Category: Health
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We Lost a Ram
Our ram, Desert Weyr Kirk, died today. We had a veterinarian conduct a postmortem to find out why. He had a perforated stomach from an ulcer, and he had peritonitis. It was probably the result of the injuries he sustained in his feeder accident back in May. Continue reading
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Off to Wales!
While Ken stayed home to care for the farm, I headed off to Wales again to continue my judge training. The goal is to become an approved judge for Black Welsh Mountain sheep eventually. My journey started with an uneventful flight from Grand Junction to Dallas. Next, I flew overnight from Dallas to London Heathrow,… Continue reading
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Spring Work Continues
The last couple of days, we’ve been vaccinating the sheep and doing toe trims. I can’t do too many toes before my hands give out, so we do them in batches. The pregnant ewes are now completely done, except for the spring dewormer. I do that 24-48 hours before we turn them out on pasture,… Continue reading
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Spring Tune-Ups Have Started
It’s time to start the first part of the sheep’s annual spring tune-up. The yearling rams all got tags inserted and toes trimmed. 30 sheep, times four legs per sheep, times two toes per leg, means my hands are tired! Continue reading
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Ewe Sorting and Lamb Vaccinations
We got one batch of ewes sorted out today. This group will go to the live cover ram as a control for the AI procedure. They’re now all sorted into breeding pens, and they’ve had their fall dewormer to kill nose bots. The potential AI girls are now in the other pen, closest to the… Continue reading
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Culinary Students, Ram Sorting, and Chicken Processing
The culinary school students came back today for more farm work. Today, we evaluated all of the adult rams, trimmed toes, and gave dewormer as needed. We then took a field trip to Karla’s to pick up our chickens, which were butchered yesterday. The students got to see a bit of the butchering process. Next,… Continue reading
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Labor Day Labors
Today, we had four students from the Culinary School of the Rockies out to help on the farm and learn about where food comes from. We had a busy day! Starting at 7:30 this morning, we worked on most of the flock. We had several tasks to perform. The most important one was vaccinating all… Continue reading
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Sheep Happens
You never quite know what can happen during morning chores. This morning, after feeding all of the critters, we were watching the adult rams. One was being chased by both Becky and the other rams. We’ve learned that when that happens, you must get the picked-on sheep out of the pen, or he’ll get injured.… 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 Postmortem
We lost a ram lamb today. He’d been looking off for over a week. We’d separated him to a small pen to keep an eye on him. He wouldn’t eat or drink, but he’d eat fresh snow. We gave him Nutridrench, propylene glycol, and warm malt liquid. I couldn’t figure out what was wrong. He… Continue reading