Farm Life

Shearing – part 1 of 3

Posted by kenleighacres on November 21, 2008
Posted in: Farm Life, Fiber, Jacob Sheep, shearing, sheep. 5 Comments

We are doing shearing a little differently this year.  I wanted to get all of the ewes sheared before lambing and the thought of shearing all 33 of them myself was too overwhelming 🙂  So, I called 6 shearers and left messages.  In 3 days I heard back from 1!  Why are sheep shearers and farriers so hard to get ahold of and all of them seem to be lacking in customer service.  So, I called my friend, who is also the person that I got my first Jacobs from, Sheryl Zettle.  She does a wonderful job shearing, but only likes to do 10-15 at a time due to an injury to her shoulder.  I thought I would give it a try anyways 🙂  She very graciously agreed to do them on three different days and only charge me 1 setup fee.  This morning was day #1 and she sheared 12 of them.

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I love the look of freshly shorn sheep and I think the girls in the barn were a little jealous!

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I love how clean they look and how black the black looks.

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and the new girls that were so shaggy, look much better now!  I can actually see what they look like without 2 years worth of fleece on them!

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These 2 girls are sisters – Chevelle in the back and Liberty in the front.  Their handsome brother resides at Mud Ranch.

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Here they are as lambs, weren’t they so cute!

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Unfortunately, shearing can also show you all of the bad things 🙂  This new ewe is just a little freckled.  I had a feeling she was after looking at her fleece, but she has a few more than I imagined 🙂 oh well.

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Not to be confused with freckles, poor Harley is starting to show her age and has developed quite a few age spots 🙂  I’m not really sure what the correct term is for these skin spots, but I have noticed that a few of my older girls are developing them as they age.

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The other benefit of doing them in small groups is that I can skirt the fleeces before the next batch needs to be done!  Part 2 is scheduled for Sunday morning.

A glorious Sunday morning!

Posted by kenleighacres on November 17, 2008
Posted in: Farm Life, Jacob Sheep, sheep. 6 Comments

We woke up to a glorious, sunny morning yesterday so I took my camera out while I did morning chores.  Here is a picture of the ram lambs and wethers along with their buddy, Gallo.

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There always has to be one trouble maker that prefers to be in the feeder!

After my post about the luscious grass, I just couldn’t help myself and I let the ewes out for a little while.  They really enjoyed it!

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Kenleigh’s Sahara and Kenleigh’s Eclipse

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Windy Acres Darling

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Zettle’s Isabel and Kenleigh’s Holly

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I was amazed to see how thick it was back here.  This is where one of the chicken barns was and it is VERY high in organic matter and fertilizer.  We spread annual rye grass last year and according to the farmers around here it can grow on a New York sidewalk in the winter 🙂  I have been very happy with it and it is very palatable to the sheep as well as being high in protein.

And look…

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some of the girls are starting to get pregnant bellies 🙂

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Here is a picture of some of the ewe lambs.

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In the front we have – Kenleigh’s Maxima and Kenleigh’s Infiniti.  The two lilacs are – Timber’s Hallelujah and Mud Ranch’s Jonquil.  The little piggys in the back are Meridian Bronwen and Meridian Hailey.  We haven’t used round bales in the past, but we were going to be a little low on hay this year due to our long summer, so we bought a couple round bales and they are working great for the ewe lambs.  I have a cattle panel in front of it to keep them from wasting a bunch.

Finally we have the big boys.

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Here is Wrangler looking very unimpressed with the camera 🙂

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Sending a ray of sunshine to each of you on this beautiful day!

A beautiful sight!

Posted by kenleighacres on November 16, 2008
Posted in: Farm Life, Jacob Sheep, sheep. 3 Comments

Green grass!!!  I mentioned in a previous post that I have been keeping the ewes off the grass so that it can grow and be available for when they really need it – towards the end of gestation.  I am so happy with the results…

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Of course, I have to give a big shout out to Mother Nature – Thank you!  The weather has been perfect for growing grass.  A couple days have almost felt like spring, that is until you look at the trees and see that they are naked.  This is what the pastures looked like 4 weeks ago!

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We had an unusual dry and long summer this year.  In the past I have just left the sheep on the pastures and there has been nothing left come December/January.  I really hope this helps with the feed costs this winter.

I almost forgot…

Posted by kenleighacres on October 29, 2008
Posted in: Border Leicester, Chickens, Dogs, Farm Life, Jacob Sheep, sheep, whippet. 3 Comments

It seems like ages ago that we took a little trip to Tammy’s farm.  We were going to pick up a dog crate and some fleeces.  She borrowed the dog crate to transport Kingston in.  She is using him to breed her new Border Leicester girls.

He was one of our crossbred lambs from this last year.  He is 1/4 Navajo Churro, 1/4 Border Leicester, and 1/2 Blueface.  His fleece has a lot of Blueface qualities to it and is beautiful!  I just sent it off to be processed and I am so excited to get it back.

