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.