It's Sheep Milking Season

I think I have my dilemma figured out.

During the day I separate the ewes from the lambs.

Then in the evening when I feed I pull each ewe out. She gets her grain and I milk her of the day's milk. When they've all been milked I let the ewes and lambs all back together for the night.

This helps with the loud and constant baaing and hopefully my neighbors don't hate me too much. The lambs start getting used to being apart from their moms. In fact, during the day they make a little noise at first but then settle down. It's only when they see someone walking around that they start up again.

The only ewe I have totally weaned is Baby. She has gotten very thin, to me alarmingly thin. I put her in the stall at night to keep her apart from her lambs. They do make a little noise when everybody else is with their moms but they settle down fairly quickly. I'm able to give her a little extra hay without the others taking it over and hopefully she will start putting some weight back on.

I tried my new system yesterday and it seems like it's going to work. With the 2 cups of milk I got from the other day at the end of yesterday I had a little over one gallon of milk collected. Sheep milk cheese and sheep milk yogurt is coming soon!