Category: Animal Husbandry
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Lawn Mowers
The snow has all melted, and things have dried out enough to get the pregnant ewes out. They needed their spring dewormer. Afterward, as a treat, they got to be lawn mowers around the guesthouse and shop. I sat under the shop porch and watched while reading the mail. They spend a lot of time… Continue reading
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RS Farwasabi: February 18th, 1989 – February 18th, 2009
We lost our senior stallion yesterday to severe colic from a twisted gut. RS Farwasabi was a grandson of both Abu Farwa and Khemosabi. He was trained in dressage, reining, and pleasure, and he was always a gentleman to handle. He was the first purebred Arabian horse we ever bred. He was also a SCID… Continue reading
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Sheep AI, Day Three
Day three proved to be hectic. We had poor post-thaw motility on the frozen semen for some reason, so we had to rearrange and collect the rams again and use fresh, cooled semen. With 56 ewes to inseminate and 15 rams to collect, it was impossible to get any pictures of the proceedings. Our cell… Continue reading
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Sheep AI, Day One
We volunteered to be a test flock for a new sheep AI procedure. The plan for day 1 was to give the ewes their shots to bring them into heat. I didn’t get any pictures of the procedure, as we were working fast to get them all done. For the actual inseminations, we’ll be putting… Continue reading
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Planning Breedings
I have the opportunity to run 14 primary breeding rams this year, plus two backup pens. Each primary ram will only have four ewes, and the backups will each have 28 ewes. This is a chance to use 16 different rams for breeding, an opportunity that is very rare and potentially very valuable. Trying to… Continue reading
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Spare Bovine
We had a spare bull show up at the house yesterday. The neighbor had borrowed a bull to breed his two cows to, and the bull decided to go on a walkabout around the entire mesa. He visited several places, including ours. After strolling past the house, he went back to harass the guard dogs.… Continue reading
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End of Lambing
It’s the 5th of July, and it’s the official end of lambing. We had 73 lambs born, of which six were stillborn. Not too bad! We had four ewes who did not lamb. Two will be butchered, and two will get a second chance next year. Continue reading
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Planting, Marking, Lambing, and More
A lot has been going on, and I haven’t updated this much since we’ve been so busy. The white shed is now completely gone. We still have a few foundation pieces that need removing. They’re rotten logs embedded into the ground, so removing them will take a while. We also had a major hailstorm on… Continue reading
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Sheep Mathematics
Caridwen is a sheep math wizard, or at least an A student. She can count to three! Not only does she feed all three lambs, but if she only has two, she goes in search of the missing one. The way this year’s lambs are running and bouncing around at very young ages makes keeping… Continue reading
