Shellymay's Sheep

[shellymay]

Sheep is what I am all about and have been doing since 2006, breeding 142 ewes this year and thought I would share some photo's
I took yesterday, these are Katahdin sheep, they were running with rams for 35 days and rams were pulled last weekend, enjoy....

When you have a lot of sheep you have to take lots of pictures 



































































































SO IF YOUR STILL WITH ME AND DIDN'T GET BORED, THESE NEXT PICTURES ARE THE BABIES (EWE LAMBS) THAT WERE BORN THIS MARCH
AND THEY ARE AT OUR OTHER FARM FOR THE WINTER, THERE ARE 64 EWE LAMBS AT THIS FARM.....
































A COUPLE OF THE LAMBS GUARDIANS, THERE ARE THREE AT THIS FARM  ...................

[Deleted]

Wow, fabulous sheep shellymay. That sure was a treat for this sheep lover. They look in such lovely condition. And the 'minders' are beautiful. Such lovely faces and warm eyes. Thanks for taking the time to post the photos.

[bergere]

Beautiful sheep, and I love all the colors.

Do miss lambing time, though not all the work, even with hardy sheep, there was always some thing to do.
Look forward to lamb photos.

[here to stay]

As a non-sheep person, I enjoyed the pictures too. The all look in such fine condition?
I noticed no docked tails. Is that because they are hair sheep?

[bergere]

You are right, its because they are hair sheep, their tails stay clean.

[shellymay]

Thanks for the comments everyone, tails? All of our sheep are Registered and registered Katahdins are required to keep or have their tails, there are many UN-registered Katahdins out there that do have their tails dock, but I think these folks see wool breeds and think they are supposed to dock??? .
There are other hair sheep breeds like the Dorper sheep and their registry DOES require the tails to be docked, so one must use the registry of each breed to know if you should or shouldn’t…

Now just so you all know are sheep are NOT grain fed, nope all those healthy ewes and lambs are GRASS fed only, took a few years to build a flock like this but CAN and is being done by many, our sheep get fed corn for about 4-6 weeks a year only during milk production time for the nursing lambs, but that is it. I can’t say it enough about better to invest your money into land and the land will always be there even after the sheep are gone, (we will get to old someday to continue to raise sheep) sigh! But having the land to sell off someday will be our retirement and at 100 acres that will be a nice retirement for our future elder years, sheep feed is a waste of money and once consumed its gone and no return on your investment! Also Bergere less chores when not feeding grain every day.

Land??? Yes you have to have a down payment for said land investment, but after that the sheep (our sheep) pay for the land payment we don’t, by the way this breed is easy care breed and less work to care for as me and my husband work 40 hr weeks with full time jobs, really my husband works 50-60 hour weeks most times, back to land with this breed Katahdins you want the ewes to give you at least twins as the first lamb you sell all that money goes to the expense of the ewes yearly cost to keep her on your farm, anywhere from her shots, winter hay, and the corn she does get for milk production purpose and including the water she drinks if you are paying for water.

The second lamb at time of sale is your profit, this profit is what is used to pay for land, if you start out young enough you can have land paid for before you ever reach retirement age, Don’t over stock land is key also in the health of sheep and health/of said land, never let sheep eat down to dirt and kill the grass off, rotate pastures and keep grass height at no less than 2-3 inches in height, once it gets that low move sheep to another pasture, NOT overstocking your land is key to parasite control as well and many other factors. We also don’t breed any sheep until it reaches over a year of age, hence the pictures of the ewe lambs at the other farm as we won’t breed them until next year and at time of breeding they will be 1 ½ years old and will not lamb for the first time until they are 2 yrs of age (sheep carry for almost 5 months).

Yearly care is not bad at all (hair sheep) we do have one of those flipping machines that you put sheep in and flip them upside down and trim their feet, but we only trim feet once per year, so we pick a weekend and allow for this, once feet are trimmed they will be flipped right side up and released from said sheep working equipment (flipper) we give them their yearly shots and they are released, ONCE a year. We do feed round bales of hay and that requires a tractor but sure makes things like that so much easier and our round bales are stored outside so no storing square bales and the extra work of stocking the barn and then retrieving from barn to feed out, Okay so not totally true as when we wean the lambs off we do feed square bales to lambs of alfalfa hay while they are being weaned for about 60 days then they are put out to grass! But once on grass they will not see squares again on our farm, I also advise people to start out small and work their way up as some people find they just don’t enjoy raising livestock, always start with good stock as well, going to some slaughter sale barn to buy your foundation stock is the biggest mistake people make, those sheep are there at that slaughter sale for a reason…..

Wow I have blabbed long enough, I do enjoy raising the sheep and it really is easy with this breed……..

[bergere]

Oh, that is way cool Shelly! The Turntables make it a lot easier to work on them!

