Jacob Sheep
I was recently asked how many sheep we have named. I didn’t have a clue what the answer was! Of course, this question piqued my curiosity, so I counted and the total is 234!
Cypress was the first lamb we named.
This also got me thinking about the naming theme for the 2011 lambs.
Naming the lambs is something I really enjoy and I love putting together a list of names before the lambs start arriving. Well it is time to get my act together because the first lambs are due to arrive on January 4th. With how the time is flying, that day is going to be here very soon!
We used city names in Oregon for 2010 and I wanted to use a variation of this for 2011, so I am going to use river/stream/lake/creek names. The Oregon Atlas is full of fun names!
This boy also has a new name. I had a hard time calling him Albus, so he is now Ringo. His registered name is going to be Blue Ewe’s Ringoes Albus. Ringoes was the city in New Jersey where the AGM was held and where we picked him up. Ringo has a nice ring to it 🙂
You can see the whole breeding line-up, including pictures – here
This has been my philosophy on setting up a good working system for the sheep. Each year I buy a few more panels or a new gate to add to what we have in the barn. Every year we redo the system to take advantage of the new piece of equipment and make it a little better. This year I added another piece of equipment and it didn’t make it a little better…it made it a LOT better!
Here, Amber is modeling the new 3-way sort chute that I picked up at Oregon Flock and Fiber. I had the opportunity to use it while doing the herding dog demonstration at Black Sheep Gathering and was hooked. We rearranged the barn and worked it into our system.
Delight is demonstrating how the sheep should walk single file through the alley into the small pen. Unfortunately this doesn’t always happen. At first they don’t want to go and then it is like you opened a flood gate and they are all running at once.
The barn is set-up with several areas that go from big to small. We can have the barn completely open for them or we can shut gates and move them from one area to the next until they are in a pen that is appropriate for the number of sheep we are working. I vividly remember the good old days of running around trying to catch sheep…running around and around out in the pasture. Ah, such fun it was 😉
This way is so much better – for us and them!
We have the 3-way chute set-up so we can sort the sheep into 3 separate pens. It can also be used as a squeeze – very useful for routine sheep care. This wouldn’t be possible for big breeds, but it works well with our jacob sheep.
It will take a few more times of working the sheep through the system to get a really good feel for it, but I am envisioning so many possibilities.
Amazing what a little sun, a little rain, and a few weeks can do…
before…
and after 🙂
In just 17 days!
Can you hear the excitement in my voice?
The sheep have been locked off the pasture and I have been feeding a lot of hay. With the rain and warm weather we have had, the grass in the big pasture was finally tall enough to turn the sheep out – I’m not sure who was happier, me or them. A very good thing! In addition to having green grass growing in the big pasture, my husband has been reworking a few of our smaller pastures. It has been on the ‘to do’ list for the last couple of years, but moved up in priority thanks to this stuff…
foxtail.
A horrible, vile plant that has slowly been taking over our place. It isn’t palatable for the sheep – but worse than that, it can work into the skin of animals and cause large abscesses. We have to mow, mow, mow to keep the foxtail low and out of the sheep’s eyes. It is also horrible for the fleeces – hard to pick out and very pokey.
I have been a little apprehensive to start…tearing up the ground just seemed scary! Luckily, my husband didn’t have those feelings 🙂 He started by plowing. Seeing the pasture like this really scared me! I just stayed inside and knew it would be ok.
The boys were happy because they got to borrow the neighbor’s big tractor!
After plowing he tried disking it, but the result wasn’t what he was looking for. So, he rototilled it and that helped a lot. The foxtail’s roots were so thick and entwined, that it looked like a 5 inch thick piece of root felt.
After plowing, rototilling, and disking – he drug it – a very dusty job!
Finally it was time to spread seeds – good seeds, seeds that are aggressive and can outgrow the foxtail. We planted chicory, annual ryegrass, white clover and a pasture mix with fescue, orchard, and ryegrass in it.
The weather cooperated and it started raining a couple days after the seed was spread. Little sprouts are so exciting!
And look at it now!!! The sheep are going to have to stay off for awhile to let it get established, but the idea of having GOOD grass for them to eat next year is AWESOME!
Magoo agrees 🙂
We are officially done showing sheep and attending fiber shows for 2010. This year’s Oregon Flock and Fiber Festival was a great way to finish the season. The sun was shining on Saturday and attendance was high.
