Jan 14, 2022
1. Etta's twins from 2 weeks ago
2. Scully and her new lamb that she just had this morning!
3. ...their faces...
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1. Etta's twins from 2 weeks ago
2. Scully and her new lamb that she just had this morning!
3. ...their faces...
The issue folks have seems to be mulesing? Which okay, I don't like mulesing either. I prefer either "just regularly shear their hind end to prevent fly strike," or my long term ideal for it would be to breed sheep who lack wool on their hind ends and are born with short tails, such that mulesing and/or regular sanitary shaves and docking aren't ever needed... because you *do* have to do something to prevent fly strike, and I do agree that mulesing is not the solution I want practiced.
Like, imo breeding of livestock animals like sheep should always have a long term goal of improving the health of the animal and my Ideal Sheep would naturally have a low risk of fly strike just from responsible breeding choices. There's folks working on this in NZ! Which I love!
Also, if you have objections to some practices like mulesing, but as an individual desire or need to use wool anyway, I highly recommend checking out local fiber arts and crafts shows! You'll likely find folks who own small fiber farms locally, and probably will be able to find some local person to obtain fiber from who doesn't use those practices.
I'm just so exhausted of seeing blatant lies surrounding sheep farming, though. It's totally fine to have legitimate gripes re some parts of husbandry - I do too - as long as they're honest. (My knee jerk reaction is from seeing one too many posts where people claim that we kill a sheep to get it's wool... we don't. We just shave the wool off and turn them back out to pasture.)
Moms and babies ❤
if you're not too tired of answering this, how is the longterm hardier sheep and goats strategy going?
It is going well. But I'm going to be downsizing pretty extremely over the next little bit because I'm just not up for caring for as many animals as we have. I think Cyril is taking most (?) of our best sheep with him when he moves out to the PNW and Fer and I will probably keep back just a small handful of goats.
ETHEL LAMBED!!! TRIPLETS!!! Two ewelings and a ram lamb. So goofy looking. All healthy and up and walking and nursing. Very curious! One is a sort of light brown with socks and a white blaze and 2 are white like Ethel. It is her first live birth and she did it all on her own with no help! She is a genius! ❤
These lambs are 50% soay 25% EF and 25% tunis!
This tiny man has a soft neck brace to help him keep his head up now
Y'all remember Elsie, right? The little black and white sheep that we pulled to bottle raise bc we thought she might be good for our dairy program? Well it turns out she has some form or dwarfism or something, anyway she is too small to be bred safely. It be like that sometimes when u are breeding animals. Normally we would find a family with kids who wanted a sweet pet perma-lamb to sell her to, but bc my aunt is the one who bottle raised her, we are giving her to my aunt for xmas... My mom got a "bike bag" wrapping bag and a huge bow. DEFINITELY going to film my aunt "opening" her present tomorrow lol so watch this space :')
We met up with this lady at a rest stop and she was walking the ram around the pet walk area