46]

Nicole contrasts this with southern practices, where weather allows more frequent cleaning:

“In Oklahoma, we can clean our barns more often due to milder winters, which helps keep ammonia levels down.” – Nicole Allen [31:02]

For smaller breeders without sophisticated systems, Brian advises:

“Keep barns dry and use cross ventilation by opening doors on opposite ends when temperatures permit.” – Brian Riley [38:24]

Grafting Lambs

Grafting is a technique used to ensure all lambs receive adequate care, especially when dealing with multiple births or bottle lambs. Nicole shares her method:

“I clean the older lamb thoroughly, remove all odors, and use baking soda and warm salt water to encourage the ewe to accept the new lamb.” – Nicole Allen [94:22]

Brian emphasizes patience and proper handling:

“Stay patient and use snares or twine to support the lamb’s head, ensuring the ewe can pull the lamb without injury.” – Brian Riley [69:18]

Handling Bottle Lambs

When grafting isn't successful, breeders must manage bottle lambs effectively. Mike discusses his approach:

“We supplement bottle lambs manually rather than using milk machines, focusing on fostering the ewe’s natural feeding behaviors.” – Mike Stitzline [103:27]

Brian shares his experience with milk machines and their challenges:

“Our milk machine babies thrive initially but struggle post-weaning, prompting us to consider a more manual supplementation approach.” – Brian Riley [104:05]

Tagging and Identification

Effective tagging systems are vital for tracking and managing lambs. The panel outlines their tagging protocols:

“We use double-tagging with flock tags and Scrapie tags, color-coded by sire, and record all data in Farmworks software.” – Brian Riley [88:42]

Kaitlyn emphasizes color-coding for easy identification:

“Each sire has a specific color, and we maintain separate number series to prevent overlap, simplifying lamb identification.” – Kaitlyn Sister Urban [90:30]

Dealing with Barn Cough

Barn cough remains a persistent issue, linked to poor air quality and high humidity. The experts offer their strategies:

“Maintaining excellent ventilation and keeping barns dry are the best defenses against barn cough.” – Brian Riley [80:14]

Nicole discusses treatment options:

“For raspy lambs, we use dexamethasone and sulfa antibiotics, focusing on early detection and maintaining airflow to prevent exacerbation.” – Nicole Allen [77:06]

Advice for New Lambing Breeders

Towards the end of the episode, the guests share their top advice for newcomers:

“Have a support network of experienced breeders and practice patience. Keeping the ewes dry and well-fed is fundamental.” – Brian Riley [109:19]

“Learn to listen to the ewes and understand their behaviors. Utilizing cameras can help monitor lambing without constant presence.” – Kaitlyn Sister Urban [51:24]

Lambing Challenges and Experiences

The conversation also touches on memorable lambing incidents, offering both cautionary tales and lighter moments:

“One of the craziest lambs I’ve seen had two heads and four legs, making it incredibly challenging to deliver.” – Kaitlyn Sister Urban [114:09]

“We once had a Cyclops lamb that became a bit of a farm legend before we had to humanely manage its condition.” – Mike Stitzline [116:12]

Conclusion

The episode wraps up with a reiteration of the importance of community, patience, and adaptability in successful lambing management. The hosts thank their guests for their invaluable contributions and encourage listeners to reach out with further questions.

“Trial and error is how you learn, and having a group of supportive breeders makes all the difference.” – Mike Stitzline [116:55]

Listeners are left with a wealth of practical knowledge and strategies to enhance their lambing practices, ensuring healthier ewes and thriving lambs.

Notable Quotes:

• Brian Riley [06:12]: “We’ll start them on a grain mix of corn and soy hulls about a month before they’re due. It’s simple and effective.”
• Nicole Allen [22:28]: “After lambing, we start with a quarter to half a pound of pelleted feed for about 24 to 48 hours, then increase to a pound per ewe per feeding.”
• Mike Stitzline [26:47]: “We provide baking soda and lime to help manage gut acidity when we increase grain intake.”
• Brian Riley [32:46]: “We clean our barns every three weeks and use an advanced ventilation system with temperature sensors to ensure fresh air circulation.”
• Brian Riley [38:24]: “Keep barns dry and use cross ventilation by opening doors on opposite ends when temperatures permit.”
• Nicole Allen [94:22]: “I clean the older lamb thoroughly, remove all odors, and use baking soda and warm salt water to encourage the ewe to accept the new lamb.”
• Brian Riley [69:18]: “Stay patient and use snares or twine to support the lamb’s head, ensuring the ewe can pull the lamb without injury.”
• Brian Riley [80:14]: “Maintaining excellent ventilation and keeping barns dry are the best defenses against barn cough.”
• Brian Riley [109:19]: “Have a support network of experienced breeders and practice patience. Keeping the ewes dry and well-fed is fundamental.”

This comprehensive roundtable provides actionable advice and shares real-world experiences, making it an essential listen for anyone involved in the show lamb industry.

Transcript

[Kaitlyn Sister Urban]

Now entering the ring, another episode of.

[Steva Robinson]

The Champion Drive podcast presented by Novel.

[Kaitlyn Sister Urban]

Designs with your hosts, Kaitlyn, Sister Urban and Steva Robinson.

[Steva Robinson]

Well, we are back with one of the episodes that I'm really excited for. We're doing a lambing roundtable podcast this week, and if you guys missed it. In season one, we did a management roundtable podcast and it went over really well. The feedback we got on it was really good. A lot of people would send us pictures of the notes they took from it. And if you guys like that one, I think you're really gonna like this one. Sister And I just got done recording. Who did we have on this one?

[Nicole Allen]

We had Mike Stitzline from Ohio, Brian Riley from Wisconsin, and then Nicole Allen, which she's was originally from Iowa with Middlesworth Clublands, but now she's in Oklahoma with Alan Newcomb show Lambs. And I really, I really liked it. I. I'll be honest, lambing time is not my favorite time of the year. I'm a big, like, schedule person, so it really throws off my schedule. So I really do not like that. But I'm very thankful to get to work alongside with Nicole and just personally, she is probably the best to learn from when it comes to lambing. So just getting to learn on the podcast with her and Mike and Brian was. Was really eye opening to me. And yeah, I thought it was really good. I really enjoyed it. I thought they had a lot of intake, and I thought they had a lot of intake. You know, they went in depth on stuff, but they also like, almost dumbed it down or said like, this is what you have to have. Like, you don't have to have cameras, you don't have to have all these other things. Like, this is basically the basic necessities that you do need. And I think that was good because, you know, a lot of our listeners are people that are. That are learning or just starting out and stuff and aren't as, I would say, that aren't as experienced as others. So I think that was really good. I thought they did a really good job. And yeah, I had a lot of fun with it. It was long, but I think it was worth it.

[Steva Robinson]

Yeah. And I mean, like, Brian Riley, Obviously, he lives 20 minutes from me and he's a very good dairy nutritionist. Like, I knew immediately when we were going to have this lambing podcast, like, I kind of asked. We asked several people in the industry, like, who do you think we should have on? And Brian's name came up, and immediately that was someone that I was like, oh, he'd be great. Like, I still have things that I implement in my flock that I learned from him when I was just starting out, when I was in high school. So it was really interesting. You know, he. He's from Wisconsin, so he has, you know, a little bit different climate than what, like, Nicole has. And Nicole has a really interesting background because she grew up in Iowa, and so she knows the differences of what they do in Iowa versus what they do in Oklahoma. So we thought that would be good for our viewers. And for those of you that don't know, like, Nicole pretty much runs the lambing barn at Allen Newcomb and is really good at it, and her sister Jaylene is very good at it at Middlesworth. And those girls have a ton of experience. And Nicole is one of the people that I call. In the podcast, we talk about, like, having a group of people you can call when you have problems. And Nicole's one of the first people I always call. She always has, you know, some sort of an answer or solution. And so I was surprised we were able to get her on. I thought I'd have to use some peer pressure to get her on, but you work your magic, sister. And then Mike sits line was awesome. I learned a ton. I think Nicole learned some stuff. Brian was really complimentary. Like, he. He does a really good job of explaining things, and you're gonna want to get your notebook out for when he talks about grafting sheep. If you guys could have seen the look on his face when the word grafting got brought up, I had no idea he was, like, the pro at it. And his face just lit up when, like, some of us have our cameras on when we record. And his face lit up about it, and I can immediately see why, because he's really passionate about it, he's really good at it, and he has a lot of different techniques for it. So there's a ton of stuff to learn. How about we just go ahead and get right into it? I mean, it's a pretty long episode, but I think every part of it's really valuable. Hey, all, we're back for our second roundtable discussion, and this time, we're talking about landing season. It's right around the corner, so we thought it'd be a great time to get started. I'm Steva Robinson, and sister's here with me. But then we've got three awesome guests on here tonight. We have Brian Riley from Impact Camps, Mike Stitzline from Stitzline Club Lands, and Nicole Allen from Allen Show Lands and Middlesworth Clublands. So thanks for being on everyone. Do you want to go around and just kind of introduce yourself and tell everyone kind of a little bit about your operation and your background and your experience?

[Brian Riley]

I'm Brian riley. My wife J.C. and I, along with my son who works with us full time run about 300, 350 use depending on the year. All club lamb hamp use in Shelsbury, Wisconsin.

[Kaitlyn Sister Urban]

I'm Mike Stitzline, Ashland, Ohio. We were on about 250 to 300 depending on how many we breed each year. And yeah, been doing it for a long time just like Brian.

[Mike Stitzline]

Hi all. My name is Nicole Allen. I'm part owners of the Allen Newcomb Show Lambs and Treadmills. I grew up in Fremont, Iowa with my parents Perry and Laurie Middlesworth. So I grew up with the Middlesworth Club Lambs and then moved to Elk City when I married Ty for the Allanukum we run around 350matures and we actually kept about 100 lambs this past year. Call us crazy. So we're up to about 450 head in Elk City.

[Steva Robinson]

One thing we thought that was really neat is we thought we covered kind of like a different regions. You know, Mike's in Ohio, Brian's in Wisconsin. Nicole has experience in Oklahoma and Iowa. And so I think that some of our answers will probably vary. Some just based off like the weather conditions and such that vary. Get right into it and let's start talking about like before lambing, what do you feed your ewes, when do you intake or increase their intake?

[Brian Riley]

So depending on the year we'll, we'll actually after breeding we'll leave them on pasture as long as we can. So if, you know, if we have good grass growing season, they could be out there till, you know, early mid November. We've had them out there as late as December 1st before we started lambing a little bit earlier the last couple years. So we're lambing December 1st and we don't have out on pasture that long. But about a month before they would be due is when we would start them on a grain mix which ours is very simple and it's essentially just a mix of corn and soy hulls is what it is. Real simple. We have an ionophore in there that helps us with some abortion issues there. We'll feed one pound of that a month before, sometimes five weeks before. We really don't deviate from that much. At that same time we'll start them on grass, hay, sometimes an alfalfa. Grass mix is what we start them on. They would have that free choice. We actually can process that hay with a TMR and we have all fence line feeding outside. It would change once. Once we start lambing, but that's what we do four to five weeks prior to.

