Lamb Cam and the Cold

Sheep hanging out during the day

This past week has proven that that a camera system was a worthwhile investment. I turned it back on a couple weeks ago during the semester break in preparation of lambing. Even though we aren't supposed to start lambing until next week its better to be prepared for anything. A really neat thing that I was able to set up this year too. In addition to being able to view the cameras from the internet there is an app made by Q-see that lets you see the cameras on your phone! It's great and makes it real easy no matter where you are as long as the phone has service and is connected to the grid you can see the sheep. 

Even though lambing doesn't start yet I'm surprised at how often I check the cameras to see if the ewes are hanging out inside. It's just relaxing to watch the sheep go about their business when people aren't right next to them. You can start to notice the patterns between how the sheep act around each other too, especially when they've just been given hay. Most of the ewes are calm toward one another but put hay into the feeders and they act quite a bit different. These gentle ewes turn into battering rams to get to their 'rightful' spot at the feeder. It's funny how each ewe reacts to this, most will try to stand their ground while others will just back up and move to a different spot. You can tell they all have different temperaments which makes sheep watching all that more interesting. 

I'll try to keep this blog updated with sheep news and ewes lambing as best I can during the semester.

Shearing Sheep

I sheared our sheep last week on one of the coldest days in our area. Our plan was to have our ewes locked in overnight to prevent frost from forming on them so the fleeces would be nice and dry to shear. By locking them in just for the night there was no way that they could have frost on them. Well it didn't work out as planned. Because it was so cold the barn got a lot colder than it has been before that a thin layer of frost formed on the inside of the building! There was even frost on our cameras (and cobwebs)!Unfortunately I had a late start to the day because I had to wait for the sheep to dry off. Even with this delay shearing went great.

I learned to shear sheep at a sheep shearing school a few years ago so we do not hire a professional shearer to come and shear our flock. This saves us a little bit of money but also takes a significant amount of energy on my part that it took several hours for me to shear 30 ewes.

This year we had a couple of our ewes coated for parts of the year and one coated for the entire year. The coats serve to protect the fleece from dirt, rain, hay, grain, and any other things we don't want in a fleece. The one coated for the entire fleece was the cleanest fleece I have ever seen in my life. It was also a lot easier to shear with less dirt and vegetative matter(VM) in it. I was so amazed by how clean it was that we decided to coat all of our romneys for the next year. While this will be a bit more labor intensive the returns on the clean fleeces will definitely be worth it.


Check out our facebook page to see more photos from shearing: facebook.com/windsweptacressheep

Shearing Support

Our cat, Fern, enjoying the sun

So we shear our sheep about a month before they lamb to ensure that if there is any weakness in the fiber due to lambing/lactation that it will be at the tip of the fiber. While some of you may think that this is crazy to shear sheep in the middle of winter, it is actually beneficial. By shearing the wool off the ewes become more sensitive to the weather and are more likely to go indoors if it is raining, if they have lambs with them the lambs will follow and will not become cold and drenched. Another advantage is there will be no wool for the lamb to mistake for the teat which it needs to find for that essential liquid, colostrum.

This year for shearing there were about 30 ewes that needed to be sheared, this meant it was going to take some time and effort, a lot more then previous years. This was going to be an all day affair. I haven't sheared sheep for long periods of time like the professional shearers in New Zealand so I wasn't sure I could accomplish this alone. After watching some other shearers I set myself to make an assistant for shearing.

Most of the professional shearers have some form of back support while shearing because for the majority of the time shearing sheep you are in a crouched position, and from experience it is not the easiest to stay in. A couple of days prior to shearing I started to think how I could make my own back support and after seeing some examples online and from other shearers I set out to make my own.

The sling in action!

My first stop was at an equine tack shop where I acquired a saddle girth. (It had to be a western girth since I do ride western at school). The girth serves as the part of the support that will rest against my chest when I stretch down to shear the lower parts of the sheep. My next stop was a hardware store to acquire some rope and a pulley. This lets me hang my sling somewhere and tie it off in any direction I want, while allowing me movement in any direction. The last piece of this is actually an old unused exercise band that serves as the elastic to support me and provide more support when I am lower shearing the sheep. With that I had my shearing sling made and ready to go!!

Now the scientist in me needed to know that this was actually going to help before using it. It turns out there have been scientific studies that show that the effect of back support on the spinal forces while shearing. These show that the use of the support reduce the compressive and shear forces present while shearing sheep. This reduction was found to be significant and reduces the overall load on the spine while shearing!



With that I'll talk about how shearing went in the next post.

Happy Holidays

Now with the semester over I actually have some time that I can post more over the winter break. There is a lot to talk about from shearing, to blood sampling, to prepping for lambing. Until then,

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!

Time Flies...

So once again I have failed to keep up with posts on this blog. I'll try to do a quick recap of the past two months and then hopefully I can keep an updated blog. The past two months have flown by so fast, with final exams and my summer job (unrelated to the farm but partially sheep related), selling lambs and wool, and shows and sales. I guess the best way to tackle all of this is chronological order.

The first thing was the Maryland sheep and Wool Festival at the beginning of May which was a a lot of fun. It was great to help show some romneys and catch up with the breeders. Unfortunately immediately after the show I had to head back up to school in order to study for my final exams.

The ewes on summer pasture.