Wish I had one, when I was raising sheep. (I sold registered, breeding stock, with good temperaments and wool. Normally got $1,000 for the good quality ewe lambs)

Wool sheep were a lot more work than that,, then again it was just me, did everything by hand and they did need a lot more care in general.

Now I just down to, two Katahdin hair sheep. Tons easier to care for.

[Deleted]

shellymay, I'm with you about how useful the sheep handlers are. It was the first thing we bought after we moved here. A lady up the road was selling her property and had one for sale. As we had a motley group of x-breed sheep that came with the land, our contractor/shearer at the time put us on to her. Best $100 we've ever spent.

I'm envious about your only needing to check feet once a year. I have to do it more often than that. Polwarth's are heavily influenced by Merino, which can have foot problems in wetter areas. Our place is at the bottom of a rise and we get a lot of run-off, so during winter the land can stay quite wet. While our Pols are more resistant to fleece rot than some other breeds, their feet do need keeping an eye on more than in their traditional dry high country environment in the South Island. It's a compromise for wanting the finer micron wool.

Must admit that with age creeping up on me, I'm very tempted to change breeds to something like Wiltshires, as living in a rural area just outside a major city means that it's harder to find shearers than in real rural areas. With the fine fleece, there are only a few fly-strike preparations that will penetrate to the skin once it has any significant wool on and these are hugely expensive and only sold in larger containers. I try to keep my sheep as chemical free as possible, so this effectively means shearing twice a year - once in November and then again around February as the fly-strike season lasts well into June/July here. But I do love my Pols as they're otherwise very easy care and non-flighty.

[shellymay]

@kiwifarmgal, I love your sheep (assuming that's them in your avatar)? and sorry to hear about being in the wetter areas
and the feet issues, we can have the same issues here with rain but its not the bottoms being wet because of rain, the grass 
just grows so fast that the sheep can't keep up with it and when they walk out in pastures the long grass rubs between the hooves
and it irritates the skin between the hoof, like a paper cut  , they now have a shot for such a thing and or else a farmer has
to bush hog off if it gets way out of control   So do you spin your wool or sell it? how many do you have? Gosh sheep people 
want to know...LOL

Bergere, you will have to post pictures of yours someday for us 

[bergere]

All the photos are just normal photos.... would have to dig some up. You can see some of the sheep's backsides in this photos of DS, his favorite bantam chicken Squeaky.
The Larger Black butt, is a full sized Brecknock Hill Cheviot.

Sold off most of my Black Welsh Mountains, before Oogie brought semen into the USA, it was a genetically dead breed at the time I had them.  Did keep some
very nice Brecknock Hill BWM crosses, just for me.
Also had some Jacobs for awhile, but with a young son, I did not want anything with horns, and some Babydoll South Downs... but I finally sold those off, and just ran the original sized Cheviots....  they now call them miniature Cheviots.

[Deleted]

bergere, Baby Doll sheep are just starting to take off over here. They do look cute and I can see how much easier they would be to handle for those that are getting a bit past it. Interested in why you sold yours off in favour of the standard Cheviots. :-)

Love the photo of your DS and the chickens. Too cute.

[bergere]

I couldn't find a Ram with the temperament I required and the ewes were really labor intensive during lambing time. Had a couple that would lay on the one of the two or three lambs they had, smothering them, so I had to be right with them to pull the lambs away and keep the ewes away from them,while they had the rest. Meant being up all hours.

My Cheviots were super good mothers, very hardy, lots of milk, didn't have any issues or problems with them. Their fleece was much longer, so good for handspinning. Not nearly as soft as the Babydolls.
Won a couple of shows with the Mini Cheviot fleece, sold out every year with the fleece I wanted to part with.

[Deleted]

bergere, thanks for the explanation. I was just interested. :-) It's amazing what a difference it makes having a good-tempered ram. I've only ever had one that I was scared of. His name was Jethro and even though he came from the same flock that I buy new rams from, he was a tyrant. Was glad to put him into salami. All my others have been pretty docile and trustworthy - well, at least as much as you can trust any ram... :-)

Do you have a close-up shot of any of your Babydolls? Reason for asking is that one of the breeders on a NZ forum I belong to has ones with really unusual cute faces and I just wanted to see if that was standard with the BDs. Again, just curious. :-)

[bergere]

I think I do, but I would have to dig through my photographs,,, might take a bit because I never organized anything. They are stored in boxes.

I agree, life is too short to have aggressive Rams.  The Cheviots I had, were quite mellow, kept an eye on them of course, but went in all their pastures, even during breeding
season, never had any issues.

[motdaugrnds]

WOW what a beautiful assortment of sheep. I am so envious as I've been wanting some hair sheep for sometime now. They sound as though they would be so easy to keep. Thanks so much for sharing your pics. I do so enjoy seeing what others are raising.