Lambing Record Template: What to Track at Every Birth
Lambing happens fast, at bad hours, in cold barns. The record you make in that moment — or fail to make — is the one you will be looking for next fall when you are deciding which ewes stay and which ewe lambs are worth keeping. This template covers the fields that earn their place on a barn sheet, whether you keep it on paper, in a spreadsheet, or in an app.
The core lambing record
Most university extension lambing sheets agree on the same core fields. For each lambing, record:
| Field | Why it matters later |
|---|---|
| Date | Ties the birth to breeding group, season, and weather |
| Ewe ID | Connects this lambing to the ewe's history |
| Sire / breeding group | Lets you compare ram groups honestly |
| Lamb ID(s) | The starting point of every lamb's record |
| Sex | Keep/sell sorting, replacement planning |
| Birth type | Single, twin, triplet — raw prolificacy |
| Rear type | How many she actually raised — the number that pays |
| Assist | Unassisted, easy pull, hard pull, malpresentation |
| Birth weight (optional) | Useful for spotting trends if you already weigh |
| Notes | Weak lamb, bad udder, poor mothering, grafted lamb |
Two of these do most of the work: birth type vs. rear type, and assist. A ewe that drops twins every year but rears one is a different animal than her lambing percentage suggests. And a ewe that needed a hard pull two years running is telling you something before she costs you a night's sleep a third time.
Death and disposal records
Nobody enjoys this column, but it is the one that finds problems. When a lamb dies, record:
- Lamb ID (or ewe ID for an unidentified newborn)
- Date
- Best guess at cause: stillborn, starvation/exposure, scours, pneumonia, injury, unknown
A pile of "unknown" entries is still data — it says the losses happen when nobody is watching, which points at checks and timing rather than genetics or disease.
Weaning closes the loop
The lambing sheet is only half the record. At weaning, add:
- Weaning date
- Lambs weaned per ewe
- Weaning weights, if you run them over a scale
Lambs weaned per ewe exposed is the number that connects lambing season to the ranch's bottom line. You can only calculate it if the lambing record and the weaning record use the same ewe and lamb IDs.
Paper, spreadsheet, or app
Paper barn sheets work because they are always available — clipboard on a nail by the jugs. Their weakness shows up in March of next year, when you are flipping pages trying to reconstruct one ewe's history.
Spreadsheets make sorting and totals easy, but they get typed in days later from a pocket notebook, and the details that were obvious in the barn get lost in translation.
Apps put the record where the work happens. The risk is the opposite one: software that wants six taps and a dropdown for something you'd write in five words.
Whatever you use, the discipline matters more than the tool: record at the jug, not at the kitchen table, and use one consistent ID per animal.
A sheet you can copy
For a paper or spreadsheet version, these columns cover the season:
Date | Ewe | Sire/Group | Lamb ID | Sex | Born | Reared | Assist | Wt | Notes
One row per lamb. Add a second sheet for deaths and a third for weaning, keyed by the same IDs.
Ranch.Bot turns plain-language notes like "ewe 412 twins, one weak, easy pull" into structured lambing records you can search at culling time — and you review every record before it saves. Start a 14-day free trial at ranch.bot.