[Kaitlyn Sister Urban]

Yeah, I would this Mike. I would say we're. We're kind of similar in that situation on. On starting. You know, depending on the condition of the used we'll bring in. I kind of sort them into to groups. I guess I would have them as. As you know we get them bred up and. And then you sort them out into groups. As far as body condition like my young use that that Lambda's U lambs may be a little thinner so a lot of those will get sorted into one set and. And may get fed a little better hay quality. Like Brian was saying. Depending on grass alfalfa mix or if it's old used that are good condition. We'll feed them just the first cutting mostly grass hay and then we'll. Similar to what he's doing with the corn and. And soy hulls we'll use. We're. We're still old school. We do ear corn will pick the corn and grind the cob and all. So you got the fiber and the corn and it's very similar I would say to what he's doing and. And yeah, start them 30 days or a little further out on these that are thinner if we're trying to put some weight on them, you know, before they land. Because I like to have them in a. In a decent body condition score to. To get them to have more ability to milk something off when they do have their babies. So. So yeah, very similar.

[Steva Robinson]

What about you, Nicole?

[Mike Stitzline]

Yeah, this is Nicole. We are very similar to what Mike said as far as grouping our ewes off of body condition. We tend to always have about three or four pastures going of different youth with body types. We normally keep them out to pasture on grass until mid October, the first part of November. Then we start pouring a little bit of grain to them. Not a whole lot but just a little bit to get started. We actually feed a show right fundamental pellet on our use. And then I would say at about 30 days prior to lambing we go ahead and start pushing those that need their potty condition up, pushing those to more of the fundamental pellet and go from there and add more alfalfa into their mix.

[Steva Robinson]

Does anything vary what you guys do in Elk City versus what you guys do at your parents in Iowa?

[Mike Stitzline]

Absolutely. We Like I said, we show, we feed a show. Right. Fundamental Pellet in Elk City in Iowa, obviously my parents are row crop farmers so they actually grind and mix their own feed. They do a corn mixture and add in a protein pellet as well. So that's kind of a big, big change. We always fed out of a bulk bin whenever we're in Iowa and now we go through many bags a day in Elk City.

[Steva Robinson]

What are your guys thoughts on increasing feed too early or perhaps waiting too late to increase feed? What do you think people need to be concerned about there? Mike, do you want to take that?

[Kaitlyn Sister Urban]

I mean there's always been a concern I guess as to the size of a lamb when they're coming out, if you fed them too hard. I actually don't know honestly if I've noticed a tremendous difference when we're. Because, because like I said my young use that are flammed, you know as you lambs will be thinner and so we'll push those pretty hard. I don't know if I notice a huge difference in the lamb size as much I over all the years of lamb and I think it's still for me boiled down to, I mean there's certain bucks that I would get that would throw bigger lambs and honestly if you get twins you're probably not of a concern out of most any buck. Right. So it has a lot to do with multiples. And of course the earlier we breed, the less multiples we get because it's just not what mother nature intended for most of these blackface sheep to be lamb in this, this far out of season. So I see more singles because we're starting earlier and earlier with the early set and then we get into the middle part, you get more, you know, you start getting more multiples of course, late, late. You, if you have some broodies lamb late, you'll get more, more twins and triplets out of those probably. But I guess that's always been a concern like that. We've talked about that with Major and I've, I've actually talked with cattle guys and they, you know a lot of studies read up on some studies on that birth size really has as much to do with the genetics of it I think as it does for at least what I've noticed on the bucks we've used over all the years more genetically because I would get some bucks just throw monsters, you know and then the next buck you get lots of singles out of them. And I will say lambing this early in the year, I think my birth Size in these early falls, they're. It's not even a concern with this. Most of the singles, you hardly ever get one that's as big. I think it's when probably because those use have been on feed longer too, because a lot of times you don't get to sort out by age. I do it mostly by condition. So some of those use have been on feed longer and so maybe that does have something to do with the ones lambing a little later in the season. So that would be my, my biggest concern, I guess, is what people would be afraid of feeding too much to get big lambs or too early, you.

[Steva Robinson]

Know, Brian or Nicole. Did you want to chime in at all on that?

[Brian Riley]

Sure. This is Brian, I guess, you know, to echo what Mike said there, I think genetics would determine the size of the lambs the most because we, we also would keep a large number of ewe lambs. So we'll keep about 100 ewe lambs a year and we try to breed all of those and we'll usually have about 80% of those Ewe lambs lamb. And the difference with those versus matures. On those matures, we'll feed them a, you know, that pound of that grain mix four to five weeks ahead of time. With our U lambs, we push those things pretty hard. You know, they're, they're getting fed two to two and a half pounds of grain. They, they get free choice hay all the time because we want to grow them as big as we can get them and it would be rare if we had lambing issues with those. And, you know, they're on that two, two and a half pounds of grain their entire, their entire life. And so that's not a month before it's, you know, whenever they're weaned and growing, we keep them on that the whole way through breeding season and we wouldn't have any more lambing issues with those than we would with our mature. So I think it's predominantly, you know, genetics. It's, it's the buck that's going to drive that more than anything.

[Mike Stitzline]

I was going to say on the opposite side of that. My biggest thing is going too late into it, making sure that your body condition of your ewes are spot on. Right. As your lambing time is crucial. I know that. I mean, we've all been part of it. Some of those ewes come in there a little bit thin and it's always a struggle to make sure that they're milking and producing exactly what you need to Be able to have a baby that is at a good weaning weight. So I think it's also just as crucial on the other end to be not, not be too late to feed them.

[Kaitlyn Sister Urban]

Yeah, yep, absolutely.

[Mike Stitzline]

Yeah.

[Nicole Allen]

And I know that Brian's mentioned several times that he feeds his roughage kind of year round. So what do you guys recommend for your roughage and do you feed alfalfa and if you do, do you test it?

[Mike Stitzline]

So this is Nicole again. We actually all of our ewes are out on grass a majority of the summer. Spring, summer we put them on grass round bales throughout the fall during lambing season. All of our ewes are always, always have free choice grass hay. And we also feed alfalfa and I always say the greener, the leafier, the finer, the better. So whenever they are, have babies at their side, we push the alfalfa to them like crazy prior to lambing. If their body condition scores are a little bit lower, we also push the alfalfa.

[Brian Riley]

This is Brian ours, Ours would be real similar to what Nicole said there. If they're not on pasture and they're still just gestating, it's grass, grass, hay, free choice. You know, we would sort them in groups too. So you know, depending on the, the group you use, some of them would get grass alfalfa. But then once, once they are on, once they have lambs or lactating, they would be on just straight alfalfa dry. We buy all our, all our hay from out west, which would be Nebraska, Kansas is where we would purchase it. We usually shoot for like a medium quality alfalfa. We want it real green, real dry, but it would be like 130 relative feed value. It gets up over 140. It's, it really has too much protein in it and they can't utilize all that protein. With our facilities, we're pure confinement in the winter months. So ours are locked indoors all the time. If we feed really good alfalfa, there's just too much ammonia that's produced, you know, so by dropping that down to just a, a real dry, good alfalfa, that's medium quality, or I'll call it medium quality, you still get really good intakes without, without all that extra protein and ammonia that's produced or excreted off because of that. So that would be a little bit of a difference.

[Steva Robinson]

Plus you'd probably make all your customers mad at your real. At your day job.

[Brian Riley]

Exactly.

[Steva Robinson]

For those of you that don't know, Brian's a really well respected Dairy nutritionist in Wisconsin. And so I've thought for sure when we asked the alfalfa protein level question that we were definitely going to get some dairy nutrition thrown our way.

[Kaitlyn Sister Urban]

Yeah, this is Mike. Yeah, I, I would say we are very similar to Brian in, in the fact that of course the only difference I, we make all of our own hay. So you're kind of stuck with what you got. Right? So. And we do rotational crops too. We rotate through corn and beans and then back to hay. And, and so we're doing this rotation of crops every year on our ground. And so some, some of those seedings begin to give out after a certain, certain amount of time. So they may be not as good. I try to keep hay cutting separate from newer seedings and try to manipulate the protein levels that way, but I'm good with a, a grassy alfalfa mix kind of like Brian's talking, maybe it doesn't have to be rocket fuel. And that extra fiber, I think keeps those use happier. And we, again, same situation. We're sort of, we're almost full confinement. I try to open up the barns as much as I can, but you still build up a lot of, of ammonia from the urine. If you don't, if you, if we're feeding too high of a, of a protein. And I feel like that, you know, you get, you keep their guts a little more settled. If they have a little more roughage, they don't, you know, struggle to, to keep up with the lambs. I think they're happier and fuller. So that's. Yeah, we're very similar on that roughage thing, but we do grow up our own corn and hay. And so, yeah, it kind of depends on our situation on how the year was. Like this year we've been extremely dry, so the quality is actually really high. Now. It won't be as much fiber to it just because it was so spine and it was short when we cut it. And we made, we got to make more cuttings than we would ever normally make in a normal year because it was so dry. But it was awfully short. We're still going to struggle to try to have enough just volume of hay to feed. But I think we've. With the extra cuttings, we, we will have enough this year. But it really, in our situation, it kind of comes with what we've got. Right. So we're, we're, you know, making our own crops, making our own feed. You just have to. And we do a lot of. And when I've gotten into doing a Lot. A lot of haylage big bales and individually wrapped big square bales is what I found over all the years we tried round bales, we tried them in a tube. We've tried different ways of doing that halage, but really, really have gotten onto the big squares, making them small enough so they're individually wrapped. We can carry them around to whichever barn we want them, set them down, cut them open, move the hay around and it really works nice. And I have not. The big thing you worry about with haylage courses is listeria. And we just haven't had that issue with the big bale, the big square bales because they're so tightly packed and you get as all the air out that you can. And so with them being individually wrapped like that too, if you do get one with a hole and you can throw that bale away, it doesn't destroy the whole tube like when, if you've tubed tube wrapped them. So we've really done that now this year it was so dry we didn't have to wrap it. So it kind of comes and goes how we make it and whatever's most convenient at the time and so just kind of have to play with it a little bit with, with making your own feed.

[Steva Robinson]

So let's talk now about. So we've fed our ewes, they've lambed. As soon as they lamb. What do you do in terms of feeding them like once they're in the jugs, like some people wait, some people feed them right away. Kind of run us through what you guys each do. Grain wise grain and haywise.

[Mike Stitzline]

This is Nicole. So when we put them in the jug at first, we do not let them eat feed for about the first four to six hours. From there it's about a quarter can quarter to a half of a pound of our pelleted show Rite Fundamental is what we use. We do that for about 24 to 48 hours. We just feel like their milk, they come to their milk better not, they're not coming all at once. Seems to help with our mastitis issues. Once they're about 48 hours, then we'll start up and to about a pound of feed per ewe per feeding.

[Brian Riley]

This is Brian. So we would jug them likewise we would hold off feeding them for, for a little while and you know, our wise probably would be what Nicole said. But it's really, you know, after that lamb is up and nursing and then we would just give them hay for the first 24 to 48 hours. It would just be hay straight Alfalfa hay is what they would get. Really aren't getting any grain at that point until 48 hours. Depending on the ewe and the amount of milk she's producing, we might not give her any. We would all of our jugs we would put. We have all these ear tags and we take a zip tie and we would zip tie on. On the lambing jugs if they get grain, not get grain. So it's. It's a really easy visual as you're walking down through because now with the amount of embryo transfer stuff we do and the AI we do, we could have a hundred views in a jug at a time. That would be, you know, anywhere from just born to three, four days old and, and being sleep deprived and, and grumpy. It's easy just to have it wrote on an ear tag on the panel instead of asking somebody that is looking at 20 others. And so it's just an easy visual. So no grain right away, just hay. And then we'd kind of stair step that grain up.

