Record lambing

Where

A lambing is recorded in two places: the Reproduction tab of the ewe's profile, or the Lambing activity in the Chute (also inside a session for a whole lot). Both save the same event; the Lambing statistics page only reads it.

The lambs

One row per lamb: sex (female, male, unknown), ear tag, birth weight in kg and whether it was born alive or stillborn. "+ add lamb" adds a row for twins or triplets, and the button counts them ("Record lambing (2)"). Each live lamb becomes an animal with its dam, sire, birth date and birth type set from the litter.

Date and difficulty

Difficulty is one of unassisted, easy pull, hard pull or cesarean, with an "Assisted" checkbox; the statistics page later summarizes these as assisted vs unassisted and as the ease distribution.

Sire

Select the sire, mark it unknown or register a new one on the spot. The conception type can be inferred from the recorded service ("AI (inferred from the 2025-09-15 service)").

Observations about the ewe

Official management codes recorded as chips: abnormal udder condition, poor mother, pregnancy toxemia, prolapse of reproductive organs, abnormal rupture, overfat or abnormally thin at lambing, physical defects, induced ovulation, mastitis, no milk, low productivity, poor feet and legs, synchronized oestrus, premature birth and born backwards. They discard nobody: they land in the health history and feed the impact matrix (maternal ability, cull signal).

Seen at the lambing

Udder, milk and mothering are scored 1 to 5 (5 is best) or left as "not observed". The form says it plainly: these are descriptive and do NOT enter the EBVs, because genetic mothering is already measured by the Flock Index from the lambs' weaning weights. They are for deciding who to watch and who to keep.

Related events

The same tab records joinings (natural, AI, ET), pregnancy diagnoses (result, method, estimated number of fetuses, fetal age) and abortions (date, days of gestation; the ewe becomes empty and the event counts toward the abortion rate). A checkbox marks the female as an embryo-transfer recipient.

Decisions it supports

Which ewes needed help and should not be kept for an unassisted system, which lambs need colostrum attention, and which ewe records explain a lamb's slow start.