All of these bags left early in the morning…
and most of these little buggers left on Saturday…
I love them, but making this many was a little overwhelming. I felt bad coming home with one lonely little sheep, so she is keeping me company in my office 🙂
I loved the comments I heard about the sheep and the bags – ‘I REALLY don’t need this, but I MUST have it’, ‘This looks just like the sheep I used to have’, ‘My friend just bought a new car and this little sheep is going to be so cute hanging from the mirror’, and many more that I forgot but enjoyed in the moment! In addition to all of these sheep finding new homes, quite a few people bought the kit so they could learn how to make themselves a little flock.
This year I found myself needing to show sheep and man my vendor booth all at the same time – WHAT??? I can multitask well, but not that well 🙂 Thanks to several good friends, I had plenty of help – this is one of my favorite things about fiber shows! While I was thinking about who I could ask to help me show sheep, I remembered that Kristine had offered her showing skills to me earlier this year. Although she had plans on Saturday afternoon, she gladly agreed to help. She hasn’t shown livestock in quite a few years, but it didn’t show. Since we were both showing, there aren’t very many pictures to show of the jacob show. So, I will just say that there were 4 breeders and some very nice sheep 🙂
Kenleigh’s Ironside came home as the Champion ram and Kenleigh’s Mollala was Reserve Champion ewe.
It has been 14 years since it rained at this event and that is amazing for the end of September in the Northwest. The sunny stretch ended on Sunday. We woke up to a drizzle and by mid-morning – it was POURING!!! About half of the vendors are outside on the lawn, including my booth! Thanks to some help from my husband, we were able to put walls on my canopy and everything got damp instead of wet 😉
Thanks to some more help from friends and my husband, we had the 7 sheep we brought to the show shorn and then I got to walk around and visit the other vendors! These two pieces weren’t for sale, but they were some of my favorite things that I saw…
and another one of my favorites…the blueface…
their ridiculously huge ears and eyes…
and their super shiny curls.
I only bought two fibery items…
this beautiful and super soft blueface roving…
and some colorful goodies.
You’ll have to wait to see the other item I came home with – I am so excited because it is going to make sheep work a lot easier and dare I say… maybe even fun!
Our new sheep are here! A couple of them have been on the road for two weeks. I wish I could tell them that their travels are over because I’m sure they are just waiting to be put on another trailer.
Bringing new sheep home is fun, but it should be done with care. As much as I would like to turn these new sheep out into the pasture, this would be haphazard because they have been exposed to a lot of different sheep and farms over the last couple of weeks.
I would hate to expose my sheep to an unknown threat, so the new sheep will have to wait a little longer to enjoy the Oregon grass.
I have them in a quarantine area in the barn. This will help acclimate them to our property and I can watch them closer for any signs of distress. I am also taking this time to worm them. In addition to buying new sheep, you could also be buying worms that you don’t currently have in your flock. It is recommended to worm with 2 different classes of wormer. It is best to flush the worms out in your quarantine area and not in your pastures.
In addition to Albus, whom you have already met – we have…
a handsome 4-horn ram lamb from Peg Bostwick. His name is Sweetgrass Clint and he will be traveling to California with Robin Lynde in the middle of October.
Albus’ traveling partner – Blue Ewe Meg. Very pretty girl with a lovely fleece.
An unplanned (but one I am excited about) purchase from Dan Carpenter. Such a cute face on this girl. Her name is Dandy’s Hope.
This girl may look a little out-of-place 🙂 She is a Navajo-Churro from my friend Karen at bide a wee farm. Her name is Ursa and she is the ewe that I mentioned briefly in a previous post about breeding to one of my ‘brown’ looking jacob rams. I can’t wait to see the resulting offspring and am hoping for something other than black. I wish I understood color genetics better (I am TRYING) so that I could discuss it with some intelligence. So, please don’t ask any technical questions – but feel free to help me in understanding the extension brown and dominant black aspects! On another note about Ursa – her name means ‘bear’. So far I haven’t seen that she takes after her name, except for maybe looking like a big brown bear. The churros aren’t much bigger than the jacobs, but just that little amount seems like a LOT!!!
After Albus realized that Clint is NOT a girl, they have settled down…
now he has his eyes (nose) on Ursa.
A yearling ram of Bob May’s
Byeburn Basil
Sweetgrass ewe lamb
another ewe lamb from Sweetgrass – she was so inquisitive.
A pen of yearling ewes owned by Anthony Berger.
A ewe lamb owned by Kay Kreutzer.
Another ewe lamb owned by Kay Kreutzer.
A Byeburn ewe lamb.
A lilac ewe lamb owned by Dan Carpenter.
A Southwind ram lamb.
A pasture of pretty ewes at Royal Unzicker’s.
and after being on the road for almost two weeks, this boy should be home tomorrow 🙂
A whole lot of letters = a whole lot of fun!