[Kaitlyn Sister Urban]

Yeah, this is Mike. Yeah ours is similar. I, I do similar to Brian. I'm more probably more rough hay even than what you're. Brian's talking. Ours don't get any good hay until we get them out of the jug for I mean depending on how hard they're pushing. Right. Like there's only so many jugs. Some don't get to spend as much time. The singles get a little less time than maybe. Maybe the twins. Or if you had a set of triplets that's behind and you're trying to graft. I may hold those up until I get something to draft to or you know there's a lot of different scenarios that that but we generally use just first cutting hay especially in a jug for the first couple days. And they, they do really good. They a lot of times those use. I feel like their gut gets off the first licking the lamb fake. If they eat the afterbirth they can really get their gut messed up. And so the rough first cutting seems to keep them going really good with that. And another thing we do when I get them out of the jug in the and and we put them into small groups and start grouping them up. We'll keep a lot of baking soda out. Those use tend to eat what they want kind of. I know they do it a lot with the dairies and we kind of got onto that and and just keep it free choice. So if their gut is off they will eat that helps lower the acid level in their gut and we seem to keep them on, you know, feed. Especially when you start to increase your grain and changing hay on them, it's a big change for their stomach, you know, to get back going on all that, you know, if they're not used to that good a roughage. And so I feel like the soda really seems to help. That's one thing we've just gotten onto and just really keep it out all the time. So especially when you start pushing on use, I feel like their stomach can get acidic from the extra grain.

[Mike Stitzline]

That was a good point that Mike brought up about the baking soda. We actually put out. We put out, sometimes put out baking soda, and we also put out a lime, like your barn lime. We actually put that in a feeder as well, and that tends to help their guts as well. We found.

[Steva Robinson]

Brian, do you still feed gluten?

[Brian Riley]

We do on and off. It kind of depending on, depending on the quality of hay and depending on the price of gluten, corn or soy hulls, those would be the things we kind of would rotate through. So if we have marginal or lower quality hay, we would blend gluten feed in our grain mix instead of soy hulls. If we have, if we can purchase the type of hay that I want, then we, we stick with the soy hulls. But if it, if it's a lower, like I say, a low quality alfalfa, we will feed gluten feed. That's a, that's a great byproduct. Those are both great byproducts and they're usually very, very inexpensive, at least in the Midwest. And so they're, they're, they're great, great to feed, but it all depends on the type of hay we get.

[Mike Stitzline]

Yeah.

[Nicole Allen]

Let's go into our facility questions. And I know Mike brought up earlier that sometimes he has to leave his barn, like enclosed a lot more. So how often do you guys clean your barn? I know that some breeders don't clean their barns and some just add, you know, hay or whatever every single day. So what's your intake on that?

[Kaitlyn Sister Urban]

This is Mike. Yeah. In our situation, we're utilizing an old, an old bank barn to lamb in, which is nice because temperature helps with the bank side. It keeps it warmer when it gets super cold. But it does make it harder to get in there and clean out. So like individual jugs. We're not doing it every time I u lambs. I wish I could. If it's, if it would be possible we could, but we, we try to run like we'll get a group of Views coming in a big group and then they'll get those all through. And then once I start getting those jugs emptied out into, you know, we start them out in say like a group of 10 and then they bump up into groups of like 20, and we get up to about I think 25, 26 using in a group then. But we'll start them out in a smaller group and then just build up. So when I start getting those jugs emptied out, then I'll try to. To clean it out in between my biggest groups. But yeah, it's not as it's not ideal. You know, you'd like to keep it cleaner out more often, depending on the weather and when you can clean it out, because we'll take it out and I don't have a storage system, so we'll actually spread it. That's probably going to happen at some point though, is to have a storage system would be a nice to be able to get it out when you need to more. And it really helps keep the ammonia down. The one barn we have a dirt floor or like, you know, we put gravel down or stone, a mixed stone that was a hard pack, but it really helps with the moisture. Where the other old barn, the bank barn, was already concrete when I started using it, so wasn't much choice in there. And. And I feel like the concrete definitely builds up and more moisture. So we did put in air tubes. They're a positive pressure. So we'll bring in outside air through the tube. It pushes it out the holes down along the tube. So it's. The idea is to circulate that air in that area to push out the old air. Supposed to clean, you know, replenish the air every 15 minutes or four times an hour. And so it's. It just keeps rotating the old air out. We try to run those quite a bit in the lower part of the buying barn because there just isn't enough airflow in there to keep the air as fresh as you would like. So that's what we went to. To try to do better with the airflow.

[Mike Stitzline]

This is Nicole. I would say being from the south, our ability to clean barns is probably more often just due to the weather. I know growing up in Iowa, my parents normally, whenever they lay them out, a flush group, most of the time they lam out the actual recips in the same pens that they're going to be put together in groups and those ewes are going to get weaned and most of the time those lambs will stay in there. After the ewes are moved out and then once it becomes warm enough, then they'll go ahead and clean those barns. So it's just not as often just due to the weather. I mean the snow and everything else up north it doesn't allow it to. Now in the south we have maybe snow two times a year, knock on wood. So we can clean our barns quite a bit more often. I know our jugs, we have a jug room. We try and clean them out every couple use. However, like I think Mike or Brian said before, whenever you have a flush and all of them are 100 plus head going through, it's not as easy, it's not as ideal, but that's what we try to do in our barns. What we normally do is our ewes go from the jugs and our barn was an old horse stall barn. So we're kind of limited on our space in the pen. So we can only get about 10 to 12 ewes per pen. So when they come from the jug we mix them into small groups and have 10 to 12. And most of the time whenever they're in those pens we can go about a month and then we try and clean out within that month.

[Brian Riley]

This is Brian. So my wife, my son and I all have a little bit of ocd. So we. Every jug gets cleaned out between every you when we lay them. We've been really fortunate that Steve and I wouldn't live that far away from each other. We have a college that's fairly close and we've been able to recruit college kids to work for us. We've been pretty fortunate with high school kids too over the years to work for us. So I haven't cleaned a jug in a long, long time. But I'll pay good kids to clean them. And so they do all get cleaned out between every u. And then our barns, the way our barns are configured, we can put about 18 to 20 ewes in a pen. With lambs, we're able to push all those using lambs into the creep pens. They're big enough that we can clean those other pens out. And the way our gates are configured, we would have like 11 pens. We can, we'll clean those pens out every three weeks. We do have a manure storage area that's a concrete area that we can pile manure. And like I say, those get done every three weeks. My wife puts it on a calendar. Calvin's religious about getting them cleaned out. We can get those pens re bedded, let the use the lamps back in there and then Our. Our treat pens, the gates swing open, and then those can all be cleaned out. So it's. The configuration allows us to do that fairly easy. So it's every three weeks here. But with our, with our confinement and the amount of straw that we use, we kind of need to clean it out that often.

[Nicole Allen]

Yeah. And I think that, you know, Mike hit on a good point earlier about how important air quality is. So, Brian and Nicole, what do you guys do differently to kind of improve your air quality? I know Mike already talked about what he does.

[Brian Riley]

Yeah. So this is Brian again. We would have. Similar to Mike, we would have an air tube. We. We would have a really a air ventilation system. So we have. We have inlets in all of our barn. Some of them are manual inlets. So when the exhaust fans turn on the inlets just because of the air pressure, they'll open up to let. To let new air in. Those are the most simple, most cost effective to do. Exhaust fans and just manual inlets. Our big main barn, that would have seven pens in it, that has really too fancy of an air system. It works great, but it's kind of overkill that that has temperature sensors in the roof that would have the. There'd be a variable speed motor on the air tube. So depending on the temperature inside, it would run faster or slower, depending on what that temperature is inside. And then the exhaust fans would start at certain. They would be on a timer at certain temperatures to run on and off. If it's really cold out, they'd run for five seconds, every 15 seconds, and then they shut off where if it gets up to 50 degrees, all three of the exhaust fans would be on. And then all of our inlets throughout the barn would automatically open up to like 6 inches. It's way too fancy of a system, but it works really good for fresh air. And so all of our Barns, there'd be 1, 2, 3, 4 barns that we would have using lambs, and those would all have exhaust fans and inlets with the big main one having a tube. So we're big on fresh air.

[Mike Stitzline]

Our barns in the south, actually, we have them with garage doors opening on every side of the building. And in western Oklahoma, the wind is always blowing, but you never know which direction. So we're real fortunate to be able to have those doors on every side and be. Most of the time we're warming up, that we're able to open those up during the day and let that fresh air in. I know in the north, that's not even a possible thinking Point. But that's one thing that we can do in the south. Also we have doors on every single one of our horse stall pens. So in about 11 o'clock noon we normally can open those up and they all are facing the east. And most of the time the ewes and the babies can go out into the fresh air until it's chore time at 4, 4:30 in the afternoon. So we're, we're real blessed to have nice weather.

[Steva Robinson]

What about for a lot of feedback I get from some of the people we talk to that listen to the podcast are smaller breeders that have, you know, 20, 30, 40 use and so they obviously aren't going to have like the air tube system that Mike and Brian have. What is your advice for them on, you know, like a lot of them have, you know, maybe some of them have built new barns but, or maybe don't have an airflow system in there or their older repurposed barns. Like what's your tips for them? Kind of like is it better to keep it closed up? Is it better to keep it opened up and dry? Or I guess for someone with a setup like that. What would you guys suggest?

[Brian Riley]

This is Brian. I'll take a stab at that Mike, and then you can, because I've had old, older facilities too and number one is keep them dry. So dryer versus temperature being drier would, would trump temperature. So, so and the reason I say that is because then I would cross vent those barns. I mean I'd, I'd have air moving through there, not necessarily on top of the sheep, but maybe over the sheep. So if you could block the air from being right on the sheep to where it could go over. So I would have a door open on each end of that barn. You know, as long as it's not sub zero out, you know, less than 20 degrees and wind is blowing. But if it's anywhere above 25 degrees, I'd open a door on each end of those barns and I'd have a piece of plywood, a four foot piece of plywood on the bottom part of each of those doors and just let the air flow over the top of them, keep them dry in that fresh air. It, it will do a lot better than having it all closed up and warm. People tease us all the time because our, our sheep aren't tough and they aren't outside and, and all that and our facilities are built probably more for us. My wife and I being not liking the cold weather. So the sheep can handle it, we can't handle It.