I picked up some fleeces to transport along with my fleeces to the fiber processor.

This is one of her Border Leicester fleeces and it is beautiful!

Of course we had to visit all of her critters…

The pigs came running to greet us and find out what goodies we had to offer.  They weren’t disappointed with the garden spoils we gave them.

I love this guy – so much character!

This pretty hen disappeared awhile ago and came back with 9 babies.  Danica made the mistake to go after the babies and the mama sent the babies to the barn with a loud “squawk” and then very loudly chased Danica down.  I was laughing too hard to get any pictures.  Danica gave all of the chickens a very wide berth after that!

These three were having a little pow wow.

My son and his friend thought the goats were very funny!

Danica had a lot of fun running around with Tammy’s Aussie puppy.

On our previous visit, I was surprised to see her spotted lambs that were Jacob crosses.  Usually you will get black lambs with little splashes of white on them when you breed a Jacob to any other breed.  You can imagine my shock when I saw that a few of the lambs also have horns.  The polled gene is supposed to be dominant.  Very interesting!

On the way home, we found this stunning red tail hawk.  He posed for quite awhile 🙂

The boys loved this castle and we all imagined there was a dragon in the tower making the smoke.

Cull half my flock???

Posted by kenleighacres on October 27, 2008
Posted in: Farm Life, Jacob Sheep, sheep. 5 Comments

I don’t think so, but they sure are pushing their luck!!!  I have very little patience for sheep that are hard on fences and I have a 3 strike rule that applies to everyone – whether they are friendly or not.  Since I am the one that does most of the management with the flock, this works the best and makes my life easier.  Well now I am in a quandery because 1/2 the ewe flock has been pushing their way under the fence to the green grass.  We are all having to experience some self control because I want to save the grass for the winter.  This isn’t the first time that I have locked them off green grass, but one of the new ewes that was added this summer has other plans.  I haven’t figured out who it is, but I have a very good idea 🙂

but I don’t have definite proof and of course it is my son’s favorite ewe.  I know it is one of the new girls because this was not an issue before and they are the same fences.  I will be installing electric fence to hopefully solve the problem and if that doesn’t help then I will find the trouble maker and have a tough decision to make.

The Challenges…

Posted by kenleighacres on October 3, 2008
Posted in: Farm Life, Jacob Sheep, sheep, Uncategorized. 3 Comments

No, this post is not about the challenges of farm life right now.  Yes, feed costs are high, but I have spent too much time personally worrying about it and am moving on 🙂  This is the life we love and I have faith that everything will be ok.  Now onto my post about the challenges of raising Jacob Sheep.

Raising Jacobs can be both frustrating and rewarding.  There are so many things to get right – fleece, horns, conformation, color ratio, spotting pattern, hardiness, mothering ability, and temperament.  This is part of what I love about the breed.  The part I have a hard time understanding is how a certain breeding can be so right one year and so wrong the next – same ram and ewe.  For example – we bred Darby to Junior last year and Darby had a beautiful set of triplets…

Kenleigh’s Debonair “Dub” – owned by Mud Ranch

Kenleigh’s Chevelle – one of my buddies.

Kenleigh’s Liberty – another pretty girl that lives in our flock.

Since the breeding produced such lovely lambs, we repeated the breeding.  Unfortunately the results weren’t so nice…

This poor little girl doesn’t have any horns – she has scurs which are not attached to the skull and when you move her head, her little scurs flop around.  Of course she is lovely in every other way!  Her twin sister had very little color.  They have to have at least 15% coloring to be registerable –  I think she had around 10%.  My sister fell in love with her and now owns her.

I went ahead and did this same breeding again this year.  I am really looking forward to these lambs – I’m hoping they are like the 1st time 🙂

A boy, an old lab, and a can of spray paint…

Posted by kenleighacres on October 2, 2008
Posted in: Dogs, family, Farm Life, Funny, Lab. 8 Comments

My husband and son love this time of year because it is the start of duck hunting season.  They have been busy building carts to haul their decoys and using spray paint to camoflauge the cart and various blinds, including a huge cardboard box for my son to play with.  Unfortunately the can of spray paint was left out… 

Yesterday my son was playing outside in the backyard.  He was playing with his tractors, dump trucks, and various digging equipment.  He was very content playing with his toys, so I took advantage of this time to do some housework.  I kept checking on him and all seemed to be fine.  Major, our old lab, was out doing his thing – which at 13 years old is a lot of sleeping. 

I was sweeping the kitchen floor and the two of them came up on the back porch.  Major looked like this…

I asked my son what happened to Major???  He said that he fell in the dirt.  This was some what believable because he isn’t very steady on his feet and has been falling more and more lately.  There is some fresh dirt in the backyard because my husband ground a huge stump back there this last weekend.  I thought there was probably more to the story but didn’t see the point in pressing the matter.

When my husband got home he also asked our son what happened to Major.  We thought he might come out with the truth if asked again…he did and we both had to leave the room because we started laughing. 

