Category: Animal Husbandry
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Ongoing Drought and Lambs for Sale
The drought shows no signs of stopping, and irrigation continues to be troublesome. We’ve had to haul water in for many of our sheep. As such, we’ve decided to reduce our breeding flock by half to lighten the load. This is a great time to add high-quality breeders to your Welsh Mountain sheep flock! Check… Continue reading
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Irrigation Troubles and Moving the Rams
Our irrigation ditch is turning off this Saturday, August 2nd. We’ve been moving sheep to get them closer to the house. That way, we can more easily haul water to them if necessary. We do have a pond that holds water, and the adult rams have access to it in the lower pear orchard pasture.… Continue reading
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Irrigation System Work and Poetry
Today, we had to take a trip up to Juniper Gulch to service the irrigation system. Unfortunately, it hasn’t been working, and the part we’ve needed to fix it isn’t available anymore. Ken spent all day at his metal lathe making a new one, so now we need to go install it and see if… Continue reading
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Remembering Desert Weyr Boba Fett
Desert Weyr Boba Fett went to the freezer on the 26th of June, 2025. He was born on May 2nd, 2019, and was the son of Desert Weyr Wibbly and Desert Weyr Yolanda. He was born unassisted and weighed 9.79 pounds at birth. He grew to reach 145.74 pounds. His NSIP USA Maternal EBV Index… Continue reading
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We’re Back With a New Shop! Plus Conservation
Did you know that our farm property is in a conservation easement? Our land is preserved for farming for the future. In Colorado, the land trust puts out a resource that shows where all of the conserved farms and ranches are. It also lists the goods you can buy from them. Now is the perfect… Continue reading
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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 of these sheep are trained to electric nets for… Continue reading
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Not Dead Yet!
OK, so posting on this blog has been low on my priority list, and it hasn’t been getting done lately. However, both the farm and the sheep are doing well, despite almost no online activity. 2020 lambing has finished successfully. We had 23 ewes bred and 43 live lambs. No stillborns and no triplets, which… Continue reading
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2019 Lambing Is Done!
Lambing for 2019 has officially finished. We bred 36 ewes, and every single one of them became pregnant. This is a first for us! Usually, at least one ewe fails to conceive. Sadly, we lost two ewes. One was an accident, and the other was pregnancy toxemia. Our lambing percentages were decent – 57 live… Continue reading
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AI Class Results
We’ve finished our first round of lambing, and the AI Class results are in. Nine total ewes lambed to AI, giving a 26% result. However, as everyone knows, we had some straw failures and other issues where the ewe did not get proper doses of semen. If I remove those sheep from the group, 28… Continue reading
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Scone Recipe and AI Class, Completed
We hosted a class on sheep artificial insemination during the first week of December. Eleven students from all over North America came to learn about the non-surgical AI procedure that Dr. Purdy developed. Students got to practice thawing straws of frozen semen and performing the procedure on our sheep. All told, we inseminated 34 ewes.… Continue reading