Fall Ewe Sales List
Our fall sheep sales list is now available. At Desert Weyr we breed Black Welsh Mountain sheep. Our flock is the only performance recorded flock in the world of this breed. Black Welsh Mountain sheep are a small sheep that is ideally suited to small farmsteads. All...
Hungry Sheep
Our pastures are now functioning as exercise lots. There is no feed to speak of in them so we are putting hay bales out for the sheep to eat. We've done this before during drought and the increased fertilizer from the sheep eating in a concentrated area has improved...
Garden Bounty
I have a black thumb. I have been known to kill plants easily. However this year my stepdad is staying up here and he always has a garden so we're doing one too. It's been a wild success, lots of peppers and tomatoes and even a large batch of peas not to mention the...
Dog days of Summer
Leena and some of the lambs resting in the shade. It's summer, very hot and back in major drought. We're getting the weather we normally get in late July and early August in late June and early July. The guard dogs are still on the job though. Leena and her lambs...
2019 Lambing Done!
Lambing for 2019 has finished. We bred 36 ewes and every single ewe got pregnant. This is a first for us. Usually at least 1 ewe fails to conceive. Sadly we lost 2 ewes. One to an accident and one to pregnancy toxemia. Our...
AI Class Results
We've finished our first round of lambing and the AI Class results are in. Total ewes bred via AI was 34. Total ewes lambing to AI was 9 giving a 26% lambing. However, as everyone knows we had some straw failures and other issues where the ewe did not...
Scone Recipe and AI Class Completed
We hosted a class in sheep artificial insemination the first week of December. 10 students from all over the US and even one from Canada came to learn about non-surgical procedure that Dr. Purdy has developed. Students got to practice thawing straws of frozen semen...
How I got 15 meals from a 9 pound Heritage Turkey
Thanksgiving is over. For the last several years we haven’t had turkey on Thanksgiving because I was not able to get a locally raised heritage bird. I like the flavor and I want to support rare breeds so if I can’t get a bird raised like I want it we’ll choose...
Freezer Management
One of the hardest things to manage when you use chest freezers for storing meat for sale is how to handle the depths of the freezer and not lose track of what you have. I’ve discovered a few tricks over the years that are applicable to anyone with a chest freezer. My...
So How Do I Ship Sheep Anyway?
So you're buying sheep from across the country. What's involved from the time you agree to purchase sheep until your new sheep arrive at your farm? Well the rules vary a lot but here are the basic things you will need to deal with. Paperwork Every livestock shipment...