Never Say Never

We had seriously considered not producing any more lambs.  The barn is full of animals and I don't want to 'get rid of' anyone, either selling into another flock or <shudder> send to auction.  As we have chosen to discontinue the freezer lamb part of the farm business it was hard to justify producing animals without a specific need or purpose.  And, knowing how long our sheep tend to live (we have three right now who are fifteen years old) part of our long range plan was to let the flock dwindle from natural causes until in a dozen years there would be just a few that us old farmers could manage.

But.....having been contacted by a few buyers who really, really wanted lambs in the future we decided (OK, it was pretty much just me) that we'd expose a maximum of ten ewes to three different rams.  While my decision to not breed again didn't hold, I can say that we are D-O-N-E with trying to shear and lamb in frigid winter weather.  Sheep gestation falls quite reliably between 145 and 149 days so one does the math, looks at the calendar and sets the schedule.  The boys were put with ewes in mid-December so the earliest possible lambing date is after I return from the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival in May.  Likewise, they are scheduled to come out shortly so that the last possible date will be before I attend the Central New York Fiber Festival.

In the non-Cotswold group we have big handsome Brick in with Taffy, Macaroon, Tiffany and Violet.  They are all super crimpy medium wools, and Brick should add some length and solid body to them.  All except Taffy carry moorit genes (Tiffany herself actually is a moorit herself so that will double her odds) but the color is a recessive trait so it will depend on how the genetic dice roll.   I would love to get a moorit lamb or two as some of my very old girls like Ruby and Foxy won't be around much longer.  All have been covered by him and Taffy has repeated.  I'm not too surprised since she's fat as a market hog over conditioned and may not conceive at all but I'm hoping his full attention during the second heat will have done the trick. 

Old Isador is the last able-bodied F1 (first generation) Cotswold ram from the AI we had done ten years ago using a British ram and I really hated to not ever see lambs from him again especially since I have such nice young ewes who aren't related to him.  He has a group of three -  Paige, Peggy and Olivia.

The third group is exposed to the young colored Cotswold Norris.  He has three ewes - Lovey, Ophelia and Oleander.  Lovey is two-tone gray like Norris.  The other two ewes are white but have colored parents so the chances of colored lambs from them is high.  And white would be OK too as I'm sure the fleeces will be lovely.  They are housed in a long but narrow ad hoc pen which will be fine for a limited time frame. 

Once the rams have been returned to the bachelor barn the ten ewes will be housed together in the last pen on the floor where Isador's group is now.  We can feed them most appropriately if they are together. 

So the die is cast!  We'll be lambing in May when the sun is shining and the grass is growing! 

The "Un"-Breeding Season

For the first time since.... let's see.... about 1987 we aren't going to breed any ewes this year.  We certainly aren't giving up sheep (we have coughcoughmorethanevercough) but we decided to declare a moratorium on creating any more, at least for a year.  There are several reasons, none dire, but we both need a break to catch up on things.  I need to make a dent in this mountain of accumulated wool.  Andy needs to put a new roof on a chunk of the house, make repairs (or just finish started projects) in house and barn, we still have 2 standing silos that we'd like taken down (they have to be cleaned out first) and breeding season, lambing season and growing the youngsters eats up a lot of time and mental energy.  Further, I always seem to keep back several more lambs than I intend because they're friendly or just what I want fiber-wise or bottle babies or been nursed back to health or good quality for breeding stock or whatever. Add to that the fact that it's getting harder emotionally each year to send loads of lambs to slaughter.  Andy pointed out that if lambs from this spring stay in the flock and live their usual double-digit lifespans he'll be into his 70s by the time they go to greener pastures and I think he'd like to not be putting up hay and handling big animals by that time.  We aren't selling any of the rams so we can always rethink things by next year when we've hopefully gotten caught up on at least the big jobs.

The rams are acting rammy with each other but not making a big fuss.  There's a little more pushing and shoving and growling at each other but very little head butting.  They already have a pecking order and there are no ewes anywhere near them to get thoughts stirred up.  This morning they were all standing in the sun (sun! yay!) waiting for us to let them into the larger pasture.

Nigel is one of our home bred Cotswolds.  He carries color and can throw colored lambs when mated to colored ewes.

