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.

Colorful Coats Part 2

So now I'm going to discuss some more on the different alleles that can occur at Agouti. As I briefly mentioned in the previous blog post there are some 18 different options for alleles at the Agouti locus. A sheep can have any 2 of them including two copies of the same type of allele. However because of the way that sheep breeds were developed not all of these alleles are found in each breed. For example the Romney breed only has 6 alleles of the 18 that are common throughout the breed. Whereas the Romadale/CVM and the Navajo-Churro has around 9 alleles that are frequent through the breed.

Nightshade, our AaAa ram

As I mentioned in the last post the first of the these different alleles is the one that you see in most sheep. The White allele (Awt) is dominant to everything else and masks any of the other alleles so all you see is a white fleeced sheep. Now seeing that there are 17 other possible alleles, and explaining each of them would be too long for most people to read, I'm going to limit my explanation to the most common of these alleles. The next allele is known as the Badgerface (Ab). This gene exhibits as a half white and half black sheep. The white is along most of the dorsal part of the sheep. The exception is bars above the eye and from the chin working down into the brisket with the underbelly and inside legs exhibiting pigment. The next allele would be Black & Tan (At). This sheep is essentially the negative of the Badgerface pattern. With the belly and underside being white with white bars above the eyes while the rest of the sheep shows pigment.

The next three genes are darker genes with more than 50% of the wool on the sheep being pigmented. The first would be Light Blue (Albl). This is a sheep that has a black belly extending up to the rump as well as the nose and nose bridge with the rest of the animal having white fleece. In order for there to be a Light Blue there must be a Blue(Abl). The Blue allele shows black on all the inner and under areas with the shoulder tops, neck, and nose bridge with the rest of the animal appearing white. The last allele I am going to explain is the Self(Aa) allele. This results in an animal with absolutely no white pattern on it. It is a solid black animal that exhibits pigment in all of its skin and fiber. 

Frost, our AtAa ewe getting sheared.

Now these alleles work together or mask one another at times depending on the strength hierarchy of these alleles. As I mentioned earlier White is the most dominant and masks any other allele it is paired with. So some genotypes of a white sheep could be AwtAwt or even AwtAa but you would never know what that second allele is because the white allele masks it, unless you progeny test (topic for another day). For the rest of the alleles they work in a co-dominance fashion. So you could tell the difference between a AblAlbl and a AblAa due to the two alleles working together, just maybe not equally, but enough for the shepherd to determine the two alleles based on the color pattern. I may need to elaborate on this more later but I'll leave it here for now.

Colorful Coats

So for this post I'm going to try to explain some of the genetics of sheep color since it's a passion of mine. To start off I'll explain some basic genetics concepts:

Sheep have 27 pairs of chromosomes (compared to humans who have 23 pairs), with each chromosome composed of different genes that code for different proteins. Alleles compose these genes on the chromosomes, but each sheep can only have 2 alleles, since that is all a locus, location of a gene, can allow. There can be more than two different alleles for a given gene but sheep, or any animal, can only have 2 of them, since there's only enough room for 2 on each pair of chromosomes, one allele on each.

A black & tan ewe with two white ewes

Moving onto basic color production, all sheep have a base pigment that their melanocytes will produce unless directed otherwise by the genes. The color of pigment produced depends on the animal's DNA but it will be either a black pigment, eumelanin, or a brown/red pigment, phaeomelanin. The melanocytes receive a hormone called melanocyte-stimulating hormone (MSH) that (you guessed it) stimulates the melanocytes to produce a type of melanin. MSH does this by traveling to the melanocyte and binding to a receptor (MC1R) on the cell and signaling to it produce its base pigment. One might think, based solely on this mechanism, that all sheep should be black. So then why are majority of sheep white if their melanocytes are supposed to produce pigment? 

Now to answer that question I need to start discussing specific genes. In sheep the main gene that determines coat color is the Agouti gene. The purpose of this gene is to code for WHITE display on the animal. This gene codes for the protein called agouti-signaling protein (ASP). This protein binds to the melanocyte, specifically to the MC1R receptor, and alters it so that it will no longer receive MSH. Because the melanocyte is no longer receiving MSH it will be unable to produce dark pigment making that area on the sheep white or tan. So the important thing to remember is that the Agouti genes are responsible for the white parts of the fleece. One allele at the Agouti gene codes for a pure white sheep, denoted Awt. The reason most sheep have full white fleeces is because they have at least one copy of this allele at their Agouti gene. They only require one copy because this white allele (Awt) is dominant to the other 17 alleles that are also possible at this gene. Since each sheep carries two alleles for this gene, a white sheep can carry an allele for white while also carrying another allele coding for a different color pattern besides white, but only the white color pattern will be observable to the shepherd.

Dorothy and one of her lambs napping

So I'll leave you here until the next blog entry where I'll explain about all the alleles that occur at Agouti and other genes that interact with Agouti. I was originally thinking this would be two entries but I'm starting to think I may need three to cover everything I would like to. And to everyone in the Northeast, Enjoy the Snow!

From Breeding to Lambing: A Summary

So this time of year is the normal lambing season for most shepherds. What that really translates to is long restless nights and exhausting hours spend waiting out in the barn for ewes to lamb.

A little visitor to the barn the past few days.

In order for the ewes to have lambs they need to be pregnant! This requires the ewes to be bred about 146 days prior to when lambing should start. This means that the rams were placed in with the ewes back in August or September through October or November in order for them to lamb this spring. Generally this is plenty of time for all the ewes to conceive and recognize the pregnancy.

Two lambs born just this morning.

The first tell-tale sign that ewes are pregnant is the development of the mammary tissue in the udder. This begins approximately a month before the ewes are due to lamb. This is the most utilized tool to determine if the ewe is pregnant. However ultrasound can be used to see if the ewes are pregnant as soon as 30 days after breeding, but most ewes are checked around 45 days. The way the ultrasound machine detects a ewe is pregnant is by utilizing sonar, or sound waves, to 'see' the tissue being examined. The device works by transmitting, receiving, and then interpreting those sound waves into an image viewed on the machine screen, by the CPU within the device. The sound waves are directed towards the uterine horns to determine if there are fetuses in there. The different tissues such as bone, muscle, fluid, and fat appear as different shades on the monitor, which allows the technician to determine if there are fetuses within the uterine horns.

For each lambing ewes are supposed to have 2 lambs since they have 2 teats on their udder. Generally ewes have no trouble raising twin lambs on their own, and some ewes can even manage triplets just as well. However some breeds are known for having multiple births such as the Finnsheep or Polypays. Most shepherds will allow their lambs to nurse from the ewes for about 60 days which coincides with the ewes starting to dry off (stop producing milk).

A day old romney ewe lamb in the feed tub.

Sorry for the shortness of the post, but its Super Bowl Sunday. To make up for the brevity there are 3 pictures instead of the usual one.