10/10/2026
After doing amazing all summer during the historically hot and humid heat wave in Illinois, September was pretty awful for us but we’ve made it to the other side. We had Moon’s white ram lamb get stuck in the fence which later resulted in his death caused by bloat. Ginger’s ram lamb who had coccidia scours in spring, was found extremely dehydrated with scours again, and thanks to some guidance from my mentor, was treated for brown stomach worm and he made a full recovery. Next, was our first case of fly strike on one of Theysa’s ram lambs. I couldn’t tell if it was due to just how wet it had been or if he also had scours so dewormed for brown worm as well. Then Moon’s ram lamb had loose stool the next day and at that point he also got dewormed. Then the weather drastically changed and half my flock got a respiratory infection 😭
So what have I learned? No more skipping the Bo-Se shots on my lambs. I’ve gotten away with it since starting even though the midwest is pretty depleted of Selenium because we’ve been fairly under stocked on our pastures but now that we are near capacity, I really need to make sure our minerals are on point! I also want to do better with my rotation schedule and adjust it based on weather and time of year, instead of leaving them the same fixed number of days the whole time. Next year we are also going to be trying out some off farm pasture grazing and I’m really excited to see how that turns out!