He said that he was camoflauging him because he didn’t want the ducks to see him 🙂 

I would have loved to see how he did this – Major may be old but he isn’t small and he is still strong.  I don’t know if he did it while he was sleeping???  Poor old man is now sporting a camoflauge mask.  The cans of spray paint are now on one of the top shelves in the garage! 

The chickens get a new yard!

Posted by kenleighacres on October 2, 2008
Posted in: Chickens, Farm Life. Tagged: . Leave a comment

My brother made me a wonderful barn for my chickens a couple years ago,

but I haven’t had a good chicken yard.  I had regular sized chickens and then switched to bantams this year.  The yard was adequate for them, but didn’t give them a lot of room to stretch their wings.  Thanks to Craigslist, I have some great poultry pens now and the chickens are the proud owners of one of them.  The pens were owned by a big game farm and they recently sold all of their birds.  The pens were taken down and sold as panels.  Each panel is 6′ high by 20′ long complete with netting for the roof.  The chicken yard is 20′ x 20′ and the chickens love flying around! 

They also like to come and go as they please.

This chick has found a bug it is about to pounce on.

I love the banty girls – this one reminds me of the banty hen I had growing up.  Her name was Henny Penny and she would let me carry her around everywhere.  She was a very neat chicken.

This girl is the queen bee and referees everyone – no one is allowed to have too much fun.  Party pooper!

One more project I can check off my to do list 🙂

 

Checking on the sheep…

Posted by kenleighacres on September 25, 2008
Posted in: Farm Life, Jacob Sheep, sheep. 5 Comments

This Dolly and she is my son’s favorite sheep.  She is really more like a dog than a sheep.  She is a big girl, so I am glad she is a friendly one.

Reno is one of his other favorites.  He is a little friendlier than I like the ram lambs to be, but he is a laid back guy and I’m hoping he stays respectful.  I have a spray bottle with water and vinegar waiting just for him 😉

He is the only ram lamb we retained from this year and I am happy with how he is maturing. 

One of our llamas, Gallo, isn’t thrilled with him being in the pasture…

but then he made a piece offering and all was good again 🙂

Poor Jeslyn had a monkey on her back, actually just a blackberry branch, but her and all of the other sheep were sure it was a huge monster that was going to eat them all.

Luckily it came off easily and peace was restored.

This is Mercedes and Savannah with Wrangler.  They are visiting from Timber Acres and are owned by my friend Lisa.  Mercedes is one of our 2006 lambs and Savannah is a lamb from last year.  We don’t usually allow other sheep on our place for breeding, but made an exception for Lisa and these girls since most of her sheep have come from our farm.  They turned out to be lovely girls and I can’t wait to see their lambs.

 

Things you may not know…

Posted by kenleighacres on August 31, 2008
Posted in: Border Collie, Cardigan Welsh Corgi, Ducks, Farm Life, Jacob Sheep, sheep. 4 Comments

My friend over at Mud Ranch tagged me and I must reply with things that you may not know about me (I chose to do 5 just like she did):

1.  In highschool, I was rodeo queen for our local rodeo.  It was quite an adventure travelling around the state with my dog and horse.  A time that I will always remember fondly.

2.  I originally got my sheep to learn how to herd with my Cardigan Corgi, Darby.  I was taking lessons and wanted to practice more often.  The only way to do this was to have some sheep of my own.  My husband was not thrilled 🙂 he grew up raising sheep and was involved in 4-H and FFA.  He had Dorsets and proceeded to tell me about all of the problems they could have. 

Life works in funny ways because later that week I got a call from my sister saying that she just picked up a little goat at a place and there were 2 sheep in the pen available as well.  The conditions were horrible – an 8′ x 8′ pen with mud water for drinking and straw for food, with no shelter, in the middle of winter.  I brought home the funniest looking sheep for $25 for the pair, a ewe and a wether.  They weren’t great representatives of the breed…

but they got me hooked.  After doing a lot of research into what these funny things were, we added 5 bred, regitered ewes.

I love this picture of them – Zettle’s Aspen, Zettle’s Hattie, Zettle’s Blackberry, Zettle’s Harley, and Zettle’s Ginger.  Almost 6 years later, we still have Hattie and Harley. 

3.  Along the same lines as the sheep, I can blame the dogs for the ducks we have as well.  I wanted to teach my dogs how to herd ducks and I fell in love with the little Call Ducks.  They are very entertaining and have fun personalities, just like our sheep!

This is a picture of Kate herding ducks at a trial earlier this Summer.

4.  I can thank my husband for my love of photography.  He bought a really nice camera for me several Christmas’ ago and I was thrilled.  It is truly the best gift I have received 🙂

5.  It is 11:15 pm and I just heard on the news that It might rain tonight and I have 1/2 a ton of pellets in the back of the truck that I forgot to have my husband help me unload before he left for the weekend – ugh…  I guess I better go put a tarp on it!