I still haven't replaced that dratted ear tag but he's not going anywhere.......

Neville is our other home bred Cotswold but he has all white genetics in his background.  His fleece also has smaller curls.  He's super sweet tempered, politely standing next to you until you rub his back and tell him he's a good sheep.

One of my half-British boys from our AI venture several years ago.  I like his square back and rump.  His fleece is very lustrous but lacking in curl, having loose waves instead.  I've been working to get both that shine plus improved curls.  That's one of the most intriguing things about having your own flock (or herd of anything) - trying each year to get the right blend of his traits plus her traits to produce offspring better than either parent.

Here is Titan, left, and BB (aka Mr. B) on the right.  Titan is a colored Cotswold from Break Loose Farm.  He's not as friendly as my homegrown boys but he's certainly not aggressive.  (Middle guy is another half-Brit of ours. Small locks and quite white but not so much luster.)

Wee Little Guy, who was a very sad orphaned lamb who is now a big love bug.

Castillo, also sweet and with really cool hair.  ;-)

The ewes seem rather put out that there are no manly men around.  Mickey, a wether about 3 years old, will talk dirty to them but there isn't much action involved.  The good part of our 'un'-breeding season is that the whole flock can still go out to pasture.  Granted, there isn't much grass left but at least they can get out of the barn and sit in the fields and get some fresh air.  We fill the hay feeders every night and by morning most of it is gone so they're getting plenty either way.

It was so warm (to them) that they all came in off pasture at midday to have a drink and stand in the shade. They saw me in the barn and came storming in, probably thinking I was going to open a side gate and let them into another pasture.  Three days in a tired pasture creates boredom apparently.

"Hey, what's everybody looking at??"

Soon we'll have to really bring them off pasture for good.  Coats will go on and hay will be the only item on the menu.  I love seeing them right now before they get hay trash on their faces and covered up by the coats.

Lots of Cotswold curls.

And not Cotswold.

And lots of sheep with character.

Bunny

Flopsy

Daisy (chewing)

Ashes and Tuxedo

 Angelica

Nugget

Bacardi

Tiffany

Minnie

Matilda

Salsa

Fortune

Lovey

Madeline

Fuzz

Kim

Yup, everyone has a name.  Maybe with more time next spring I'll be able to post everyone's baa-ography.

Looking Good

Sunday we finished readying the new pens for sheep, divided the ewes into their groups and introduced the rams late in the afternoon.

So far everything is working very well.  We have automatic waterers in most pens.  We only have to carry buckets to three groups and they are the smallest and so have the least water consumption.  I like these black water troughs from Tractor Supply.  They are large enough to allow 2-3 animals to drink at once but fairly shallow so if it gets dirty and needs cleaning it's not a big job.  Andy built an elevated platform for each trough so it wouldn't get bedding kicked into it.  The edges of the box come up a couple of inches so the trough can't get pushed off if the sheep crowd it.  We've found that they like to chew on the hoses sometimes - recreational destruction - so the hoses are shrouded in flexible plastic drainage pipe to keep sheep lips off.  Nugget, on the left, is bummed that we took all the fun out of it and it's just....water.  Most of the lambs are in the big "non-breeding" group which includes all adult ewes who aren't being bred for various reasons but we put this pen to use housing some of the smaller lambs who we want to make sure get enough to eat and don't get bossed around by the big ewes.  That's Daisy standing up front and center, Fortune a little blurry to the right and Fawn partially hidden on the bottom left.

A bit better view of Fortune.

She looks thin here but she's not, it's just the camera angle.  I can't get into the pen with them without being nearly trampled with affection which is great fun but not when you're trying to take pictures.

And little Snubby who is doing just fine although she always has something to say - loudly - about every situation.  I caught her chewing - not flattering - and had the shutter speed so slow to catch the light that things are a bit blurry.

Flopsy.  Her ears swivel independently like a cartoon animal and she's getting cute brown freckles on her nose.

We put Danielle in with the lambs.  Having had a stroke or two and being ten years old this year we thought she would benefit from minimal competition. She has a perpetual slight head tilt and doesn't turn to the right worth beans.  I think she has a lot of character in her face, kind of like Bette Davis after her stroke (and I mean that kindly and respectfully to both parties).  Interestingly, she and Snubby have struck up a friendship.  Animals.  They know.