[Kaitlyn Sister Urban]

Yeah, that's. I. I would say I echo. What Brian's saying is good airflow is definitely key to keeping them healthy. There's. I mean, most of the time, I think all of us realize, like, these sheep will take some cold temperatures once they get to a certain stage. Babies, yeah, newborn babies, you can't let them get chilled. But once they get gone, those babies can take some pretty cool temperatures as long as there's not a. Like a straight airflow right across of them. Like Brian said, they are much better off. When we start grouping them up, they're in a pole barn. We keep the doors open as much as we can unless there's snow blowing in them. Even if it's super cold out, they like, you know, if they can get to the doors where there's sun coming in, they'll stand in the sun. They really like that. And Even if it's 20 degrees out, that doesn't feel too bad to them. If you've got, you know, good fresh air and they've got some bedding that's got some, you know, up here, we bed pretty good. And so, yeah, once they get in, they dig into that bedding, they. They like it. They don't seem to bother them too much, and they keep right on going. And they're much, much healthier to their lungs. You know, that if the air is. Is much fresher. So, yeah, it's definitely. And it's tough, I know, depending on the situation. And each barn is different and. But direct airflow over them, I mean, on them is not good if you can get it to go, like Brian said, over top of them and keep that from going out the top. Like we have our. The one barn we built, we build it directly to have an airflow going out the top of the barn. So the. The. The top is overlapped where it hasn't bent out the top all the time. Now, we do have a curtain that I can close if it starts getting snow out of the. The northeast, which is where we get our worst storms. So we had to put a curtain on there to make sure we didn't get snow coming back in. But it definitely helps with that barn. And those babies seem to be pretty healthy and it can get pretty cold, but they, they. They stand quite a bit of it once they get some size and get a little flesh on them. So we're nice. It's nice to have the older bank barn where they can get going. And then we move them to that. That pole barn where, you know, there really isn't much heat in there, but if you can keep the airflow from going across them, but still deep fresh air, they're. They're pretty good.

[Mike Stitzline]

Yeah.

[Nicole Allen]

And kind of going off of what Mike said, he mentioned that he beds pins pretty often, and he mentioned kind of a little bit how important how bedding is to the baby. So what do you guys use to bed pins? And how often do you bed your pins?

[Kaitlyn Sister Urban]

This is Mike. Yeah, we bed depending on the weather. Winter, when it's actually cooler, you can, you can get away with a little less bedding. But in the summer, spring is the worst. You know, February, March, we get into so much just damp weather, you know, cooler temperatures, but yet it's still kind of rainy, wet, damp. That's probably the worst time of the year. And you're bedding basically every day to keep them dry, which means you end up hauling more often if you can. But it's. We use straw in our situation, it's just what I've always used. Once in a while I've used stalks in the big, big pens where they use, you know, there's a big group of ewes. But we've just. Because we have access to straw here, that's what I've. I've used.

[Mike Stitzline]

I know in my parents in Iowa, my dad tends to put down stalks first just to get a good solid base in those group pens. And then from there, most of the time they use straw. In Oklahoma, Cooper has some allergies, so we don't get a used straw, which I would prefer the straw. But we actually bed with grass hay. And since it is grass hay, the ewes tend to eat a little faster. So we are always. We're bedding every morning is normally our routine.

[Brian Riley]

This is Brian. We would use all wheat straw and we would. When we have using jugs, those are bedded twice a day. So they get done morning and night. A lot of times it's with. If it's not us, it's college help or high school help. So that's just kind of the protocol, morning and night and they get bedded just a light, you know, layer. And why they're in the jugs. The other pension, it's pretty much every day because of how damp and humid we are. And I really preach keeping them dry. There's sometimes if the, if the weather's, you know, right, and it's not that humid out and cold, we'll get away with every other day. But pretty much it's. It's every day we tell them how many how many flakes to put per pan? You know, thin layer across the top every day with wheat straw.

[Kaitlyn Sister Urban]

Yeah.

[Nicole Allen]

And I know you know that we've kind of mentioned a little bit about jugs and then also bigger pens. So what size jugs do you guys use?

[Brian Riley]

Ours are cheap. We just cut panels and. But they would be four and a half by six foot is what the jugs are. And as we need them, we just keep wiring them together and putting them up. We, we don't have, we don't have fancy jugs. Never have. But that's the size. They seem to work pretty good for us.

[Kaitlyn Sister Urban]

Yeah, I would say ours are similar. I mean I've. I've had sets made up. I made some my own kind of. So they're all conglomeration of gates, but they're a five by five in general. Yeah, I, I feel like we've had some that were a little smaller at times and I'll try to. And some of those jugs are slight bit small, smaller. So I'll. I'll use those for use with a single. I feel like you just have less issue which, I mean if you get a U that lays on one you probably. She may, you may not want to keep her around anyway. But I feel like because I got enough sheep, I. Give me an excuse. Right, Give me an excuse to get rid of you. But yeah, five of fives worked really nice.

[Mike Stitzline]

Ours are four and a half by fives and then we do have a few jugs that are a little bit bigger for like our triplets or whatnot. Now when we lamb out we actually AI every mature you on our farm and then we actually have a flush that are going to be due at the exact same time this year. So what we normally do when that happens is we pretty much jug our entire lambing barn and we just put up panels and we go cutting panels and putting them up and it's, it's real simple, nothing real extravagant, but it.

[Nicole Allen]

Works well, if I remember right, I'm pretty sure Donnie had said on our last round table that he puts all of his ewes in their jugs before they lamb and then he kind of lambs them out like that. So do you guys pre jug or do you have them in a drop pen and then move them into a lambing jug?

[Mike Stitzline]

We, we actually use a drop pen. So we normally have about 20 to 25 head in a pin pen and we put cameras on them and we just put them into jugs after they've land.

[Kaitlyn Sister Urban]

Yeah, we do the same we. We use a drop pen. I just. I, I guess I. You could individual them, but until I figure out who's. Because some of those use. I You think they're going to lamb and then they just go on and on and I don't have enough jug space for. Honestly for me. So it's just whoever lambs gets a jug and like that. If I'm really pushed. Are you with a single. Might not ever get to see a jug. She might get to be put in with a group, a small group right off the bat, if I'm really pushed. But I try to, you know, let them drop in the, in the big pen and then bring them into a jug.

[Brian Riley]

Yes, Brian, we would, we would manage them the same way we would have 25 use in a pen that we would use as drop pens. We let them lay them there and then. Then put them in a jug.

[Nicole Allen]

And I know like as technology is always changing and many people are starting to use cameras. Do you guys use cameras or what do you see being the pros and cons of watching use lam on a camera versus just being there in person.

[Brian Riley]

Start with this. We do have a camera system, but it's fairly new. It's only about four years old. So we've been doing this for my entire life. I'm 54, but my wife and I been doing this for 30 some years. We've never had a camera before that. We try to have somebody with them 24 hours a day and which now with ET and AI it's nicer because everything's concentrated more having somebody with them. And my opinion is much better than the cameras. Although we do have a camera system that's probably more to watch or help than it is to watch the sheet. But you know, it's. It's nice. But we did it. We've done it for so many years without. I don't think it's a. I don't think it's an absolute must have.

[Kaitlyn Sister Urban]

My situation is that the barn is far enough from the house and I don't have a good. I don't have a nice room in the barn where I can get warmed up. So I come back and forth. So I, I do utilize the cameras a lot. Honestly though, I. I would tell people over all the years the camera maybe. I mean, you can see kind of what stage if. If she's under one of the cameras, which you have to kind of go through the different views to. To get the right angle. But I also have audio and I feel like that for me I could almost not see the sheep and kind of know where they're at just by listening to them. Because you've gotten so used to listening to a you and what stage she's in, if she's calling and digging or if she's actually pushing and Yeah, I mean it really, the, the, the sound is, is super key for me to read like where she's at and then if you can get an, if you, if you're lucky enough, she's pointing in the right direction towards the camera. You can see where she's come, you know where she's at and they get up and they move around, they lay back down. I feel the only thing I, I've noticed with that I don't have to go and turn all the lights on in the barn and disturb all the use to get them up. I just have to watch, you know, the individual. Maybe that's, that's lambing at that point. So yeah, I use it, utilize the cameras quite a bit and if it's super cold out, I don't have to go out there until, until it's time to get all dressed again. Until she's made her progress to where I feel like, you know, if she needs help, she gets help. If not, she's got them out on her own. And so yeah, I, I do utilize them quite a bit. So it kind of depends on each person's situation and you know, experience with them and, and being around them lambing. I think you definitely, you have to realize like where they're at and what stage and how long they've worked at it.

[Mike Stitzline]

We do use cameras in Elk City and Brian's comment about watching the helpers made me giggle because sister, sister works for us or whatnot and that just made me giggle. But Mike was saying the sound of the U is like probably pretty crucial. I know growing up with my mom and dad we, they actually use baby monitors. So we put a baby monitor out with the use, just turn it on where it's non stop and you could listen. And like my mom and dad would put that baby monitor right beside their bed and like the sound of it would wake them up. And I guarantee to this day if we did not have cameras in Fremont, Iowa, they would still be doing that. So I know the cost of a camera can be quite a bit. So if you only have a few use and you're trying to continue to watch them but still be able to get some sleep at night or whatnot, that may be an option.

[Kaitlyn Sister Urban]

Yeah, yeah, I, I used those in the beginning too. Definitely same thing. And you could. That's probably how I got onto the sound more than the audio as I got later. Because we started out with baby monitors.

[Brian Riley]

Yeah, this is Brian again. You guys are absolutely right. We use baby monitors before our camera system. So for 20, 25 years we used baby monitors.

[Steva Robinson]

Let's go through a little bit like we talked before we started recording this. Like, we do have people that listen to the podcast of all different levels. So let's say that we see that a use in labor. What do you do? Like kind of explain like what you go through at that point. Like, do you immediately go in and start pulling or like what do you. What do you do? Kind of just describe like for someone who would just be starting out lambing. Like, let's kind of give them the. The basic overview before we get like real in depth on advanced techniques.

[Brian Riley]

This is Brian. I'll. I'll start this. So Mike alluded to it before with a U that's digging or nesting. And we try to train all the kids that work with us. We kind of go through it verbally and then we'll show them those use what they do. But all, all those use are gonna nest. So they're gonna, they're gonna dig, dig, dig. They're just basically making a nest to la into the ones that are digging and nesting like that. Generally always the more aggressive they are, it just seems like they're the ones that have the least amount of trouble. So we would train or coach that, you know, just. Just let them, let them be. If the amniotic fluid is clear, water bags clear, just let them be. They're gonna progress just by themselves. You know, half hour after they start nesting, you're probably going to start to see development of water bag and or feet head. At that point, they can just let them, let them push. Within an hour, they should have something out. If they don't, we try to temporarily pin them up. Just to check. Check that there's two feet, two front feet and a head coming or a nose. And if it is, we just let them push.

