End of October

It was still mild weather. The Sacramento Valley got rain, but not much here—not enough to show in the rain gauge.

The sheep moving to the gate where I will let them into the next paddock.

A sheep farmer’s version of fall color. Peyton, the BFL ram, was the one with the red marker. I moved his ewes out a few days ago and now they are with Townes. Silverado and Barrett still have some ewes, but I’m getting ready to be finished with breeding season.

This is one of my favorite views of the property.

Patchwork Townes is the ram with the most ewes now at the end of the season. His marker has been switched to green, but I think there is only one ewe marked green.

We held Hug a Sheep Day on Saturday, but it was mostly for Farm Club members with a few other friends who came. We had the most huggable sheep available. That’s Jade and her daughter, Hazel.

At the end of the day I walked across the road and took my customary photo looking south to Mt. Diablo. One of these days I’ll share the series of photos I took from this spot throughout the growing season.

Random Farm Photos

After that last heavy post I thought I’d share some photos from today. Darn, I forgot to take some during the weaving class I taught today. I’d better get some tomorrow.

I took this photo this morning after removing the ram marking harness from Barrett. I am pretty sure there are still ewes in his group who are not bred but I was having a hard time seeing any new marks. This started out as an orange marker but you can see that all the crayon part is gone.

Here is what a new blue marker looks like in that harness.

This is Barrett—Hillside Gabby’s Barrett, to give his full name. He was born in the spring of 2021 and came here from Michigan.

He has a very nice, soft fleece.

This was taken a few days ago after I replaced the worn out marker from Townes’ harness with a new blue one. Let’s hope for some rain to wash those marks off!

Change of scene here. After today’s weaving class I took Ginny on our regular walk Across the Road. We didn’t start out with a tennis ball, but she found one somewhere along the way and then did her usual trick of dropping it into the ditch where the water is too swirly for her to go in after it. That water is quite turbulent and the cement sides of the ditch are steep. I saw her lying on the bank looking intently at something in the water. It was a tennis ball that was trapped in the eddies of the water.

I fashioned a net as I have done before by weaving her leash onto a forked stick. Even with this advanced tool it took me about 20 minutes to get that ball out of the water. I was kneeling on the wooden planks with my toes hooked over the edge so I wouldn’t fall in.

Then we finished our walk.

Breeding Season Begins

We live by seasons…and this one is breeding season.

On Sunday Farm Club members came to help. We started by sorting ewes. We also replaced old smaller ear tags with some that are a little larger and more legible. We colored coded the 2018 and 2019 ear tags. I had already tagged the 2020 ewes with blue tags. I can identify many of the sheep by their markings but I don’t remember all 60+ of them. The larger ear tags make it easier to read the tag and to find a particular sheep when you can narrow down the year by the ear tag color.

Then we put the markers in the ram harnesses.

It was time to get the rams. Farm Club members went to get the ram lambs. I had worked with Axis (left) and Silverado (right) a bit…

…but Barrett is the new one and he thought dragging was the way to go rather than walking…

…or maybe giving up was best.

We had planned a break at 10:00 to watch the Lambtown Sheep-to-Shawl judging. We missed the first part so didn’t hear what most of what they said about ours—we can watch the recording when it’s posted.

The judging presentation was good, but unfortunately our shawl was among the four that were disqualified based on size. We were short of the desired 72” by only about 2”. I guess we were in good company. Back to work.

The lamb, Axis, got down to business right away.

The youngest one, Barrett, was interested but the ewes wanted nothing to do with him. In cases you’re wondering, it’s not that he’s too little, it’s just that they aren’t in heat right now.

Dan and I caught the big rams.

Tamarisk’s face has been looking a little rough, but he seems OK other than something under his jaw. (Thanks for the photos Susan.)

I caught him about a week ago to check out his swollen face. He has something going on with his jaw but I think that whatever it is has healed—it’s hard like bone, not soft like an abscess. He still eats and is in good flesh.

If there is something with his jaw it’s not on his mind right now.

I had to chase this group out to the pasture because they got distracted by each other and were just hanging around the lane.