Next to the lambs we penned Ian and eleven Cotswold ewes.  He's behaving himself very well.  We were a bit concerned that he might lust after the lambs but apparently the older girls are keeping him plenty occupied.  Wouldn't you know he'd turn his head just as I took the picture.

We're trying three ram lambs with small groups this year.  They are all taking to the task with enthusiasm.  This is Nigel, trying to convince Lovey she's in heat.  He is from a colored mom so should give me some colored Cotswold lambs from at least some of these colored ewes.  His fleece is showing good curl and really nice luster.  Ian is doing the heavy lifting this year with the other colored and color-carrying Cotswolds.  It's too many for a lamb to manage but if he does give me some colored lambs he'll be promoted next year and have a group of about twenty.

"Do you mind?!  This is hard enough without an audience.  Sheesh."

 

"Whatever, kid.  Just don't mess up my curls."

 

This is Neville.  He's auditioning to take Lucky's place in a year or so.  He's built nicer than the picture suggests and has good curls with a very small britch area.  He's been working the ladies like a pro, so he's got at least one talent.  Heh.

 

 

Everybody should have a job they're good at.  ;-)

More Building

Breeding season for the flock has finally arrived.  While our plan is to breed fewer ewes than last year (OK, it was almost 80.  Clearly I was delusional and the only thing that saved the situation was that many ewes only had singles.  I won't play that particular version of Russian Roulette again!) we still felt the need for more floor space to reduce crowding.

Short of building an addition onto the barn - NOT going to happen and if it did it would be because I would be living in it - the only direction to go was deeper into the main part of the dairy barn which we've been using for hay storage.  The project actually got started last spring.  If we had had a repeat of 2012's drought we would have had to have the whole flock in the barn again and there just wouldn't be room.  Thankfully the weather and pastures provided the flock with abundant forage so the task was set aside as more pressing things came to the fore.

The approach of breeding season and the multiple rams we use brought the need for the extra space back to the top of the priority list.

Andy is a wonder. In the past two weeks he has cemented in the gutter and built a space 24' by 32' that can be divided into two sections.  All the lumber came from trees from our woods that he ran over the sawmill to get the material he needed.  He also had to replace the long flourescent lights in that part of the barn with new fixtures and incandescent/halogen bulbs.  We have some early-version CFLs in other areas and hate-hate-hate them....but they're paid for so we're going to use them till they die, which can't be soon enough.  The new lights are a hundred times better but it's still wonky to take photos so apologies in advance for the quality.

 

The center panel is removable.  We decided to try using the same metal gridwork for this divider as we use for the hay feeders.  It's very strong but lighter in weight than a similar panel made all of wood.  If there are any drawbacks to the design I'm sure we'll discover them.  The large posts sticking up are set in the concrete that fills the old gutter and help anchor and stabilize everything.  I told Andy he ought to use a chainsaw and carve them into sheep totem poles.  I got "a look" for my suggestion ;-)

 



The panel bolts into place rather than working on hinges.  If we need to have groups separated we don't want to trust the latch of a hinged gate to keep them apart.....

 

The hay feeder is the same design as we've done previously and we added an upper board to keep chaff from falling down on the sheep's heads and necks.  And.....drumroll...... Andy built swinging gates in strategic places to manage traffic flow.  Seen above, the gate is folded back flush to the front of the pen.

 

 

Swung open, it shunts the sheep to the left and toward the open gate of the pen which in turn blocks the alleyway and gives a sheep no choices about taking a more scenic route.  It's a given that they would do that.  (Pardon the pile of debris - it will get picked up before any sheepies head this way.)

 

 

Since he was in full building mode, Andy also made two other gates down in the older section of the barn which function to make an alley between the east and west sections of the barn. They are folded back flat to the feeders when not needed....

 



....but swing and latch to make a quick conduit between the two areas.  Gone are the days of having to go find 2 sheets of plywood or four small lamb jug panels to make a passage.  Woot!

Tomorrow we have some finishing up to do and then the ewes have to be divided.  Later in the afternoon when they've settled in a bit we'll bring the rams down and put each in with his harem. 

Once the sheep are all organized for the duration we can get back to work!