[Kaitlyn Sister Urban]

Yep. I would say the same thing. It's big. Big thing is I find with a lot of. And. And I'm guilty as charged with a. When I was young, you want to. You want to get aggressive and you want to get. And you want to pull. And the best thing to do a lot of times is to. To let them progress on their own because you pull too soon. And then a lot of times the uterus isn't contracted down on the lamb tight enough. And so when that happens, if you're reaching in there and the lamb falls back, you know that you've went in too quick, usually because that uterus just isn't contracted onto that lamb. And that's how you get a head falling back. And if it's up there and it's tight and it's in the right position with the feet and the head, they'll come most of the time on their own. You shouldn't really have to pull too many. But it's just having enough patience. Right. Because we all, you know, heard that saying about watching the pot that never boils. And it's just, you have to let them progress on their own. Each use a little different young use take longer. They fiddle and dig and up and down and up and down. And where you really, for me, as where over all the years you get to site, you kind of see it's. It's just, it's birth, so it's, it's in the contractions. Like, you start watching how often is she laying down and actually pushing. If she's just up and down, up and down, up and down and isn't pushing, then she's probably not ready to even, you know, for, especially for someone to be going in there and digging around. But if you can get them pinned up like Brian said, and it makes you feel much more comfortable to, you know, go in there and check, make sure you got feet and, and feel on those feet, you know, check do claws are down, that means you've got front feet, not back feet. Because if the duke calls turned up towards the tail, then, you know, you got back feet and that's. That is a problem. Right. So we got, we've all had those breech babies. So if you can feel that nose and you feel the front feet. Yeah, just let her go back and let her get at it. And if usually a you. If they're ready and if they're really working at it, you can almost walk right up to them and they won't even get up. Right. A lot of them just will let you come up and help them if they're really struggling to. To get it out. But I mean, if not, they'll probably just drop it on their own and take care of it. And a lot of times they're better off that you stay back. Like, especially after they drop that you, you know, you want to run up there and make sure it's breathing and everything, and that spooks to you. Then she runs Gets up and runs off and, you know, so, yeah, it definitely is a process of letting them go through it on their own. Usually most used don't take. Like Brian said, it doesn't take too long. But if you get one get a big single, it's going to take longer. She's having more trouble. It's a bigger one. That's. That's just part of it. So. But if you watch them and then give them a little help, honestly, when I give help like that on a you that has a big single, I'll try to pop the front feet and kind of. Unless. Unless it's one that we, you know, somebody wasn't there, you know, and it was. She was struggling. And then of course, that's when you get some swelling in the tongue and the nose and that kind of stuff. Then you can help her along a little more. But I try not to pull that lamb completely out. Pop the legs, make sure that. That they're coming out, and that gives it more room to come through, because if you pull it too quick, you could have more coming out besides the lamb. So. Because it just doesn't have that uterus, doesn't have time to contract, and then it sort of has a suction, it turns. Starts turning in uterus inside out. So a lot of times you're better off not to pull them out too quick like that when they're that big.

[Mike Stitzline]

Yeah. I would just pretty much reiterate what Brian and Mike said on having patience. However, I'm not sure if we have a whole lot of patience in Elk City at times. We're always wanting to get that one out and see what the. See what the. It looks like. So. But if you do take. If you do have patience, the. You always ends up better in the end. And most. Most of the time you're gonna have live babies that are very thriving.

[Nicole Allen]

So, you know, you guys hit on a good point that sometimes they come breach. So what would you do whenever one comes that way, Good luck.

[Brian Riley]

You know, if they're coming breach, you know, we. We just try to get them out. We've tried turning them with very little success. But if they're breach, you know, usually feeder up in the birth canal, hawks are up in the birth canal, hip up in the birth canal. You know, it's. It's at that point you just. You just really want to get them out. That's my take on that, you know, and. And hoping that you're early enough, but not. Not too early either. You know, most of the time they do live most of the time if, if you're there in cattle. I've heard numerous veterinarians in the last multiple years that say now that breach is a normal presentation. But I still can't wrap my head around that that's normal presentation because in, in a, in a lamb, it's, it's tough. So. But yeah, I just, we just get them out. So.

[Kaitlyn Sister Urban]

Yeah, the only, the only thing I can say about breach is that like Brian said, hope you're not too soon or not too late. It's just hard to know like the best thing to go in there and you. I put a glove on and go and sleeve and check to see make sure she is dilated enough. So that way you know that. Because the hardest part is getting them out when they're breach and not, you know, cracking ribs. The hardest part is you have to really make sure that when they're coming that you're ready to get the front half out. Because what happens is your cord's gonna break and then they're gonna take a breath and the front. If the head's still down in there and they're taking open in their mouth to try to suck in air, it's not going to be air. So you really have to make sure they're super open and ready to, to get the lamb out when you start pulling on one of those. Because if it doesn't come out fast enough, you get a great. I've had them where it was a great big single and you get them part way out and then they stuck because the ribs flare out and the shoulders and you're just. Yeah. Then they suck in fluid and that's a, that's a bad deal. And you're pulling hard and sometimes you'll crack ribs doing it, especially on a, on a big single. But yeah, there's no, I don't know if there's a good, a good predicament as you end up with when you get into that. You just gotta hope.

[Mike Stitzline]

Yeah. I would say for us, whenever they're breached, the first thing I do is make sure that they're dilated enough. And then from there it's pull as fast as you can. And once, once that baby's out, we actually put straw, like a piece of straw or grass hair or whatnot up their nose, try and get them cough right away. And we'll actually take the babies by their back two legs and swing them three or four times. It kind of gets any fluids that may have been in their lungs or may have gone down Their esophagus or whatnot. Trying to get that out right away. And then we actually do. I'll actually give them about a quarter cc of dex right away just to try and prevent anything, anything that might have already been in that lungs or in this esophagus. So.

[Kaitlyn Sister Urban]

Yeah, yeah. And we've. I don't. I think you can even buy them from, from different supply places. There's a, I know these, them on babies as a tube with a, with a little ball on the end of it that makes a suction. And you can try to use some of those to kind of suck out some of that fluid out of their nose and mouth and stuff sometimes too if they get really full of that. So those, those are helpful.

[Steva Robinson]

What about when you've got a head back? I always feel like I'm pretty good at getting them when they've got a head back. And it's probably because I have learned patience because like you said, Mike, like when you're young, like we all think we're heroes and oh, there's a water bag, let's have a birthday. And then all of a sudden you've got one with its head down between its legs. Or you get in there and it's a head back. Like this might be like, Nicole, do you want to take this one first? Like, can you explain what to do when you go in there and you feel two front feet but the heads turn back to the side?

[Mike Stitzline]

Yeah. So most of the time I'm the one that goes in on those just for the fact that I've got smaller hands. And I think that's real crucial. Whenever I go in and I feel a head back, what I try and do is I try and actually push like where the neck attaches to the shoulders or whatnot. And I try and push the entire baby like back into the U. And then I kind of take my, my, I take my right hand or whatnot because I'm right handed or whatnot. And I will just go back and I'll start digging to see if I could flip that up and over the right front foot. Another thing, what we do is we're actually, we have like round bell, like twine or whatnot and we'll actually put those on the two front feet and then we'll shove the two front feet back in and then we can actually take that head and push it back around and then pull it with the two front feet as well. There's just a couple different tricks we use.

[Steva Robinson]

What about when you've got one that's got one leg up ahead there, but the other one's tucked back underneath it. The other front leg is. How does someone go about flipping that up?

[Brian Riley]

This is Brian. That's. That's easier than the head back. Way easier. So it's just, it's just a matter of patience and, you know, palpating that lamb or that fetus, you know, finding where it is and popping that up. You think when you're doing it, you think you're breaking their leg, but you're not. Those things are really resistant, resilient, and as soon as you get that leg popped up, it's going to come out. I'll add on to what Nicole said about that head back. They do make snares for those. They're a little trickier to use, but once you get the hang of them, they're. They're really great for helping get those ones out that their head is down more often than not. If their head's down, it's because somebody intervened too quick and didn't allow that you just to push that baby up into the birth canal. Not always, but most of the time it's because people intervened too quick. But we do like the snare in that case.

[Kaitlyn Sister Urban]

Yeah, I would agree with Brian. It's definitely. Most of the time it's when they got a head back, it's. It's usually due to. There's so much space in there. When that used not contracted with her uterus down onto that baby, it lets the head fall back and they go in and try to grab and they start pulling front feet and not the head doesn't come with it because there's nothing to hold the head from falling side to side. When you start pulling the legs, it just falls to the one side or the other. And so yeah, it's mostly due to that. It's. It's rare. You'll get one down and. And sometimes when that happens, it's. It's obviously a lamb that's not alive or really weak and they will fall back even on some.

[Brian Riley]

The.

[Kaitlyn Sister Urban]

Some of the ones that they use are contracted because that lamb is just so limp. That's how that happens sometimes too. But I, I use a. I have a cable snare like these for pigs and lambs. You can buy them. Those work really good to. To snare ahead. And if you've got one that is a little big and it's tight and it's tough to pull, I really recommend those to get onto the head and bring. Because you got to bring the Head with. And, and you can't just pull like snare the feet, right? You know, we've all done that, and then we're pulling on the feet like crazy. But that if that head's not coming with it, you gotta, you gotta, you know, pull extra hard where, if you get the head to come along with those front feet. So I always get this, you know, snare around the front, hit the front feet, each of them, and then, and sometimes I just use twine on the front feet, and then I'll use that cable snare on the head and then bring them all at the same time. If you're struggling to get one out, those, those really work.

[Steva Robinson]

Well, the last question on, like, presentation during lambing that I have is, what about when you go in and you get the four front feet, you get a set of twins and you've got, you don't know what belongs with what. Like, that's where like my husband Jason, that's when he calls me, like, that's his solution. But, and I, I, I'm not a patient person, but I can figure it out. But it's hard to tell someone when you get, like, a friend who's pretty new at lambing or whatnot. What do I do? I've got four front feet. What are you telling.

[Brian Riley]

It's, it's patience. Women are way better. Not to be a male chauvinist, way better at that. But. So jc My wife would be better at that than Calvin or I. But it really is, you know, palpating the U. Palpating those lambs and finding the head that go with the two feet. You know, the U's gonna be pushing, pushing, pushing, but you gotta, you gotta push that other one back in. And it's just patience. Like, if I'm doing it, it seems weird, but I always close my eyes and just so I'm concentrating and, and.

[Kaitlyn Sister Urban]

Imagine, yeah, that's what I do.

[Brian Riley]

Imagine how they, you know, are in there. And you push that one back. You get the head. Mike alluded to it before. Head and legs at the same time. And, and you can get them. But it's at that point, it's like really being patient because pulling on the legs will do no good, no good at all. Without, without that head.

[Kaitlyn Sister Urban]

Yeah, I go in and, and just start with one leg and follow it right. You follow it to. Till you feel the chest. And then you finger take your fingers across. And then if you're going left or right, because you can, you'll be able to feel the chest. It'll either be, you know, one side or other of that leg, and then you. Then you follow across that chest and then come back out the other leg and try to then get those two legs together. It's a, it's a, it's a trick. Experience is the best teacher. And, you know, it's hard to tell anybody what they're. What they're gonna feel like when they get in there. But you. Yeah, you just have to sort. Try to sort those things out with their feet and follow one leg and. And then find the other one that goes with it before you start pulling. Right. Because if you start pulling right away, you may have two and. Yeah. Then that one head comes and you're. It's. It's. It's not easy.

[Mike Stitzline]

Yeah, I was gonna say, I think they pretty much hit it spot on. On being able to follow up one leg into the chest and being able to push the other lamb back to get the one twin out. I know that if you get to a point where you the usually struggling and trying to push both at the same time, well, I'll give the. You a shot of banamine or something just to kind of get her to relax just a little bit. And once she relaxes a little bit, sometimes the twin or whoever, whichever one you're trying to push back, will finally push back a little bit easier and then you're able to pull.

