Herding Dog?

Oldest has allowed me to start working with Ivy in herding the sheep.  Ivy is a very nervous dog and often is easily frightened so I wasn't sure if she was up for the challenge or confident enough to complete the task.  However, I've been putting her in the sheep's pen a couple times to keep them back while I feed one or two and she has shown remarkable confidence.  Even when the ram challenges her.  She might have potential after all.

Development

Well, I'm no expert but I do believe we have some new development.  As in udder development.  We study our girls daily and maybe that might be slightly obsessive but we noticed the beginnings of what we believe are the beginnings of growing udders.

Cocoa is our biggest girl and is not only wide but has a big belly however her udder is still underdeveloped compared to others so she may not be expecting for a couple of months yet.  But at her size, it's possible she may throw us twins.

The above is Ugly Betty's small udder.  She is the ram's favourite ewe but we don't expect her to deliver for a couple months as well.

Dark Carmella, surprisingly, looks to be the furthest along.  I'm suspecting another month with her and more than likely going by her size, she is carrying just the single lamb.

Lastly, our smallest ewe has udder development which is udderly disappointing.  She has looked pregnant now for several months so if she does deliver she could possibly have some major problems.  If she delivers multiples, it could be fatal.  We will continue to watch udder growth and hopefully we have a lamb crop after all this year and that all are healthy happy little bouncing lambs.

Evaluating My Girls

I've been studying my sheep daily for the last several months and have noted noticeable differences in them.  I in no way know which is better than the other but have my opinions.  We will be scoring them in the next couple days and will give the results of that afterward and do a comparison to see how far off I am in eyeing a "good" ewe over a "bad" ewe.

These first two ewes are what I believe to be my best sheep.  Cocoa is my largest ewe.

Cocoa

She is nice and wide and full. And wooly.  My sheep are hair sheep so not sure about this appearance of wool.  We will see if it will shed in the spring.  It shed last spring so am expecting it to do so again, however, it is far more wooly this year than it was last.  I question whether Cocoa is purebred or not because of both her coat and her frame.  She looks like what I think the typical sheep looks like.  Katahdins are more lean than square.  Cocoa has a wide backend that makes her look more squarish.  She also looks pregnant but am not holding my breath for that.

I am thinking she is suffering from an extended rumen that some other sheep and goats are suffering from in my barn.  I don't believe it's bloat as it's been this way for a very, very long time and they would be long gone and dead by now.  Instead, I think it happened during the development of the rumen when they were lambs.  Lack of nutrients or minerals could have caused an inproper development of the rumen.  Or she's pregnant. :)  But since I'm no doctor, I'll leave the diagnosis to the experts.

Mary is my favourite ewe in appearance.  She was the perfect little lamb when we brought her home hence the name in honor of the nursery rhyme.

Mary, in my opinion, is the perfect ewe.  Out of my flock.  She can still do for some growing, but out of my little flock of misfits, she appears to be the best proportioned.

Nice full frame, rounded backend, straight topline, nice coat, and no distorted rumen.  And she seems to be the happiest of all the ewes.  It isn't uncommon to look in their pen and find her leaping around like a baby lamb.

After these first two, I would say the Carmella sisters are our best ewes.  Now, I really have no idea whether they are sisters or not, but that's how I've always identified them.  Light Carmella (left) and Dark Carmella (right).  

After Mary, Light Carmella is my next favourite looking ewe.  Like Mary, she is well proportioned, has a great coat, nice colour and is the tallest of all the sheep.  However, she is slightly slimmer than Mary but I think she'll still grade well.  Dark Carmella is not far behind her but is slightly shorter and thinner.  However, she's been hungrier lately so I've been giving her a little more helping of feed then the others and it's beginning to show.  That's her below on the right.  As you can see, she has been gaining weight thanks to the increase in her diet.  Neither of the Carmella's suffer from extended rumens.

Lastly, we have the two bottom ewes.  Ugly Betty is not nearly as pretty as the other ewes, but she is one of my personal favourites.

She sits at the bottom of the hierarchy order amongst the ewes.  I feed the lambs individually to ensure everyone gets the same amount of feed, however, Ugly Betty has not gained the weight as the others.  She is average height, slender, and slightly underweight.  Though I see lots of room for improvement with her, so will keep at it and possibly might increase her feed intake as well.  At feeding time, all the sheep crowd the gate waiting to be fed first, Ugly Betty keeps to the back and doesn't even attempt to join the mob.  That's because she knows when it's her turn, I simply have to swing my leg over the pen panel and all the sheep go fleeing.  Except for Ugly Betty.  That is when she parts her way through the ewes, heads for the gate and slips out easily without any crowding.  And that is why she is my favourite.  I don't have any other connection with any of the other sheep like I do with her.  She simply waits quietly for my signal and then calmly walks out of the pen.  Love it.

The ewe I place at the bottom would definitely have to be Freckles.

