Lambing Season

It is lambing season here on our farm. Half our ewes have lambed out already and we are waiting on the other half. One of the things I enjoy most about sheep farming is going down to the barn first thing in the morning and directly after work to check for new lambs on the ground. So far, our sheep have thrown us lambs nearly once a day for the past two weeks. Some days we'll even have more than the one mom lambing. Unfortunately, however, our lambing rate has only been 1.26. Very disappointing. We're hoping that improves with the remaining half of the ewes waiting to lamb.

That does not diminish how dang cute they are though. A couple photos from the barn.

Remember our bottle lambs from last spring?

This is them now.

Or at least two of them. The ram lamb which we had wanted to use as a future breeding ram, turned out to have an overbite. Not a flaw you want to potentially pass down to your lambs. It also caused him to take longer to gain weight. When he was big enough, we sent him to market. But the girls have turned out very well and we put them in with one of our breeding rams last month so fingers crossed they took.

This is our market lamb pen.

Not much, I know. And only one of them is being sold for meat. The other two (the two standing in the forefront) are both ewes and we really liked the way they developed so keeping them as future breeding ewes. The pen is pretty empty now but it will be nice and full for the Easter market.

Catch Up

It's been several months since my last post as I was busy getting ready for my oldest daughter's wedding which took place October 8. That's me with my kids and the happy couple.

But we did manage to find time for some exciting events here on the farm as well. Of course we had a couple lambings.

A puppy litter.

Attended dog shows where my daughter's registered dogs won lots of ribbons.

In particular, Hudson, our up and coming stud, did very well winning championship, then grand championship and finally Best in Show.

We finally found time to hook Pixie up to the cart. And she shocked us entirely by knowing exactly what to do. 

She was totally amazing. We took her step by step through the process of introducing a mini to cart but I am completely honest when I say that we did each step once, she passed each test and progressed on to the next level without any problem. Here is a video of her progress. Done all within a couple hours.

We've owned her for four years and have never introduced her to cart. However, it is possible she was trained before we purchased her as a four year old, That mini came to us completely broke and completly amazing. We love this mini.

The baby foal running along next to her is Oakley, the colt she gave birth to back in May. He is getting big fast.

And nearly as tall as his big sister, Blossom, now.

Here's a cute video of him herding the sheep back in the summer when he was still tiny.

Double Egg

Nope, not a double yoke which is exciting enough with my son but a double egg.

He ran down to the barn to inform me that the honking big egg I brought home from work the other day had another egg inside it. I've heard of the myth but never saw one before.

Hay Order

The first crop of hay is just getting cut from the fields around here now. For those of us who don't raise our livestock on pasture, that is a huge relief. Raising sheep, we prefer them to be on second cut as it has more nutrients and the sheep waste very little of it. But still, this year's first cut is better than last years first cut which was what we were feeding the ewes once last year's second cut ran out. So we were thankful when our hay provider contacted us and delivered a large order of hay.

There isn't quite enough to last us until second cut, but fingers crossed we have an early crop. If not, at least we know he has enough if we're still needing it. Nothing makes me happier than seeing all this green stuff in my barn.

Already my ewes are looking nice and plump.

Oh wait, that's just a pregnant ewe! Go ahead and have that baby any down now please!!!

Livestock Racks

Today's project for me was to finish the livestock racks I had begun a couple days ago. We have 8 lambs going to market but still no trailer. But I do have a truck and since they are small enough, they will all fit into the back of my pickup. I decided this time around to make livestock racks or panels instead of a livestock box. I had made one a couple years ago to fit into the back of our pickup truck but found it heavy and cumbersome.

And since I figure I will probably be putting the racks up on my own several times, it would be more convenient to racks rather than a box. So Farm Boy helped me lay out the main pieces and screw them all together.

Then I took a couple days off from the project but it needed to be done today as they go to the market tonight. I didn't have a plan or design in mind and had a hard time finding anything on a Google search, but put together something that I hoped would work. Each piece will be connected with adjustable hooks.

The back rack above the tailgate will have a swing door for easy entry and exit, however I have found the weight of the gate pulls the side panels its screwed in to, down too low. Not a major issue, but annoying. I attempted to correct this by adding a brace between both side racks above the gate, but it didn't make much difference. I will have to do some engineering thinking and figure it out, but till then, as long as it doesn't fall off, it will work just fine.

Since I didn't work from a design or plan, there were some definite mistakes and I will need to go back to the drawing board--and the saw--and make some adjustments. But for tonight, I think it will do its job. There is no roof on my livestock box and don't know yet whether that is a bad thing or not. Experience will tell.

Shearing Day

Yesterday was shearing day here on the farm. It was my first shearing day ever. Previously, I only owned hair sheep, so the experience was new too me. Farm Girl has had several shearing days at her job and was able to give me advice for the set up and what to expect.

I was told to provide the shearers with a sheet of plywood that they could work on so that when the wool came off, it fell onto a reasonable clean surface. I don't have any sorting equipment yet and wasn't sure how I was going to set up. After much discussing, me and Farm Girl decided to use the stall that led out to the runnin. The shearer wanted a small confined area with about ten sheep at a time. The stall worked perfectly. The remaining sheep needing to be sheared were spread out in the other stalls waiting their turn.

The shearers were a two brother team. It took four hours to go through 34 heads of sheep. The remainder were already sheared or heading off to market. The sheep mostly all behaved with the exception of only the one ewe who didn't want to be confined in that small stall with the brothers and kept eyeing the opening to the runnin until finally she made a run for it and leaped the fence gate as seen in the photo above blocking the entrance to the runnin.

When all was done, the boys collected over 250lbs of wool.

They will then deliver the wool to a distributor where it will be cleaned, inspected, graded and weighed. There is no money in wool but at the current prices, I should at least be able to make back the price of shearing. I'll take it. Shearing sheep is more for the comfort of the sheep and should be done annually at least. If ignored and a second years growth begins, that will actually lower the quality of the wool as it will split at the line of new growth when being spinned. So it benefits both the sheep and the shepherd to keep up on shearing.

We only have the one non-wool ewe who needing no shearing. Which was a good thing. Just before the boys arrived, she delivered her baby lamb. Alice was one of the rescues I took on last year when we first moved to the farm. She gave birth to twin stillborns just before Christmas and we thought she wouldn't be a good breeder. However she delightfully proved us wrong and dropped a single ram lamb on the ground.

She turned out to be a terrific mother so will be allowed to remain on the farm. Along with her hair lamb.

I mean really, how can I turn away such a face? Aren't Katahdin lambs just the cutest?

It's a Boy!

Pixie, our miniature, gave birth to a sorrel paint colt early this morning.

Isn't he beautiful?!

I think so too. :-)