An online dictionary defines selection as “carefully choosing something as being the best or most suitable.” When it comes to sheep, there are many factors that go into the process and, in one way or another, some sheep are going to be selected for or against. A shepherd can’t avoid selection; the question is who […]
So if I am honest, the title perhaps overstates the current marking situation of our breeding season since we have only gone through two different crayon colors at this point: yellow and orange. Yet things are looking up, with more markings in our groups every day. Regular readers might recall that we got a very […]
Breeding season began for us this past Saturday. By 5 p.m. each of our ewes had been matched up with the appropriate ram, and each group was given a space where they will stay for the next six to seven weeks. This year we had six people (two teens and four adults) working to get […]
Not all farms keep a ram — and even fewer keep multiple rams. With breeding season coming in only a few weeks, however, those of us with rams have shifted our focus from the gals to the guys in our flocks. Here at Peeper Hollow Farm, we tend to keep 10 to 15 rams, which […]
On June 16 I wrote about my attempt to figure out how ovine spotting works. Researchers have told us that the S-locus is the genetic location that determines spotting and that one copy of the spotting gene causes top-of-head and tip-of-tail spotting, while two copies create much more than that. But how that is determined […]
This is the time of year when nearly everything I do is focused on the coming breeding season. In the process of setting up our breeding groups, I try to select rams and ram lambs who will not let me down, who will go into their breeding groups focused on the ewes before them. The […]
On Monday, I began to discuss how we put together our breeding groups and had gotten to having put together the framework – the rams in columns and the ewes in rows – of our breeding charts. The next step is to determine the relationship coefficient between each of our rams of a breed with […]
It is hard to believe, but breeding season is less than five weeks away, beginning for us this year on Saturday, September 16th. Everyone goes about setting up their breeding groups in a different way. Some shepherds will keep only one ram, and every ewe they own will go in with that one guy. They […]
Every year, we add a number of new lambs to our ewe flock in hopes that they will eventually help to produce future generations. Some of them breed the first fall, but most will wait to breed in future years. I generally expect to feed these young girls well throughout their first year or two […]
This is the time of year when we reconfigure our flock for the coming breeding season. I constantly tell new shepherds that hard decisions must be made for the good of the flock and its future. Without those choices, the flock doesn’t move forward and cannot remain competitive in the market, which will eventually threaten […]