Category: Sheep
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Smart Sheep Aren’t Always Good
Having smart sheep isn’t always a good thing. This is the gate at the bottom of the corral, where the ewe yearlings are living. These brats have figured out how to unclip the chain and untie the baling twine. Now, we have to put enough separate ties on that we can check the gate and Continue reading
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Delivering Hay
Time for morning chores! On a typical day, we first move the ewes out of the pen and close up the gate. Ken then drives a bale in and places it under the hay shed row roof. Finally, we put the hay feeder panels back around the bale, take the twines off, and let the 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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Dry and Delivering Hay
Our dry weather continues. While the East Coast is getting bombarded with snow, we remain in a drought. Without snow, we have no irrigation water, so the lack of decent winter storms is worrying. Meanwhile, we’re continuing to feed out hay. We move the sheep from pen to pen so we can get in with Continue reading
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Hay Delivery and Warm Weather
Today was hay delivery day. We got five big square bales – over a ton of hay. The adult rams, ram yearlings, pregnant ewes, and horses all got fresh bales. Moving to big bales helps us make feeding simpler, but it now also means that the tractor is required. The pond is nearly thawed out 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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Sheep Coats
Here’s my plan for sheep coats. Coat parts from top left to right: 2 assembled leg pieces, chest piece, chest reinforcing, coat body folded in half. A fully assembled sheep coat. A fully assembled sheep coat from the inside. The chest piece is at the top, girth tucks are on the sides, and leg straps Continue reading
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Solar Sheep
Our ram lambs – now yearlings – enjoy eating fresh hay under the solar trees. Continue reading
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Sterling Is in Jail
Little Sterling is the lamb whose mother died when he was only three weeks old. He’s small and stunted, and he can’t live with the rest of the ram lambs. However, he seems willing to try and breed the ewes, so he’s now in a separate pen in the hay barn. We don’t need any 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