[Kaitlyn Sister Urban]

Yeah. And honestly, if you have a real trouble, you can kind of. If you've ever tried to lay them over a bale or try to get their back end up, if you have somebody to help you up over a gate, those lambs will fall down in and you'll have more room to work. Especially when they get up there and she's really shoving against you and it is contracted all down tight, then you have a lot of problems trying to get one push back and bring the other. So if you can get her to hang where she's a little upside down, that'll give you a little more time. Plus, I've used. I mean, I've had them where they're really shoving and, and I've actually used epinephrine and that'll give you a few seconds. It's not a long time. You get like 30 seconds with. With a shot of epinephrine and that will relax her uterus enough to let you do some work in there. So, yeah, there's little things you can do to help you. If they're really contracted tight, and that's where I think they'll have the most trouble if you've got two of them together and if she's really contracted down on to those two lambs, it's really hard to get one to go back and bring the one. But if you put her. Get her upside down, it seems to help a lot. If you got. Got some help. It takes help to do that.

[Mike Stitzline]

Yeah.

[Nicole Allen]

And I think those were all very good points that you guys hit on. So, you know, as Steven mentioned, we have a lot of listeners that are either younger breeders or people that don't have a whole lot to use. So if you guys could set up your lambing barn in a different way, what would you choose about it?

[Brian Riley]

I. When I read this question before, I really thought on that. And I don't know if I'd set it up a lot different. We have. We have two. I'll call them rooms. So we have the two drop pens that are in the main part of the barn, but then we have two rooms where our jugs are. And one of those has in floor heat and one of those doesn't. The in floor heat sounds really, really fancy. And I would never do it again as a giant waste of money. The use get too hot. So like you can set that in floor heat at 45 degrees. 50 degrees is way too warm. 45 is almost too warm. Those use just drink water. Drink water. They'll pant in there because they're laying on that warm concrete. It's great for the babies. But the use. It really doesn't work. I'd never do that again. So I think the more basic the better. Probably the only difference maybe is I'd have our. Those rooms that we lay them in where the alleyway where the jugs aren't the alleyway a little bit bigger so we can have a little more room to. To work or to drive a ATV through. But otherwise h. I just, you know, lamb and use. It's manual labor. So I don't know if you can set it up where it's real easy.

[Kaitlyn Sister Urban]

Yeah, I would agree. Probably just Brian probably said space. Can you make it bigger? I need more room when I'm lambing and all these user coming and yeah, you never have enough. Enough space. I mean we. We are using an old bank barn that we converted into that. And so you're kind of stuck with what you got. And. And we're making. I've tried to think of easier ways of maybe setting it up so I could bring them from the drop pin to the other pin because I have to come through a Couple gates. I don't know. I just haven't figured out a better way. It's. It's about what you got to deal with, you know. So for each person, I think you just gotta make the best of your situation.

[Mike Stitzline]

Yeah. I would reiterate what he said. Our lambing barn was actually old horse stalls. So our barn that we lamb out of is real narrow but real long and we take millions of steps in the spring because of that. So I really would like to make. It would be nicer if it could have been wider. The other thing I wish I would have done is our. The height of the barns is not exactly ideal for air quality. I wish they could be a little bit taller. But you're just dealt with what you have. So we make it work.

[Steva Robinson]

I think one thing that like to chime in a little bit is, you know, sometimes now we're going into fall lambing groups, like you can lay them in a different spot maybe where you need more fresh air than where you do like in the winter, like for like Mike and Brian and I. Like, you know, you need to have it pretty warm and closed up then. Well, that's almost a detriment when we're doing a fall lambing group or an April lambing group. So like I have mine where we have like the panels like what Brian's talking about and kind of what Nicole have. Like it actually works great because you can adjust based off what your weather is and the way the industry's going. We're about going to a lambing around, you know, year round almost. And so I think it's. You don't get too caught up in having a specific lamming room if you don't have one. Like you can always build jugs in your drop pen and then pull them out and then that can be your mixer pen. And I think like, you know, kind of some feedback we've got of people that maybe don't have the brand new barn or don't have a ton of use. Like don't get so wrapped up that you don't have a fancy lambing room because sometimes that can be more harm than good too. And there's been plenty of use like when Mike said like sometimes there might be a single, it doesn't get a jug. Like sometimes you just gotta toss them in a mixer pen with another you because you're out of space. So they're more resilient than you think. Let's talk a little bit about barn cough. I feel like that's something that I Maybe personally struggle with. So this is a question I was really excited to talk about. What do you do when you get like the raspy baby?

[Kaitlyn Sister Urban]

There's lots of different newborns. Sometimes you'll get some fluid in. We'll use a little Dexa method and I like, I have a sulfa SMZ that we use on those younger ones. It's an oral medicine. It works really well on those little ones. It's not so harsh. And the dexamethasone is a, is a lighter, you know, cortisone. There's definitely some stronger ones. But the decks at the beginning, I think it really helps to dry them out, get them started. If there's one that's a little raspy at the beginning as you get on into the, into the lambing season. Honestly, where we end up seeing more barn cough isn't maybe during the time necessarily that it's with the ewes. It's more like later in the spring when you get groups of weaned lambs and they're all together and you get that, that just constant. And sometimes it's a dry cough and I don't know that there's a dry through. You know, we've tried to run antibiotics through those whole groups at times. Best thing is airflow again and try to keep as much fresh air to them after you get it started. I don't, I, I guess I struggle. I've always struggled with, you know, you. I don't want to over treat. I, I try not to over treat with a lot of antibiotics and I'm not sure that some of the barn cough is going to respond that well to it, to, you know, the antibiotics in general. You can tell if it's a pneumonia now that if it's something that's a pneumonia, you have to treat with some kind of antibiotic and some cortisone and get that, those lungs, you know, cleaned out. But yeah, I mean, you'll get that dry cough later in the spring. I know it's. And I know when you people talk about a barn cough that one has always been a problem to struggle. And it seems like, I will say like a lot of times they'll grow out of it. Maybe there's problems in between with the other end, which is caused by the barn cough. Right. We get, we get prolapses because they continually cough, cough, cough. And I don't know how to, you know, how do you prevent that other and try to keep as much airflow to them as you can. Somebody else might have a Better. A better take on barn cough. But that, that's my. When you talk about barn cough, I think of that cough that they get later, like a little bit after they've been weaned and they're in groups and then they start this just dry hacking. And that's the one I always struggle with. Pneumonias you can treat and, and if you catch them quick enough, most of them will respond. Yeah, but it's, and it's being able to recognize the, the signs other than a cough because like in their little. I don't see a lot of cough. And you'll just see them a little droopy, a little slow acting. You pick them up, you listen, you, you know, you can kind of definitely pick up on that. How they're breathing.

[Mike Stitzline]

Yeah, I was gonna say, I guess when I think of barn cough, I kind of think what you think, Mike. But also I tend to see if it's gonna be like a wet cough or a dry cough. And that kind of determines how we're going to medicate. So most of the time as babies or whatnot, if they're kind of raspy and a little bit wet, we're going to give them the dex, like dexamethasone, like what Mike had said before. But we also will actually give. It's called recover. And we tend to give that as well. Tends to help clear those lungs a little bit. And if there's one that is just not recovering from our antibiotics or our dexamethasone or whatnot, we'll actually give him just a little bit of Lasix to try and dry out those lungs. That's kind of a last, last resort type deal. But that's something that we do on those. I would say the biggest thing is you got to keep your barn air quality well, keep them as clean as you can for what your. What cards you're dealt with.

[Brian Riley]

And yeah, on the, on the young ones, like we would have a protocol we use right at birth where we use an upper nasal stimulant vaccine that we would use there. Plus another immuno boost product is what it's called. We don't have a lot of coffin in, in young ones. And I don't know if it's because of that or the air ventilation system. We have those older ones, you know, I would say three, four months, five months old. That cough like that. We have many internal debates here on, on whether that's a virus or whether that's internal parasites. And were leaning more towards that. It's, you know, Kind of a parasite issue. And you know, the dewormers don't work quite as. As good as we think. And the. Just the repetition of those needs to be a lot more frequent than the old fashioned. Twice a year, like once a month. If you can do it once a month and rotate products. I do think that as a significant difference in those. In those ones that cough like that. So we all do lots of different things. I mean, we treat too, but. Yeah. Is it a pneumonia or should just a dry hacky cough. And that dry hacky cough I do think is more correlated to internal parasites. That's just my opinion. I'm not a veterinarian.

[Kaitlyn Sister Urban]

Yeah, I. I wish I had a good answer for that too. I don't know the actual bar. What we. What I consider like the barn cough. It usually comes on later. And Yeah, I don't know. Not a good. Not a good explanation as to why they get it or a lot of times they'll just seem to grow out of it too.

[Steva Robinson]

I think one thing too. I thought Nicole might touch on this. And I just know this from spending some time in Elk City or being around Nicole or Jaylene at Middlesworth. I think a lot of people miss the fact of like catching it early and not only noticing it early, but I feel like when I spent time at Elk City last year, I laid over there between Denver and Arizona and I helped them during their laming group. And they would walk those pens every day like, hey, like let's go through these pens and see what's going on. And it's an. It's Dr. Anything that's sick. Because once you let it go on for too long, then you're really, you know, gonna battle it.

[Kaitlyn Sister Urban]

Definitely.

[Steva Robinson]

Talk about banding tails. When do you do that? And any tips on that?

[Brian Riley]

This is Brian. So we would band tails before they leave jugs. So at three, four, five days old at the max, we would use. We would double band them so that everything, everything would get two bands. I do think there's a difference in bands. Premier Supplies there in Iowa has a thicker, stronger band. It's an orange one that I do think works significantly better than the green ones that you can get at most farm stores. We would. So that. That's the age we would band at. And then they would get their other vaccinations at that point too.

[Mike Stitzline]

So Ty is the one who bans all the tails at our place. And we are pretty much the exact same protocol as Brian and we double band with the exact same orange bands.

[Kaitlyn Sister Urban]

Yeah, I Would. I would do the same thing. And I agree with Brian. The. The orange ones are much, much better. I don't even know if you'd have to double band with the orange ones. But I feel like when I'm adjusting bands, when I'm looking at them, when I band, I put the first one on and see if the second one, if I want to go above or below and that kind of those things. And that only comes with time, like, and even then, sometimes I get one, I'm like, boy, that one's too long, you know, that one's too, you know, too short or whatever. So you just try to kind of try to adjust. The only thing I've found over the years, I. I did get into. And this is part of that situation back there. You'll get a fistula, which is a hole below the dock. And I really thought it was coming from a certain buck or something, because I kept getting them and it was here I found it was kind of the way I was holding the lamb when I was banding, leaving all four feet on the ground and. And putting them between my legs and trying to do them from, you know, the back end was sticking out between my. Between my feet and trying to hold between your legs and then put that band on. And what happens is that intestine gets. When you squeeze them between your legs to hold them, it was pushing it out into that caudal fold of that lamb's tail, and you would pinch it in the band when you would actually put the band on. So what I ended up doing was I ended up starting to pick the lamb's butt end up more towards me and try to hold it up side down so that the intestines fall away from the tail so you don't get that intestine pinched in the part of that underneath there when you're trying to get them, you know, short. And I. I also don't do them quite as quick. I guess I like them a little thicker. So I kind of know or I feel like I can judge where that band needs to be, because I think you can get them too short. Where we could make them look short rumped, right. If it take. If it goes up too short sometimes. So if I wait a little bit longer, I mean, I'm talking a week, maybe 10 days, you know, on. On, especially if it's a smaller little triplet, takes a little longer to get some flesh on that tail. And I can. I feel like I can see and judge where I want the band a little better. But that's just, you know, comes from however you like to do it. Right. But I would agree wholeheartedly. The orange bands. Absolutely.

