Category: Health
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Where Is the Desert Weyr Farm Store?
If you’ve followed our farm for a while, you’ve probably noticed that we no longer maintain an in-person farm store. It used to be located on the premises of our farm. Where did it go? It’s a bit of a long story. We first closed the farm store down during COVID, and it never really… 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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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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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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Black Welsh Mountain Sheep Characteristics
I use a variety of characteristics to evaluate our flock of Black Welsh Mountain sheep each fall. I also look at their NSIP EBVs for important traits. Every year, I evaluate them to determine who stays, who will be for sale, and who will go to the butcher. We’ve sorted the rams, ewes, and yearlings,… Continue reading
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Shearing (Or Not)
Shearing had started, but then the shearer got badly injured. Now, we’re waiting for a replacement. There are 102 sheep left to shear. Continue reading
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Butchering a Ram
I’m a bit late in writing this post, but I felt that it needed to be written. Last week, we butchered a ram that had broken a leg a long time ago. The leg was healing, but it was crooked, and he was never going to be a breeding ram. Because he was the only… Continue reading
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Ram Health Issues
A while ago, we had a ram yearling die from what we thought were injuries caused by fighting. His bladder had burst. However, yesterday, we had another ram yearling start the same behaviors. One time is just bad luck. Two means you need to look at management to see if you can find a cause… Continue reading
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Sheep Happens
Sadly, we had a ram yearling die today. He’d been injured in a fight. As required, we had to do a post-mortem on him to determine the cause of death. Unfortunately, it was a burst bladder, probably from getting a horn in the belly. We are allowed to bury our animals on our farm, so… Continue reading
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Managed Sheep Grazing
We’ve been moving the sheep to new grass every day or two. We use electric netting to keep them contained in small grazing segments. This allows the grass to rest after grazing, and it’s really improving the quality of our pastures. After all, fresh grass = healthy sheep! Continue reading