Our 4th year of lambing out a flock of sheep has concluded. This year was MUCH smoother than the previous three – the lambs have been generally born healthy, strong, and without complications. There were three ewes who didn’t conceive, one lost pregnancy, one lost lamb, and 42 healthy, bouncing, fast-growing lambs. I don’t know …
Three and a half years ago, when we embarked on our sheep adventure, neither of us had much experience eating lamb, nor had we ever processed a sheep before. As we were disinclined to pay $75+ per lamb for someone else to slaughter and butcher our sheep for us, we rolled up our sleeves, and …
Our daughter tried to put a halter on one of our wilder sheep(Belladonna), but was only able to get it looped around her neck before the sheep escaped. She was unable to get near her again to remove the halter, so it hung around Belladonna’s neck as she wandered about the pen. As Dan fed …
Our first ewes are due on the 24th of February, so we have begun preparing for the expected flood of babies. Five are marked down for the 24th through the 27th, and a few I didn’t get dates for look like they might also join in for that time frame, thus the expected ‘flood’. Haha! …
I know it is only November, but for us, it feels like the year is drawing to a close. We are wrapping up our fences and water hoses to store for winter. The garden is harvested, the barn is ready to house animals, and our schedule is full of butchering and putting away instead of …
The lambs are looking great this year, and the Texel cross experiment has convinced us to add a flock of Texels to our program. Originally we intended to use the Texel as a terminal sire, meaning all his lambs get eaten, not kept for breeding. After talking to a couple breeders, one of which came …
In my last post, everything was mud. Not long after, we were able to get the animals out on grass, moving them through the pasture. There were a few more encounters with mud, since that is how the spring weather tends to go, but now we are dry and warm! We have been moving the …
We had a successful lambing this year. There is a grand total of 50 lambs running about on the farm now. We lost some to various causes, known and unknown, but all the ewes are doing well and the remaining lambs are thriving. They are so much fun to watch at their games, and subsequently …
In the past week we have welcomed the first seven lambs of 2021 into our barn. Three sets of twins and a single, divided as evenly as you can divide an odd number, into boys and girls. Everyone has done well, with minimal intervention needed. Some of the lambs had their legs turned back, and …
We had a beautiful snowfall earlier this week, and Dan took the opportunity to take a video of our backyard and the newly renovated barn. We have installed raised beds for the cows and a manger for the sheep. Our goals with these improvements are cleanliness and waste reduction. So far, so good! The sheep …