[Brian Riley]

And it is e for. For newer people, this Brian, again, it is easier the older they are to Mike's point. So.

[Kaitlyn Sister Urban]

Yeah.

[Brian Riley]

You know, when they're.

[Kaitlyn Sister Urban]

Don't let them get too big though.

[Brian Riley]

Exactly. Yeah, yeah. It's slightly easier three, four days old, but it's no good when they're three weeks old either.

[Kaitlyn Sister Urban]

Yeah, yeah. You don't want to quite wait that long.

[Steva Robinson]

I think the next one will probably have some very differing systems here. Let's talk about tagging. How do you do your tagging and identification? Like, I mean, do you. Do we write the pedigrees on the inside of them? What ear does it go in? Does it matter? What's the color coding? What all information do you write on the tags? What size tags? Kind of give me a rundown on how you. All of it that goes into tagging.

[Brian Riley]

I could start there, I guess. Ours are all double ID'd, so we put scrapy tag in right away with their flock tag. And everybody has teased me forever on the size of tags I use. And. But we've always used the same large cattle tags. And the, the. Our flock tag matches our scrapy tag. So they can lose either one and we'll. We'll stick another tag in. Our flock tag would. Would just go consecutive numbers. We do write the dam above the flock tag. They're printed tags. We write the dam above the flock tag. The color button depicts what sire they are. And if it's an embryo baby, we write the recip mom on that button. So just a quick glance at the baby lamb, we can tell whether it's male, female, who it's regular mom is, who its donor mom is, and who its sire is. Right off the bat, we record it all in a computer program called Farmworks. We've used for. I don't know. Right. 12 years prior to that, we had another software program that we used. And this program we use now is equipped with a reader so you can use RFID tags. We tried their rfid tags for 2 years and we had way too many ear infections with them. They're just not a great tag. So we went away from those and just back to the traditional tag.

[Kaitlyn Sister Urban]

Yeah, I'll say it's a similar. You know, we do a. A color code by the sire. So each tag that is put in and then I have usually a different number series for each color of tags that I have. I pick Out. It's kind of. I've overlapped over the few years before, but I try to keep them far enough apart number series that they. They won't overlap because usually using a buck a couple years, maybe three years, and then you're onto a new one. But I. I try to color code everything by the siren. And then. Yeah, I haven't gotten into where I write the use tag in. In the inside. But I. I really thought about that just for ease of not having to go check off one of them. I can't remember most of the time, I know just by looking at them, but yeah, the older you get, you kind of forget. So I was thinking it might be nice to have that used tag on the inside there. So I knew, you know, her number and you could just look it up without having to run to the house and. And look it up in there. So that's, that's kind of the similar situation. We don't put the scrapy tag until I sell one. Then I scrapey tag them, and it's a separate tag with a. Just a. It's a, you know, just random number series that they've given us that we just keep getting higher and higher and higher. So I just only tag the ones when they sell.

[Mike Stitzline]

Yeah. So our tagging system in Elk City is pretty much exactly how I grew up at with Middlesworth. If we just put in a scrapy tag, and if it is a male, it's going to be in the left ear, and if it is a girl, it is in the right ear. And the only reason is because Perry was outnumbered by girls. So we always said girls were always right at our house, so they were always the right ears. So. And it just kind of stuck for our Elk City tagging as well. But then for the scrapy tags, each buck has their own color. And we also put the name. Actually, Premier Supply prints the name of every buck on the tags on the scrapy tag. And then on the inside part of the tag, we'll put. Put the U and what her pedigree is. If it is an embryo baby, on the other side of the tag, we will put the recip use tag number. And then the only thing we really kind of do a little bit different in Elk City than what we do at Middlesworth is if it. We do a lot more grafting in. In Oklahoma. So if it's a graft baby, I tend to put like a dot on the front part of the tag to know that maybe that's the one we need to be watching. If it comes through in a group pin and it looks like something's going wrong with it, if I notice that there's a dot on it, then that kind of alerts me that I need to be watching at that graft.

[Brian Riley]

That's a good point, Nicole, because if we graft, because we would graft quite a few too. We would also write the graft mom's number on the inside of the tag so we can quick visual if we see something that just doesn't seem right in a group pen, we can see who that. That graft mom is pretty quick.

[Steva Robinson]

I didn't have grafting on the questions, and I probably should have. Let's talk about that. Because as soon as Nicole said the word graph, Mike started nodding his head. And I feel like this is maybe a pretty good topic to cover. Let's explain to everyone how you guys go about grafting lambs.

[Brian Riley]

Mike's the expert at that start.

[Kaitlyn Sister Urban]

Yeah, I don't know that I would say as an expert, I'm sure that you guys have probably grafted many, many lambs also. It's, it's. It started out as something because I had goats. We used to put them on, right? The babies that are extras triplets. You know what, maybe you use half uttered. And you needed a mom and. And those goats got to be a pain in the butt. So I started learning how to graft. So you just, you know, of course the easiest way is to catch them when they're lambing. You know, if. If you had it, you could just graft one right over onto another. You. When they were both laming at the same time. That's great, right? But that doesn't always happen. I've gotten a system that I kind of go by now, and it was basically just trying to duplicate everything that was happening with the ewe when she was given birth. And so I take a lamb, maybe that's older, you know, a few days and a ewes lambing. She only has one. So you can take that lamb, the older one. I make sure I clean that lamb really well. Make sure you don't use soap. Any kind of smell. You're not trying to add smell. You're actually trying to take it off. And so then you clean that lamb with just warm water. Make sure you get all. Any manure that's already come through that lamb from the original mom, because that's where the smell is. And then I use a lot of baking soda. I mean, I, I think I've did a podcast before, and they were calling it grafting goo and it's just baking soda and water, right. You're going to smear it all over that lamb to try to take that smell away. And it seems to work really well. And then I use warm salt water in a bucket, take that lamb, tie it up just like so it you can't get up and get away. Put the new born lamb in that bucket with that one. Put those two together and then you pull them back out and, and I'll take the lamb that's just been born and strip all the, the slime off of that lamb down over the other one too. Make sure you get them both kind of, you know, smeared around together. Make sure there's as much goo on the, the lamb that's a few days older as you can and most often they'll take it. I also really truly believe that oxytocin is a, a true help. It's, I call it the love drug around here because you give it, you give some oxytocin and my vet says I'm way overusing it but it's not going to hurt anything to give you extra oxytocin, right. Like she's already got a lot when she's lambing. They should be secreting a bunch of their own. But I, I found that if I give them an extra shot, put some in the muscle, you know that it'll just make that you really want to, to mother even more. Put both lambs down there together and you know, keep that one tied up so it can't get away because it's obviously a few days old. It can, it can get up, run off those. That's the easiest graph she'll do. And, and just I almost never get one to not take them. When I give them the oxytocin and do those processes of the warm salt water, you know, because you likes to lick it gets the lamb all wet again and you're, you're just taking, taking the smell away first before you, you know, put them together. I think a lot of people make the mistake of not getting all of that manure that's come through that lamb and it's the milk from the original mom that if you don't get that all off of there there's now some bees will take anything, right? They just are great mothers and they just want to take any new baby when they lamb. But what happens a lot of times is the next, you know, so many hours when that start lamp starts drying off and they start smelling it. And comparing the two lambs and then they said, well that, that one does not smell like this one. And so if you can take that smell away as much as you can, that's as, that's as good as you're gonna. You're gonna do. I've actually. This sounds kind of a little gross. I guess I don't know what I've had used to lose a lamb, right? She'll keep mothering that lamb and I'll keep her that lamb with her, especially if it's a, if she's just lambda in a week. You know, I've done it up to 10 days after they've lamed and lambs you still pawn this thing around. And I'm milking her, keeping her milking and I've saved colostrum from her and I let her keep mothering that lamp. You take that lamb away, she's not going to want to take, take another lamb. So I let her mother that, that lamb that's dead until I get a new one. And then I'll take that new one and, and a brand new lamb out of another. You has no smell. So they are really not against taking it. I take that lamb, give her, give that you a shot of oxytocin and you take a glove on and I'll actually rub in the, on their cervix on the u that you're has the dead lamb and make her think that she's lambing again, right? And then you can put that, that newborn lamb in there that's been, you know, put a little warm salt water if you want, make her lick a little more. But take that dead one out and put that new one in there after you've rubbed her cervix. And most often she will take that lamb even if it's been a long time after she's actually given birth because they really want a lamb, they want to raise one. So there's a lot of different ways of grafting. I mean when you, when you get. I don't know if that says much about my use though. They're not one that you know, some user half uttered and I'm still keeping them around. Maybe I shouldn't. But yeah, we, I find all kinds of ways to graft because I just refuse to raise lambs on the bottle and the user getting fed, they should be raising something, right. So I, I try to find as many ways to graph as you can. I'm sure there's other ways, but those worked really well to get use one that's already had a lamb for A while one that, you know, a brand new one, you can put it with those. So there's lots of different ways of trying to combine them.

[Nicole Allen]

Is there any other grafting ways, different ways to do grafting?

[Brian Riley]

Like I said, Mike was the expert there, so he nailed it. Yeah, we're 50. 50. Like Mike goes to a. He's. He's explained this to me multiple times over the years and he's, like I said, great at it. We'll. We'll do it up until 12 hours. If there's one that needs to be grafted. We have some success by, you know, catching a U. That's slamming. Rubbing this one that we want to graft with amniotic fluid. We'll vet wrap their legs together so it's a nice soft fabric so they can't get up while the other one's laming. But Mike's. Mike said it all. He's way, way, way better.

[Mike Stitzline]

Yeah, I think I've learned some new tricks tonight.

[Kaitlyn Sister Urban]

Yeah, there's a million. I mean, it is funny. You just sort of do it over time, but I've just. I guess I, I'm not winning the bottle that bad that I've learned. And, and honestly, I've. I rarely have one kick one off. But you really. It's mostly the smell. I mean, that's how they identify them. Right. So you're. You have to get rid of the smell from that lamb that's. That's a few days old. Yeah, I've, I've grafted, you know, even a. You that's had a lamb within the last 24. I, I would say up to at least 24 hours. I can get one to take another lamb. Even if she's only had one. I'll put her back through that birthing process again, give her oxytocin, you know, rubber cervix, and take a new one. Like if, if it's a. Like I said, the big key is the smell. Because if you did another new lamb and that other used lamb like 24 hours before, she'll still. And you put her lamb and this new lamb back in the water and do make her go through that. She can't really tell the difference because there's no smell on that new and color. Now once in a while, they can tell the light and dark. They're not. I mean, I guess animals they say are colorblind, but they definitely will know if one's really light wooled and one's really dark wooled and theirs was one or the other. They can they start to. They get a little funny once in a while but most of the time they will still take them even. But you have to really load them on oxytocin. I think that's a key which a lot of people don't do is give them that extra oxytocin because it is really makes them mother, you know, more.