This last weekend, the Jacob Sheep Breeder’s Association (JSBA) held their Annual General Meeting (AGM) in New Jersey (NJ) and Pennsylvania (PA).
I traveled with a couple of other Oregon Jacob Sheep breeders…
Ingrid Painter – Puddleduck Farm and Karen Lobb – bide a wee farm. This is not the first AGM we have attended together. A few years ago, we drove to the AGM in Colorado. We travel well together and they are great fun to hang out with.
We flew into Philadelphia and were all a little intimidated by the BIG city! We quickly rented a car and headed out of the city…
the New Jersey countryside was a pleasant surprise. Rolling hills and wide open spaces.
The townships, villages, and quaint cottages were delightful.
We arrived Thursday night and even though it was a little late, Karen and I went to Royal & Sue Unzicker’s house for dinner. Ingrid opted to stay at the hotel, which turned out to be a wise choice! We had a couple adventures on the way. We learned very quickly that New Jersey doesn’t allow left turns. It was quite a shock at first and then it became a joke! We finally arrived at the Unzicker’s and had a nice visit with them and Linda Bjarkman. Thanks to Ms. GPS, on my phone, we made it back to the hotel without anymore adventures.
The AGM started on Friday afternoon with a Jacob sheep show. It was a very educational show with Ingrid judging. She took her time and explained certain traits (good and bad) to everyone.
Yearling rams
Ram lambs
Aged ewes
Yearling ewes
Ewe lambs
Royal Unzicker’s ewe, Bryn Gweled Bryn, was Champion ewe and Overall Champion Jacob at 7 years old!
My new boy, Blue Ewe Albus, was Champion ram! I really liked him in person and having him do well in the show was just icing on the cake. He should be in Oregon today and I am going up to Portland to pick him up on Saturday. He has been on the road, intransit for almost 2 weeks – Kentucky to Indiana to New Jersey to Portland to home. Thank you to Sally, Carl, Kay, and Doug for making this happen!
After the show on Friday we enjoyed a nice dinner and visiting with other jacob breeders.
Saturday was educational and fun. It started with the mandatory business meeting – well run and stayed on task. This was followed by Peg Bostwick and Linda Bjarkman giving a very informative talk about fleeces. Well presented and thought provoking.
This year’s AGM was held in conjunction with the Garden State Sheep & Fiber Festival. During lunch time we had plenty of time to visit the vendors, eat lunch, look at jacob sheep, and of course ‘talk’ jacob 🙂
The afternoon started with a presentation about looking at lamb fleeces and horns to predict how they will look as adults. Karen put this together and I think it was very eye opening.
An old video of jacob sheep put together by Edd Bissell was shown followed by a discussion of ‘Jacob Sheep – a guide to the selection of breeding stock’ compiled by Ingrid Painter and Mary Spahr. I loved how the video and the guide and the previous presentations all essentially said the same things. We may each have our own ‘favorite’ look in a jacob sheep and certain characteristics that are more important to us, but at the end of the day, we can all agree that they are a jacob!
The real highlight of the day was the after dinner speaker – Susanna Davy Gilbert of the Fieldwood flock. Here is an article about her and the work that she did for Jacob sheep from The New York Times May, 1992. She told stories about her time as a shepherd at the Rockefeller estate. She was funny and endearing and amazed that people still remember her after all of these years. She was awarded with a Lifetime Achievement Award by JSBA.
There was a wonderful raffle with everything from a t-shirt and there were several things that I was really hoping I would come home with, but it just wasn’t to be. Karen and I were the only ones sitting at our table that didn’t have their names called…darn! Thanks to a new jacob friend, we both came home with a cone of jacob yarn. She won several cones and thought we would each enjoy one – she was very right!
Sunday morning we woke up to rain…but it didn’t bother us Oregonians and they were very happy to see the rain. They have had an unusually dry summer. We had a lovely breakfast at the Unzicker’s and had a tour through their barn and flock of jacobs. By mid-morning we were saying our good-byes to people that were driving home or flying out on Sunday. We made our way back to the Garden State Sheep Show where Ingrid was scheduled to judge a Navajo-Churro show. I had an afternoon free to visit with more jacob people and watch a herding demonstration…
The dogs were wonderful to watch and the handler was entertaining and informative.
I LOVED watching this dog! He will be running at the USBCHA Nationals later this year.
I had such a good time and met so many people.
Thanks again to Ms. GPS, we made our way back to the big city, returned the rental car, and made it for our flight with plenty of time! Whew…a long weekend and a long post!
Stories from the Farm 
