What ewe should know about these lambs

Anyone looking for a quick fix of cute need search no further than Winfield's Kline Creek Farm.

Eight gangly lambs have already made their debut at the DuPage Forest Preserve's living-history farm.

If the timing's right, some visitors may get a quick fix of biology, too, since another dozen or so lambs are expected to be born before the end of winter. A male lamb was born Monday afternoon to add to the farm's growing heap of sheep.

The farm at 1N600 County Farm Road welcomes visitors from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Thursday through Monday.

A specially designed creep feeder with its heat lamp and supply of food just for the youngsters is half-full of the fluffy, off-white baby sheep.

None of them have names, but they've already been ear-tagged with numbers. Agricultural specialists at the farm aren't particularly pleased with the higher number of males that have been born so far.

"You always want female," said Bruce Johnson, the farm's assistant agricultural specialist. "We have very little use for males."

That's because most male Southdowns are really only good for one thing -- eating.

But a good stud male lamb could fetch thousands of dollars at auction, said Lee Pettey, president of the American Southdown Breeders Association.

Since Kline Creek already has two breeding rams, the latest brood of little ones will likely be heading off to auction in the spring to be sold for mutton. They'll fetch in the neighborhood of $100 to $150, Pettey said.

But because the sheep are purebred at Kline Creek, they're always on the lookout for the birth of a good stud ram.

"We look at pedigree and confirmation," Pettey said. "Pedigree is the mother and father. Confirmation is lots of muscle in the leg and a long body because these are sheep bred for food."

Johnson said the farm's sheep are sheered once a year and the wool is sold, but these sheep don't have the wool quality other breeds have.

Because most of the ewes will be able to produce 10 to 20 lambs over their lifetime, they're worth more than the average ram. Breeding ewes will go for $500 to $1,000, or maybe even more at auction.

The lambing process begins in August when the ewes go into heat. They are loosed upon a ram that is fitted with a special harness. The harness contains a load of colored chalk. Johnson can tell he's got an impregnated ewe when he sees one of the gals with chalk dust all over her rump.

"We have different colored chalk for the two rams so we can keep track of who sired which lambs," Johnson said.

If one of the ewes fails to be impregnated, it's likely she'll find herself on the next trailer to auction.

"We're running this like an 1890s farm," Johnson said. "They're not pets. We're in it for the money."

This year 12 ewes were bred. The desire is that each one will have twins. One is not preferred from a financial standpoint and three are trouble from feeding standpoint.

"Ewes only have two teats," Pettey explained. "If there are three lambs, the puniest one is going to have to wait to eat, and usually there's nothing left, and it'll starve to death."

The lambs start arriving in January. The first delivery this year came Jan. 11. The last due date is March 16.

In April and May, the excess sheep -- including many of the newer ones -- are shipped off to market with some of the farm's other livestock.

"It's a business, and everything here has to be in the context of the 1890s," Johnson said. "And that means survival of the farmers, not the sheep."