[Steva Robinson]

What about when grafting doesn't go as well or you don't have something to graft to and you end up with a bottle lamb like what's your tips on bottle lambs milk machines, what to do there?

[Mike Stitzline]

My parents and Iowa are firm believers on a milk machine and they can raise milk machine babies that are just incredible come April at weaning time. And it blows my mind. We are not a milk machine crew in Elk City. We actually just do supplementing and leave the mom, leave the babies on the mama. Like Mike said. We felt like, you know the use there for a reason. She needs to learn to either raise a baby or go down the road the next year. So we supplement them along a little bit if they need it. But that's kind of our take on it.

[Brian Riley]

This is Brian again. I would attest to what Nicole said there. Her parents are great on the milk machine babies because that's why we bought a milk machine was with how they raised them. But we're not as successful with the milk machine and we would have a pretty tight protocol on how we clean that thing every day. But our, our babies just, they do too good on it. So then come weaning time it's. It's really a struggle for us. So actually this year we're talking about doing something a little bit different and going away from the milk machine. We, we actually have two of them and you know, we graft whenever we can graft but when it doesn't work they get trained to the milk machine pretty quick. But we're going to try something this different this year where we're gonna go back to a more manual, manual approach to where they're really more limited on the amount of milk replacer they get versus on the milk machine where they, you know, have it free choice and ours do just, just way too good. They crash after, after weaning. So that's, that's our problem with it.

[Nicole Allen]

And kind of going off of the weaning. When do you guys wean the lambs and do you daily or do you just straight wean the use?

[Kaitlyn Sister Urban]

We don't. When we take them off, I just take them off. I, I ideally I guess over all the years I, we used to say eight weeks was, you know, you could leave them on eight weeks and pull them but, and you can. I feel like it's better for the use and the utter issue if I can leave them on a little longer, like nine, 10 weeks is definitely better. I feel like to get them dried up better, you know. And over time I use kind of wean the lamb eventually on her own. But I feel like if I can get. And, and sometimes it's, it's a sheer fact of we run out of space. Right. I need, I need this pen because I got more used coming. So we have to do something at some point sometimes and, and so that's what causes us to, to wean a little earlier than I maybe ideally but I would say at least eight weeks. I would recommend for me, I like, I would really rather take them all to 10 if I could because I feel like the use just aren't shutting down milk quick enough, you know, or as quick. And so when I pull them at eight weeks those, some of those use aren't quite ready and I, I, you can come in next year with some utter issues from that. And I don't, I don't dry treat. Some people do that kind of like with the dairy cow. You milk them out and dry treat. I mean there's some probably, some studies done who probably should be doing that, but I just don't.

[Brian Riley]

So we would, we would similar to what Mike said at eight weeks, maybe, maybe six and a half, seven weeks. We would, we would switch the type of hay they get to a real poor quality hay.

[Kaitlyn Sister Urban]

Yeah, yeah.

[Brian Riley]

They get pulled off any grain that they're on. We used to deprive them of mineral. We don't do that anymore. We just keep them on, on mineral. We would dry treat. We've been doing that for several years now where we would do a. Inner mammary infusion to them. Same, same one that a cow would get. There's multiple different ones out there. I think it works fantastic. But really dropping the nutrition plane on those ewes would help. Would help the most for sure with, with getting them dried up.

[Mike Stitzline]

Yeah. We wean at about eight weeks of age, so our process starts at about seven weeks of age. We'll pull those ewes off of grain or start limiting their grain I should say and start removing their alfalfa. We actually keep them on a little bit of. On their grass hay, just a lower quality grass hay at that time as well. And then we actually day wean so when it comes to be about 8 weeks of age and we're already limited their feed, then we take those babies off of them during the day and then just allow those mamas and babies to come back together of an evening for about 30 minutes or whatnot. Normally they'll, those babies will go to nursing those ewes out and then we'll kick those ewes back out and we'll do that for about four, five days or whatnot. It's kind of a long process, but we seemed, we've actually done that the last three or four years and it seemed to really help on our mastitis issues. I know for a while we were in a lot of the time in Iowa or whatnot. It's. They reduce down their feet and then it's. You just take the use from the babies and go on or whatnot. And we seem to try that. No Clomid, it didn't seem to work as well. So we just tried a little different system and it's worked well for us.

[Nicole Allen]

To wrap this up, I have a few fun questions for you guys. I feel like you guys have given us a lot of good advice tonight. So what piece of advice would you give someone starting out with their first year lambing? I know we kind of talked about some tips and tricks about what to do when, but what would you give them for a piece of advice?

[Mike Stitzline]

I think my piece of advice for somebody is to have a group of people or have a group of breeders that you're always willing, willing to call and ask questions. I know Steven and I bounce ideas off into each other all the time when it comes to lambing time. And just having somebody or a group of breeders that can help you through different situations is always key.

[Brian Riley]

I completely agree with Eric. And then the next one would be patience and keep things dry.

[Kaitlyn Sister Urban]

Yeah, I'd absolutely agree with all those sentiments wholeheartedly. I think Nicole hit it on the head. Just have somebody that's. That's, you know, been around and done it a long time. Patience that comes with doing it a long time. And yeah, get. Try to get as much sleep as you can.

[Steva Robinson]

I know that there's a lot of times I'll text Nicole with a question or caller and she'll say, well, did you try this? And you just feel so like, well, gosh, I can't believe I didn't think of that. But that's why you have a good circle of friends, because sometimes you think you've exhausted all options. And she's like, well, did you try doing this and heck it works. And you know, you need friends to get you through on it. And I think the other thing to remember is like there's bad days and good days and there's usually bad things coming waves like usually you start off with some problems, that's why they're early and you end with problems and that's why they're late. But you just kind of got to keep your head head in the game and you're gonna most of the problems, some of them aren't avoidable and you can just avoid the ones that you can. What do you guys think your biggest lambing time. Whoops.

[Brian Riley]

Was not sure we have enough time for this. I'm sure I've had them before, but we had an intern that was pretty inexperienced, great, great heart, great work attitude. And she called me about 2, 2:30 in the morning once and she was just distraught as can be. And of course I'm half asleep, sleep deprived. Anyhow come out and she's got you and a lambing jug that has three babies and. And put it in there with one and another one that was supposed to have one. But by the time it was all in, she had four ewes with lambs and she had no idea whose was whose. So took a little bit of waking up to figure it all out. We got close, but by no means was it the right one with the right U. So. But no bottle babies out of it. So that was the success.

[Kaitlyn Sister Urban]

It was the right one, right?

[Brian Riley]

Yep, exactly.

[Kaitlyn Sister Urban]

Yeah. I don't know if I can. Yeah, I'm sure there's all kinds of whoopses that happen over all the years. I. I can't really specifically. I've had those happen where you have get out there and there's a whole bunch of lambs and you're like, oh God, I slept, you know, a few minutes too long. And you try to wake up and figure it out and those things happen. Yeah, that's part of lambing. And even if you had like three years, you'd probably have that happen that just comes in groups like that. But sleep deprived is part of those things. Sometimes your mind's not always working quite right at times.

[Mike Stitzline]

Yeah, there's always all sorts of lamb lambing time loops. And I mean there's been times when you throw a U and a single and a jug and you come back three hours later and you're like, oh, well, hello, hello. We got twins. That happens. And I would say probably one of the biggest whips we had was two years ago. We we don't have enough room to put all of our use into our drop pens. So we go through, we just check mark dates, we check bags, we just kind of see and then we put them in to our drop pens and we go out one morning and there said gorilla King Kong's mom out in the pasture with the set of babies. So, you know, we let our donors lamb out in the pastures at times. That can always be big whoopsies too.

[Kaitlyn Sister Urban]

Yeah. I try to bring my closest use to the main farm here and I have another farm where I have the use that are pregnant but not as close. And so that exact same scenario kind of happens once in a while where you're like, oh, I thought she wasn't gonna lay in and she did.

[Mike Stitzline]

Yeah.

[Kaitlyn Sister Urban]

So you just gotta hope it's not too cold and they're alive and move on. Right. So.

[Steva Robinson]

But yeah, we'll end with one more question. What's the craziest thing you've ever seen in lambing?

[Kaitlyn Sister Urban]

Oh, Lord, I've seen lots of weird births. I. I honestly think it years ago, before we even knew about the Cache Valley much. I think we had some issues because I had all kinds of weird deformed lambs coming out. I had one with like a giant. Looked like a giant sack with one leg coming out of it. And if you felt it, it was in the middle. There was a head, you know, and had one, had one long front leg and a short back leg. So it was like teeter totter and it hopped around like that. Yeah, I had, I've had strange. I've had Cache Valley lambs where the whole back half of the lamb was sort of froze up and it was still alive. And it would run around on its front two feet, you know, just some strange. I had, I had a two headed, two tailed one once, which that was actually a double embryo, you know, or one embryo that started to split and never finished. They had one spine, four legs, two heads and two tails. That was the craziest one to try to figure out. Why can I not get this lamb out? Because you kept trying to push the one back and it was just coming right with the other one. There was no way. And I'm like, where are the other legs? Yeah, it finally, we finally got it out. But I'm like, this is not right. So some crazy things can happen.

[Brian Riley]

You do it long enough, you'll see about everything.

[Kaitlyn Sister Urban]

Yeah, definitely.

[Mike Stitzline]

Yeah. I would say our craziest thing is we actually had a lamb born this spring. There was a Cyclops It'll have one eye. And it sat right in the middle of its head. And it was kind of. It was kind of freaky. And the boys would set it up on the hay bale and always be like, he's keeping our. He's keeping an eye on everything around here. Whatnot. And they just thought it was the biggest. It was the biggest joke for. For the week or whatnot. Until it started smelling bad or whatnot. And then we had to get rid of it. But, yeah, that's definitely one of the craziest things I've seen.

[Kaitlyn Sister Urban]

Yeah.

[Nicole Allen]

Thank you guys for being on. I feel like you guys had a lot of great advice. I really like these kind of discussions so much for being on.

[Brian Riley]

You're welcome. Yeah.

[Kaitlyn Sister Urban]

Thank you. Thank you. And hey, if anybody has questions, don't be afraid to a message or text me and we'll just try to help them through it.

[Brian Riley]

Likewise. Yep.

[Mike Stitzline]

Mike, I'm going to be calling about the grafting.

[Brian Riley]

He is the master.

[Kaitlyn Sister Urban]

Trial and error is right. That's how it's happened. Well, that didn't work. We'll try something different.

[Mike Stitzline]

Hey, isn't that how raising sheep is?

[Kaitlyn Sister Urban]

Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

[Mike Stitzline]

Thank you, Stephen. Sister.

[Brian Riley]

Thank you, guys.

[Mike Stitzline]

You're welcome.

[Steva Robinson]

Thank you. Well, thanks for staying on with us this whole time. We hope you guys found that really informative, and we hope. Wish you guys a happy lambing season. Some of you are just finishing up your falls or getting ready for your Decembers, and I think it'll be a really good reference point, but we hope you all have a happy Thanksgiving and we will catch you next time.