The ewe who got sick with what was probably a very rapid E coli infection from being born in dirt is dead now. She had a seizure and it was over.
So no baker’s dozen for us. But we have a leaping, frolicking dozen lambs remaining, 8 boys, 4 girls.
No pictures, went ahead and called the vet. Husband and I had to shear/trim the infected areas where, well, flies had gotten in. DO NOT IMAGE SEARCH FOR FLY STRIKE OR FLYSTRIKE. Unless you have a strong stomach.
Apparently it happens to lambs even in cooler climates like ours. Hopefully the little guy will pull through.
A friendly acquaintance needed to find their chickens a more rustic home, so we offered to take them since we were wanting to try chickens over ducks this year. Pictures hopefully this weekend, my husband is working out the final roaming/run area for them. Right now they are parked in our front yard and getting stirred up by a very silly little big girl.
Speaking of, I might call her Ram Tamer, since that is what she’s done. Our rams now will stand still for petting due to her valiant and persistent efforts at feeding them by hand. They are “right” kind of tame, not the kind of tame where you can get head butted (which usually is from roughhousing with lambs too often).
We managed to get all the lambs vaccinated with their initial shots today. As is the case with many folks who do not farm full-time, we have been trying to change our electronet over to other types of fencing, but we aren’t done yet, so it’s still up. Our solution to the entanglement issue is boosting the charge with a plug-in charger instead of a solar one. And it’s only on one side instead of two, so that’s a sort of progress.
We also got the shearing for spring done, I may offer some of that in July, it looks much nicer than I thought it would. I hope to have some more pictures up Monday of the sheared sheep. In the meantime, here is a picture of some ferns.
Pretty cute ferns!
This used to be a massive blackberry thicket.
Grey and Ripley love hanging out up here in the shade. I wouldn’t enjoy sticks under me, but I’m no sheep.
You can really see the slope and how they tore into the blackberry here.
This was much more brownish-yellow before the sheep got to it.
Now that’s the start of some soil fertility.
Not a golf course yet, but maybe someday? Hehe.
Miracle or mundane?
The sheep are doing a pretty decent job. As much as we fret about how terrible and sparse our pasture is, right now the sheep cannot eat as fast as new growth comes in, and that’s from all their stompyfoot and grazing and pooping. So it is getting better, but the process is years-long no matter how hungry the little sheeps are. (The older kids call them “sheeps”).
Recently we rooed one of the ram lambs, Dingus. It was a pretty successful experiment, we got a lot of fleece off him. We are going to try rooing the entire flock and shearing whatever doesn’t roo off ourselves instead of doing a professional spring shear. This will avoid the “carpet” look of spring fleeces and also provide more open locks for spinning instead of a more felting-friendly dense wool.
I also snagged a few locks from the other rams while feeding them.
Locks from Scottie, Dingus and Bucky, from left to right. The crumbly bits at the bottoms of the locks are mostly dirt or skin flaking. Both wash right out and are not a processing problem.
Rooed fleece from Dingus. Looser and more open than if we’d sheared, as it’s the natural wool break, so the denser new growth stays on the sheep instead of matting.
More of Dingus’ fleece. It looks a lot more like the fall shearing this way, which is why if an Icelandic shepherd can roo their flock, it’s really a great way to collect the spring wool.
It’s all soggy and and swampy. The sheep are looking ok, but we’ll have to watch out for worm load. With all the rain we are definitely learning what all needs to be fixed/patched during summer when it’s drier. Still not sure how to deal with some of the soggy areas near the barn.
Everyone’s settled into the sniffles, and the baby has settled into not sleeping at night because that’s what little babies do best.
That’s all for now, I should try to get more pictures even with the rain because I need to set conditioning baselines for future lambs and pictures will help more than my soggy memory.
The pregnant ewes are finally all together with their daughter lambs, and all the rams are together, which will make management easier. The breeding pen was not really set up for hay feeding, but now we have two groups with access to the hay feeders, so that will go easier.
It’s been a really mild winter, grass is already coming up. We should have fairly rich pasture this year with the extra time. Still had to order more hay though, and we also have to fix a barn leak so we can safely use the remaining hay. That’ll be fun.
We’ll try to get some hoof trims and worm checks in this month, while the ewes are not too heavily pregnant and then just focus on minerals and adequate hay until lambing season.
We’re breeding Shaft to the four adult ewes. This is him trying to persuade Goldie that now is the time for all good ewes to get bred and bear a pair of wonderfully fleecy twins next spring.
She’s not a fan.
Badgerface is in there too, those were the two ewes we managed to move over to the breeding pen. We are going to get our two largest ewes, Black N Tan and Grey, moved over sometime this week, as weather and ability permit.
Our rams are both yearlings now and it’s interesting to see how different they look. Shaft is a giant brown puffball who will produce a long, soft, really nice fleece for the fall shearing. Bucky is a big hunk of ivory colored muscle and density, who will provide an excellent dressing percentage when his breeding days are over.
Even though both rams were “bred for good fleeces and solid meat conformation”, they each clearly favor one trait over the other. Wool and meatiness as traits are sadly not all that complementary. A lot of breeders spend years on end and multiple breeding groups trying to thread the needle and get a Bucky-level of meatiness with a Shaft-like soft, high-value fleece. Sometimes they get there, but just seeing the starkness of the difference was valuable.
The two traits work against each other to some extent because growing lots of wool takes away from building up muscle, as both require protein. Milkiness or milkability (not the same, the latter is a group of traits really) are more complementary, as we have some serious milkiness in our ewes despite fleece quality ranging from felt to possibly fall-level ok in a spring fleece. And temperament is much the same– Bucky is a very gentle ram and we will totally work to keep that going in the flock, as a jerkish ram is a lot more trouble than a jerkish ewe.
So while we have breeding goals, we aren’t expecting to get exactly what we want with a specific trait just because we picked stock with “good genetics”. It’s also been instructive to see Bucky’s offspring and the range there between his genetics and those of the mothers.
Tricky stuff, genetics.
Food, Farming and Faith in Snohomish County 