Lambing

[Svejk]

Just listening to 'lambing' on radio.
Is this having 2 lambing seasons per year a recent development or was it always so.

[Buenchico]

There's still only one season but it just starts earlier than it used to.

From last week's Indepedent:
"The lambing season is beginning now and goes on until May"
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/farmers-set-for-anxious-lambing-season-as-scientists-warn-most-sheep-flocks-and-cattle-herds-are-infected-with-schmallenberg-virus-8424447.html

Chris

[Svejk]

Aha, I just presumed as most animals had their young in spring, that they were having one now & another in a few months.
Haven't read link yet but why would animal 'choose' to have young in depths of winter.

[echokilo]

Gestation is 147 days so clearly the "start" of lambing reflects this - but the timing for lambing will be driven by condition, facilities and weather, as well as the commercial planning of the farmer ............. flock size is important also as you wouldn't want 2000 ewes lambing together if doing it all alone. Chris is correct - only one season in the UK ... starting much earlier - as in any time now .....I think fact that lambing is associated with easter makes it seem like two seasons perhaps.

[FredPuli43]

It's what nature intended. The ewe anywhere is sexually active from Autumn to Winter, and she is designed to produce young when they can be fed, when there is grass growing. Here that means that we have one natural lambing season. Her cycle is 17 days or so. Sheep farmers have the ewes mated so that, as said, they don't get an enormous crop of lambs in the same week; this could happen naturally, otherwise, because females kept together develop a synchronicity of oestrus (happens with our species, too!)

[hc4361]

Some farmers in the UK and worldwide lamb twice a year, or use the star system - 3 times over two years.

It is not natural and is a recent thing - google 'advanced lambing' or 'intensive lambing'.

[237SJ]

It`s a new thing (at least it`s not what they do where I come from). Ewes can have lambs at any time - it just depends when the farmer puts the ram in with them so that they can breed. People want spring lamb so the lambing season is in winter (my friends have always started in December). I`ve known them to have the odd one born in late summer when their ram escaped from his field.