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.

Build it and they will come!

Posted by kenleighacres on November 12, 2008
Posted in: barn owls. 6 Comments

That is what we are hoping at least 🙂  We are talking about barn owls and nesting boxes.  We used to have a very healthy population of barn owls here and then we tore down 3 of the 4 barns.  Our place used to be a chicken farm – many, many years ago.  When we bought the property, there was 1 acre under barns.  Each barn was 52′ x 320′.  Unfortunately, three of the barns were in very bad shape.  Lucky for us we saw what it could be and got quite the deal.  After going over the many ways of taking the barns down, we finally hired a demo company and they dismantled and hauled everything away.  They did a fabulous job!  We didn’t realize one of these barns was the one that the barn owls were nesting in.  We still see them flying around, but they don’t nest in our barn anymore.  We discovered that there aren’t any covies for them to nest in like there was in the other barn.  I don’t necessarily miss them flying out of the barn at me first thing in the morning, but it was fun seeing the babies and they are beautiful birds.  This year we have discovered that the swallow population in our barn is out of control and the mice seem to be taking over!!!  So, I found some plans for barn owl nesting boxes and my husband is going to get busy building them.  I went searching for ways to attract barn owls and no kidding it says – “Build it and they will come!”  I will keep you updated and hopefully we hearing the screeching again soon.

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Fleeces and Fiber Yields

Posted by kenleighacres on November 6, 2008
Posted in: Fiber, Jacob Sheep, sheep. 6 Comments

I have had a few questions about fiber yields and I thought I would look up and see what I could find.  I found a great description from an Australian Company that actually tests commercial clips –

Yield is the weight of clean wool, after the removal of impurities, expressed as a percentage of the greasy wool weight.  These impurities may be natural, such as grease and suint, or acquired, such as seeds and burrs along with sand, soil or other mineral matter. In addition, wool naturally absorbs moisture and this can vary from day to day depending on climatic conditions.  Because it is used to estimate the quantity of usable wool fibre in a lot it is a significant factor in wool trading, although it does not, as such, affect the processing efficiency of the wool.

Producers can send in samples from their fleeces – with a good idea of what their yield is, they can market their fleeces better.

I was also curious about what the average is and was shocked to find that it is 45-60%.  When sending your fleeces of for processing, you are paying on the incoming weight.  So, you definitely want your yield to be as high as it can be.  Of the fleeces I sent off, the lowest yield was from Holly and Isabel.  I’m sure this is due to the high amount of lanolin that Holly has in her fleece.  It is an uncommonly high amount for a Jacob.  I look past it because she has a beautiful fleece (once it is washed) and she is one of my friendly girls 🙂

So, the better your skirt your fleeces, the better your yield should be.

Fiberlicious!

Posted by kenleighacres on November 4, 2008
Posted in: Alpaca, Felting, Fiber, Jacob Sheep, sheep, Spinning. 5 Comments

I picked up some of my fiber from Charlotte at Superior Fibers on Sunday.  I dropped it off at the Oregon Flock and Fiber at the end of September.  I love opening the bags and diving into the processed fiber.  It’s better than Christmas for me 🙂  This round I had them blend some of the rose gray fiber from Tommy, our alpaca, in with some of the Jacob fleeces.  It turned out better than I could have hoped for!

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The Jacob fiber is from Wrangler and Amber.  It is so soft.

I also had a lilac fleece from Celeste processed and it is really lovely…

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I had some black/white and lilac fleeces turned into felted sheets.

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I haven’t paid attention to yeild pecentages before, but thanks to Boulderneigh, I was curious this go around.  The average was 73%.

Now I need an afternoon all to myself to spin away 🙂

If you are interested in buying any of the above products, please visit our store at Local Harvest.

A few shots of fall before it flies away…

Posted by kenleighacres on November 1, 2008
Posted in: Dogs, Fall, whippet. 4 Comments

Fall has been absolutely breathtaking this year.  The main difference from past years is that it has been very dry.  The leaves usually just start turning color and then the rains will come and rip the leaves off the trees.  This year they have had the opportunity to reach their full potential.


The colors created a beautiful backdrop last weekend.


The rains started yesterday and the leaves are quickly falling to the ground.

I used to hate this time of year because I really don’t like the long, wet, cold winter – but I now have lambing to look forward to.  We are at the halfway mark with only 2 1/2 months left to go, which I’m sure will fly by like the rest of 2008 has!

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.

A Paisley update…

Posted by kenleighacres on October 28, 2008
Posted in: whippet. 2 Comments

I took Paisley into the vet on Friday for a recheck and x-ray.  Unfortunately, the pin had caused a hole in her skin and was causing a lot of discomfort.  The vet decided to cut a little bit of the excess pin off.  Good news is that the x-ray looked really good.  The bad news was that Friday night was miserable, I got about 4 hours of sleep due to Paisley’s constant whining.  On Saturday I noticed that she had a big bulge on the front of her shoulder.  It was hard and I had no idea what it was, but figured it had to be why she was in pain.  I called the vet and unfortunately the vet that did the surgery was out of town for the weekend.  The on-call vet is pregnant, so she couldn’t do an x-ray to figure out what the problem was.  So, we decided to wait until Monday morning.  In the meantime she prescribed some more pain medicine and antibiotics.  For somebody with a weak stomach, it is pretty nasty looking 😉  This morning I took her back to the vet and we did another x-ray.  The bulge is the pin causing a lot of irritation to the surrounding tissue and is causing some calcification.  He wanted to cut off a little bit more of the pin, but he was going to have to sedate her for it.  So, I left her there and came back a couple hours later.  The poor girl had to be sedated for nothing because the pin is in the bone in such a way that he couldn’t cut anymore off without doing more damage.  The poor girl is going to have this weeping bubble until the pin is removed in another 4 weeks.  I guess I am going to have to get a stronger stomach!  They left her bandage off and she seems to be happier.  Her skin is a mess from the tape, but should heal quickly.

I’m happy to see that she is resting comfortably.

We appreciate all of the well wishes!

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.