The next thing was the selling of most of this years lamb crop. We sold most our lambs soon after they were weaned making it easier for us to transition to the summer season. This is the least intensive season of being a shepherd, since most of the lambs are sold and the sheep are just regaining body weight lost during lactation and relaxing for most of the summer. It's also the time of the cheapest feed bill since the ewes will be getting most of their energy requirements from the grass instead of a concentrate feed or hay. The ewes will enjoy all of the pasture to themselves until the fall when we introduce the rams for breeding.

There was also the National Romney Sale in Wooster, Ohio at the Great Lakes Fiber Show during Memorial Day weekend. This was another great opportunity to meet up with new and old breeders and help during both the show and sale. It was also nice to have a dinner with the breeders at a local restaurant where we could catch up and chat over good tasting food. 

Yearling ewes at the National Sale

Each year most of the wool I shear goes to the Bucks-Montgomery County Wool Pool just across the river in Pennsylvania. A wool pool is where shepherds from a region gather all of their wool together and sell it to a large commercial buyer to get a better price due to the higher volume of wool. Each year at least 20,000 pounds of wool goes through the wool pool from shepherds in Eastern PA, and NJ (since NJ no longer has their own pool). 

I think that briefly covers whats been happening over the past several weeks. I'll strive to post more often in the coming weeks.

Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival

Hey Everyone sorry again for the delay in posting. Coursework (mainly organic chemistry) and extracurriculars have taken more time from me than I anticipated. I can't believe that the past month has gone by so fast. I'm going to talk briefly about the Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival since it starts tomorrow!!

The Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival (sheepandwool.org) is one of the largest sheep and fiber festivals in the country. It's located in West Friendship, Maryland. This year they are celebrating the 40th anniversary, so it'll probably be a big celebration. There are many different events for any fiber or sheep enthusiast to satisfy their needs. The most prominent feature is the number of vendors selling all sorts of wool/fiber related products, from spinning supplies to completed products such as scarves, gloves, and sweaters. There are also a few vendors that cater specifically to shepherds with showing supplies and handling equipment. They even have shearing and sheep dog demonstrations for the public to learn more about sheep.

Half the sheep loaded up before heading off to greener pastures!

The main event, or what I think is the main event, is the sheep show on both Saturday and Sunday morning. The Black Romney show is Sat. morning while the white romney show is Sun. morning. Sheep showing is probably the first way to get the public aware about sheep that may be located a short distance from their homes. While the judging is very subjective to each individual judge, it does provide a basis for shepherds and buyers to determine if they would like to add specific animals to their own flock from another flock. Showing is a good starting point to begin a dialogue with the public to teach them more about agriculture, and the sheep industry specifically. 

Now for an update on my own animals. The lambs have been growing extremely well, much better than they have in previous years. We did use a different creep higher in protein, fat, and energy, which may be responsible for the increased growth that we are seeing in the lambs this year. Also this morning some of our ewes are being taken to their summer pasture, to graze and get some weight back on them after milking heavily for lambing. They will probably stay on pasture for the duration of the summer and (hopefully) well into the fall and continue to graze the grass to reduce the feed bill for concentrate and hay. Our trailer is not large enough for all of our ewes, so it'll be two trips to ensure the sheep are comfortable in the trailer for the short journey.

That's all I have right now, I promise I will try to get the next post up sooner, but final exams may have a different plan for me...

Finished Lambing!!

First off, I would like to apologize for the month and a half long delay in getting another post up. This semester's workload has been significantly greater than previous ones, meaning I have less time to do fun stuff like this blog! Anyway onto the topic of the day: Finished with Lambing!!

No more waking up in the middle of the night to check the ewes waiting to lamb!! (at least for this year.) Our last lamb to arrive was a recessive ram lamb out of one our recessive ewes bred by the black & tan ram, Charlie, we acquired in October. The most wonderful thing about this is that she had the lamb all on her own, without any help from us, and the lamb was up and had already nursed by the time they were checked this morning.

Lambs basking in the sun.

This was the first time that we tried to breed ewes as lambs (less than a year of age). We had placed 5 ewe lambs in with Charlie, the black & tan ram. Generally Romneys do not grow as fast as some of the larger mature sized breeds such as Suffolk, Hampshire, or Columbia, etc. This means that they are generally not at a large enough size to be able to maintain a pregnancy by the time they are 6-7 months like the other larger breeds. However by the time they are 8-9 months they should be of adequate size to be able to maintain a pregnancy and give birth by the time they are just over a year of age. The two ewes that did maintain pregnancy were the older ones in the group, born in Feb, versus the others born in late March - early April.

Most operations wait until the ewes are at least a year of age before breeding to ensure that the ewes will be fertile and cycling when they are placed with the ram. By placing ewe lambs in with the ram it is more likely that they may not get bred since they may be too small to maintain a pregnancy. There are pros and cons to breeding ewe lambs. Some of the pros include: increased genetic progress due to a shorter generation interval and the ewe starts productive life sooner decreasing her costs prior to lambing. Some of the cons include: there may be more problems at lambing because of the decreased size of the ewe and higher nutritional requirements because the ewes are still growing while pregnant. There are several more pros and cons but those are the major ones that play a role in determining if breeding ewe lambs would be beneficial to a sheep farm.

Recessive romney ram lamb

Hopefully I'll get the next post up in a more timely manner.