She is the smallest, shortest, and thinnest ewe.  She doesn't have much of a backend and appears to be suffering badly from a case of extended rumen.  That's her on the left next to Ugly Betty.

Actually, after looking at the above photo she doesn't look as bad as she once did.  In fact, it appears her weight is starting to spread out more evenly.  However, in comparison to Betty, it's still not as proportioned as I would like it to be.

As I said, in the next couple days me and Farm Girl planning on scoring their body conditions and see exactly how they are doing.  Fingers crossed that everyone will be able to head out to pasture beginning of April but sadly, the weather does not want to co-operate.  We had one or two days of warm weather, then the snow returned.  Sigh, very discouraging.  It gets costly feeding them on hay and feed and truthfully, there isn't anything better for a rumen stomach then pasture grass.  Maybe then we will see improvements once again, and maybe just maybe, we'll get these gals bred.

A Shepherdess's Best Tool

I have discovered the best tool a shepherd or shepherdess could ever have.  And no, it's not one of these.

Though I do plan on owning a working border collie some day.  Tip:  Never ever buy a non-working border collie who was someone's pet and think by taking him to the farm his natural herding instincts would just kick in----is a BAD move.  Don't do it.

No, the tool I'm referring to is this.

This is called a shepherd's staff.  Or a crook.

Though mine is really just a broken rake handle.  Point is it does the same thing.  For whatever reason, sheep completely respect it. No more crowding or pushing at the gate or feeder.  A simple wave of the wand, er staff, and the sheep magically clear the way.

I'm actually beginning to think I'm getting the hang of this shepherding business.  It's like my calling in life or something.

The Vulva

I'm still crossing my fingers that some of our ewes might be pregnant.  We are all first timers here and my girls are yearlings and slightly under size but we are still hoping to pull off the odd lamb.

Here are my latest suspects.  This is Cocoa who is my biggest girl at 96lbs.

This is her from above.  She's always been a bit wide but that bump looks more than just fat.

This here is Ugly Betty.  

She was named Ugly Betty because we have only two white ewes.  A pretty one and an ugly one.  We were calling her Ugly White for a while which made me think of Betty White which once combined became Ugly Betty.  Anyway, she is presently Dodge's (the ram) favourite.  He's been mounting her often lately so hopefully this means July babies.

Now I am going to post some vulva photos so if you find this hard to look at...well you've been warned.

This is Freckles vulva.  If you recall I mentioned in an early post that I thought she might be pregnant.  She is far too small to be pregnant at 68lbs so are hoping we are wrong on this one.

This is Cocoa's back end.

They say you can tell from the vulva whether a ewe is in heat or pregnant but truthfully I haven't a clue.  But to be honest, I never looked at their vulva's before I thought they might be pregnant so really don't have anything to compare them to.

This final vulva belongs to Caramella.  She was very flighty and didn't like me touching her back end or taking her photo back there.  Shy girl.

It's hard to tell in this photo but her vulva cups upward.  I've read somewhere that means something but I can't remember what.  Here's another attempt at a photo.

So there you have it.  If nothing else, these photos are a good recording of the progress of my ewe's changing vulva's.

Playful Sheep

Our sheep being playful in the barn last night.

Possibly Pregnant?

So I've been waiting patiently for any of my ewe lambs to lamb out this spring and was pretty certain none of them took and had resigned myself to having to wait until summer for any babies.  However, we might have a potential possibility.

Freckles

I have noticed that one of my ewes who we named Freckles looks a little wider than the others.

Freckles with her back to the camera.  You can see her wide belly.

While the rest look slender but solid, this one looks like she either has hay fat or possibly pregnant. Since none of them seem to be suffering from bloat I find it hard to believe that she would as I feed them all equally.  I take them out of the pen individually for their portion of grain so that I monitor everyone's intake and that they all receive the same amount.

The ironic thing is is that Freckles was the one I pointed out as being a cull ewe.  She is the smallest of them all with little muscle tone.  Not that I would rush off to send her to market being that I have such a small ftock to begin with any definitely don't want to decrease my numbers, but certainly would if she continued to not reproduce in the future.  However, as it stands, we are keeping an eye on this young ewe and will see if she produces a lamb in the next couple weeks.

Freckles and her possible baby belly.  Is she expecting?

Welcome

I hate the first blog entry, there is so much pressure in what to say.    So I'll make it short and sweet.  This blog is going to be all about my adventures into sheep farming.  Presently I own 6 Katahdin ewe lambs and 1 ram lamb.  I bought them back in April simply as part of our hobby farm.  It wasn't until a couple months ago I began thinking of how I can make a living off farming or at least a supplement income.  Looking at all the avenues of farming I came back to my little lambs.  Sheep are something I can do pretty much on my own without the help of a man.  I am married but he has a full-time job off the farm so the majority of the workload will fall onto my shoulders.  So to sum up, this blog will be all about this new adventure into sheep farming.  The ups, the downs, the lessons learned, the heartbreak, the accomplishments and everything in between.