Peyton was happy to have some female company.

Ram lamb, Silverado, seemed more interested in the smells in the ram pen where the older rams had been.

Rambler’s group also has a pasture that is separate from Tamarisk but they can also go into the corral near the barn.

Everybody’s favorite ewe, Jade, was the first to be marked.

Rambler, Tamarisk, and Peyton all wore themselves out on Sunday afternoon. Among them 10 ewes were already marked.

I have two extra ram lambs, Dylan with 4 horns and Orion with 2 horns. They are both for sale as registered breeding rams.

This is the third day the rams have been with the ewes. Tamarisk has bred 10 of his group of 21 so far.

Peyton has bred 4 of his 5 ewes.

Axis is a lilac ram with some of the lilac ewes and ewes that carry lilac in their pedigrees.

He has marked Zora, left, and Foxy, right and 2 other ewes so far.

I’m still waiting for Barrett (in this photo) and Silverado to mark someone. Maybe tonight.

Breeding Season is Here

I wrote a blog post about picking up the new ram in Oregon a couple of weeks ago. I wasn’t ready to turn him out with ewes at that point, but today was the day. Yesterday I went through registration papers and made my lists. This morning we started sorting sheep. We brought all the ewes into the barn and as we looked at the list we either marked the faces or moved them through one gate or another. Then it was time to catch the rams, fit the marking harnesses and put them with their ewes.

Peyton is a Bluefaced Leicester (BFL) and the crossbred lambs he produces are ready to sell for market earlier and at a higher weight than the purebred Jacobs. Peyton gets the few ewes who are not registered and a couple of very freckled ewes. Freckling of the wool is a trait that is very heritable, and I don’t want to be tempted to keep lambs from those freckled ewes. There is also a 50:50 BFL:Jacob ewe that was sired by my previous BFL ram. Her lambs will be 75% BFL. Peyton has 7 ewes.

Ruby Peak Tamarisk is the new ram and we gave him about half the flock. I think he ended up with 30 ewes. He now gets to go out on the pasture instead of being cooped up in a smaller area.

Jasper (third from right) bred the largest group of ewes last year and produced some nice lambs, but he is also related to many of the ewes. He has 7 in his group.

Axle, a 2-horn ram near the front part of this group has 8 ewes and gets to go to a paddock in the south pasture. One of the challenges of using multiple rams is keeping them apart. Ideally they should not share a fenceline because they may fight through it. I’m taking my changes at the beginning of the season thinking that these rams will have enough to keep them happy until all their ewes are bred. Then I may have to do some rearranging.

At first I didn’t plan to use five rams but I wanted to see how this ram lamb (Jasper’s son, Rambler) would do. So he has a group of five ewes. One of the ewes is a big one (on the large size for a Jacob) and I almost wondered if we’d need to provide a ladder.

I have to allow some space for the non-breeding group also. I put a few 2020 ewe lambs out with the rams but saved some back. I may reevaluate these and put a couple more of them with rams. The ewe lambs usually breed later than the mature ewes and almost always have single lambs instead of twins. If we are going to shows next year I’d like to have a few of these lambs to show as yearlings and not worry about their condition and weaning lambs. But who knows if that will happen.

The goats are also in the non-breeding group, along with a few more lambs that are still for sale.

It didn’t take long to see some action. This is Jasper and Dilly.

Tamarisk and Terri and Betty.

Zinnia is one of Tamarisk’s ewes but I don’t know if she is bred. She certainly has green marks but they aren’t as solid as the others. Time will tell if this is adequate. I will change the markers to another color in about two weeks and I’ll be able to tell if ewes are marked again. They won’t stand for being mounted unless they are in heat.

Peyton and Anise.

Anise isn’t the only one with color everywhere.

Another view of Axle. The green mark on Ginger is more on her side than her rear, but it’s a nice solid mark.

Rambler didn’t mark any yet. There are only five ewes so it’s likely that no one is in heat yet. He’ll get his chance.

I know where I’ll be February 26. The barn will be a busy place.