Category: Research
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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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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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Non-Surgical Sheep Artificial Insemination Seminar
The American Black Welsh Mountain Sheep Association and Desert Weyr, LLC are pleased to announce an intensive two-day seminar on non-surgical sheep artificial insemination taking place on December 5th and 6th of 2018. Dr. Philip Purdy from the USDA National Animal Germplasm Program will be teaching our class. The class will cover important AI topics,… Continue reading
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What Are Clusters, Anyway?
Black Welsh Mountain sheep in North America are highly inbred. Our founding population was very small, so we do not have much variation from which to select. The USDA’s National Animal Germplasm Program performed a cluster analysis study on the population. This study looked at individual pedigree information and the population as a whole, then… Continue reading
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Ram Semen Collection
I’m behind in posting here, as per usual. We spent a week in October working with the USDA NAGP to collect and freeze semen from our rams. Some will be used later this year in our flock as part of their AI experiment. We’ll be using it to fine-tune the insemination timing of synchronized ewes… Continue reading
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Lambing Lull
We’re now officially in the lambing lull. It’s the break between when the AI lambs and the secondary lambs are due. It’s been a busy and somewhat difficult lambing so far. Our AI experiment was a rousing success this year! Of the 44 ewes we bred using the AI cervical procedure using frozen semen, 22… Continue reading
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Sheep AI Work
We are once again doing research with the USDA National Animal Germplasm program. This year, we are collecting blood samples and other data on the ewes to evaluate their ovulation stats. The experiment calls for blood collections every hour, so we have a lot of work to do. We had our vet put catheters in… Continue reading
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Lambing and LambTracker
Most of this past year has been spent working on LambTracker, our open-source flock management program. As a result, this blog has been totally neglected. My Twitter feed has been the one thing I’ve kept up with. It’s a lot easier to send a quick tweet than it is to write a decent blog post!… Continue reading
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December Breeding Season
We are once again participating in the USDA NAGP research project for non-surgical AI in sheep. We synchronized the ewes, then teased them through the fence with the live rams. All 24 experimental ewes were very interested! Fortunately, the coming storm held off until after the big insemination day. Now, we have a lot of… Continue reading
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New AI Lambs!
The first of our USDA experiment lambs has arrived. It’s a nice ram lamb. We have 3 experimental ewes to go. All of them should lamb within the next two to three days if all goes well. Continue reading