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.