Every shepherd always wants ewe lambs. Of course, to keep a breeding flock, rams are a necessity, and you don’t have adult rams unless at one point there were ram lambs – but the fact is that we need many fewer rams than ewes. When it comes to lambs to keep or to sell, ewe […]
For most of our shepherding years, we’ve had our ewes ultrasounded after breeding. When I first heard of ultrasounds for sheep, I thought back to my pregnancy ultrasounds, which were rather expensive. I was fairly certain that we couldn’t afford to do the same for our sheep — and have it done on our farm, […]
We ultrasound our ewes each December in order to learn the number of fetuses and their approximate gestational age. The cost of the procedure is far outweighed by the savings in feed costs (since we feed each ewe according to her gestational needs), so ultrasounding provides information regarding the lambing season to come as well […]
My life has been incredibly busy of late — which explains the recent absence of blog postings. I suddenly sat up in bed late last night, realizing that although I thought I had been almost keeping up with my to-do list, I had totally forgotten to post blogs on Monday and Wednesday. Rick and I […]
On Monday, October 23, I wrote about a mystery illness that has been popping up among sheep flocks here and there. We’ve seen it here, and I’ve gotten multiple calls from shepherds who have heard that I’ve been trying to figure it out – they have seen it in their flocks, too. It isn’t particularly […]
A shepherd friend in Minnesota asked whether I’ve made a list of when we do what during the shepherding year. Over the years I have researched and studied all kinds of sheep-related things — the optimum time for breeding in our region, the best way to set up breeding for multiple lambs, the best time […]
On July 26 of this year, I wrote about my attempt to determine the cause of a mysterious bacterial illness that struck two of our lambs this past spring. After seventeen years as a shepherdess, I’ve both experienced and heard from others about quite a few illnesses that appear in flocks of sheep, but this […]
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 […]