The ultrasound image shows a growing lamb fetus (head in center, with body to the right).

The veterinarian came and went on Wednesday, taking his ultrasound equipment with him, and leaving the shepherdess with the results, to prepare for October lambing.  The couple of open ewes will be primed for breeding this October, with another small crop of lambs planned for April.

The ewes, as usual, would rather have been grazing, and squeezed together as far away as they could get from the stranger with the probe, but one by one they were brought near so that he could place the probe on their bellies to get a view of the uterus. (That wasn’t so bad, now, was it?)

Fall management schedule is now set, hay’s in the barn, late summer pasture management underway, and we welcome some rains in this unseasonably cool August.