Category: Sheep
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Sorting More Sheep
No pictures, but a lot of work. Today, we sorted all of the adult ewes into their breeding pens. I also got the toes trimmed on half of them. We’ve still got to trim toes on the rest of the adult ewes, all of the rams, and all of the lambs, but it’s a start.… Continue reading
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Guard Dog
Winnie is now guarding the adult rams who have not only their winter pen, but the entire west side of the orchard to run in. We’re hoping they’ll clean the ground of fallen apples. 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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Meat Cutting
We had the great opportunity to watch some of our sheep being processed at the slaughterhouse recently. This is the typical carcass of a US-line sheep. The first step is breaking the carcass in half. This is the cross-section. It’s not a very meaty loin compared to some of our sheep. We had one lamb… Continue reading
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Sorting Sheep
We’ve been sorting sheep for fall. We evaluate all of the ewes, rams, and lambs every year to decide who will be dinner, who will stay, and who will be for sale. We’re trying something new this year. After the evaluations were done, those identified for butcher got red ear tags. That way, if people… Continue reading
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Sheep on Pasture
We sorted out the next batch of butcher sheep, and for the first time ever, they had the entire front pear orchard to graze in. There are cockleburrs, so we didn’t want to let the main flock out there, but these sheep are going to be slaughtered in a couple of weeks. The wool doesn’t… Continue reading
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Farm Blather
Today (why always on a weekend?), Becky came in with a huge gash on her side. We have no idea what she did, but after a trip to the emergency vet in Delta 30 miles away, she’s been stitched up. We were given some stuff to keep her from chewing the drain and stitches, but… Continue reading
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Fall Farm Work
While the solar system was being installed, we continued fall farm work. One task was to clean out one of our ditches. Ken used the backhoe to clean it out on September 11th. This area is where we will rebuild the pens for the rams for winter. We have an apple crop this year, and… Continue reading
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Somerset, September 6th, 2008
Another day with Melinda Baker. We sorted and looked at her entire flock, then got to finish two other flocks as well. Here are Melinda’s show sheep, ewe lambs, and wethers. After getting the catch pens set up, we got the sheep into the pen. It was refreshing to see someone else set up pens… Continue reading
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Somerset, September 5th, 2008
My next stop was at Melinda Baker’s farm in Shepton Mallet, Somerset. She had to work for part of the day on Friday, so her husband kindly took the day to take me around and play tourist. This is the chapel of the Marston House. It belonged to the Earls of Cork and Orrey. The… Continue reading