Wet, Wild and Windy

It seems so strange that a week ago I was complaining about the cold because right now it's plus 16, yes, PLUS! And my goodness it's windy! Consequently it's melted everything and there's water flowing everywhere. Before it cools down again I hope things get dried out so it's not too icy. At the farm there's hardly a speck of snow left but there is plenty of flowing water.

Meghan, bless her, thought that getting some fresh flowing water would be nice for the ewes so she devised a contraption to let her get water without getting her feet wet, blowing away, or falling on the ice. Yes I realize it looks a bit weird so let me explain. The toboggan is tied to the van to prevent it sliding away and she is using a clean shovel to scoop water into the bucket because apparently the shovel is lighter and easy to use. Did it work? Yes it did! One of the most important skills any farmer can have is the ability to improvise a solution to a problem. People don't always think of farmers as being particularly smart or creative and I'm here to tell you that you couldn't be more wrong. Every farmer I know can easily list 20 or more used for that piece of bale twine or string we all seem to have in our pockets. I like Meghan's blending of practicality and safety features in her water gathering project. Very funny yet effective. It was quite early in the morning so the light is pretty weak in the photos.

Given the strength of the winds today and yesterday I'm amazed that the tarps are still holding but they are, and I'm grateful. Steve got one end wall almost done and the eaves are now boxed in too which keeps the barn nice and warm inside compared to outside on a windy day. There's still good ventilation but no breeze blowing through as much as before. Very much appreciated by all of us who spend time in the barn. i put a gate latch on the side door so that we can latch the door closed more tightly and also open it from the inside. I should have used shorter screws though because they stick through a bit and when the wind blew I put out a hand to stop it and skewered the base of my thumb on a screw, OUCH! But at least now we can pull the door shut from inside and latch it tightly, and get out again which is always a bonus.

I was a bit surprised that Sweetpea hadn't had her lambs yet and she's really eating and drinking lots, they all are. The lambs put on a lot of their growth in the last few weeks so now the ewes are looking like they've swallowed basketballs! Sweetpea's udder last night was looking firm and round with her nipples sticking out so it shouldn't be long now and they're definitely starting to get a bit uncomfortable with such big bulky bellies. I'll see if I can get them to stand still long enough to take a photo.  It's not at all unusual for Rideaus to have triplets or quads so we'll see how it goes. Most breeds have singles or twins which works out well because with 2 teats they can feed twins but any breed with improved milk production can support more lambs and that's what ours will be good for. Older ewes are also more likely to produce triplets than younger ewes and this breed is known for larger groups of lambs so it will be interesting. One of my ewes has hardly gained any girth though and her udder is unchanged so I'm not sure that she's even pregnant sadly. Time will tell.


 Next year I'm going to have a plan in place that allows me to know when each ewe was serviced so that I know when to start increasing her feed and when she is due. Well, as much as any shepherd can know because these things aren't an exact science.

In addition to using pallets as dividers we've put together some wooden panels to use for making temporary walls and gates so that we can divide off the mothers and their lambs to have a bonding area for a few days and to make temporary pens for any bottle fed lambs. These are light weight and sized to allow a tall person to step over if needed. Now that out pallet pile has started to defrost I'm going to get the boys to help me stack them individually so that they don't freeze together again. This afternoon I want to make a trough for the sheep feed too. Keeping it off the ground is important for cleanliness and to prevent wastage which is more economical. Both boys write their last exams today and then have the rest of the day off and tomorrow too so I have slaves! Yay!

Well, time to pick them up from school. Hope you are all enjoying the last day of January.

Best Wishes!   Elizabeth

Sheep Week

I think since we're waiting around on lambs and generally focusing on our sheep at the moment that I'll dedicate this next weeks worth of posts to everything SHEEP. Sound good?

So let's talk about my sheep.

I have Rideau Arcott ewes and they are a Canadian breed of sheep that was developed at Agriculture Canada's Animal Research Centre in Ottawa, Ontario. Because of that they are often called Rideau ARCOTT indicating their origin, A R C Ottawa. The breeding program was started in 1966 and through strict controls of genetics and breeding they developed 3 breeds of sheep, the Rideau, the Canadian, and the Outaouais Sheep. They were originally bred with the goal of producing sheep that would lamb rapidly, every 8 months, so that they could be used for research purposes. After all was said and done the resulting sheep were released to farmers all over the country and are now quite common as commercial breeds. Rideaus in particular are really a meat breed but have some other great characteristics such as their ability to lamb every 8 months, their medium quality fleece and their ability to raise an average of 2.5 lambs every 8 months. We'll keep our cross bred ewe lambs and cross them back to another Rideau ram in the late fall to have 75% Rideau lambs the following Spring. The choice of ram is really important because the ram contributes 50% of the genetics to your resulting lambs. Some rams sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars but for our purposes we'll find a nice looking local boy to trade for or we'll keep an eye out at the livestock sales.

The breed's genetic mix is 40% Finnish Landrace, 20% Suffolk, 14% East Fresian, 9% Shropshire, 8% Horned Dorset and the last 9% is made up of Border Leicester, North Country Cheviot, Romnelet and Corriedale. Each contributes different characteristics such as hardiness, meatiness and non seasonal breeding. This mix makes them good mothers and by breeding them to a terminal breed (meat breed) such as a Texel or a Suffolk you get good lambs for market. Our girls were bred to a Suffolk and a Dorset Horn so we'll see what we get for lambs. Both fathers have distinctive looks and so we'll be able to tell who fathered whom. But both should produce hardy and fast growing meaty lambs.

So there you have it, the provenance of our ewes. We'll keep good records of how many lambs they each have and how they do raising them. Also how the lambs grow and mature. Records are really important and help a shepherd to make good decisions that improve the quality of his flock and keep them healthy and strong. Some record keeping such as tagging their ears is also required by law.

New Sheep in 2 weeks

Our new ewes are coming on Sept 28th so this weekend we'll have the barn finished and the fence in place. The importance of the barn is really for keeping the hay dry and as a shelter for new lambs once they come. Sheep will happily live outside with a cover or 3 sided shelter in even the nastiest weather, but we like to have a barn available anyways. We're also going to add a coop on one side and probably a lean to shelter to the other side for the sheep to have some shade if they want it.

The sheep we're getting are culls from a larger flock. And since I would usually advise people to make sure they're not getting culls, why are we doing it? Did we feel sorry for the sheep?

In keeping livestock there's a balancing of caring for your animals and being able to butcher them if you're raising them for meat. Good producers treat their animals well and take care of their needs while still being able to maintain perspective and know that they have given them a good life before slaughter. Does that make sense?

Well, our girls are very good quality mature ewes of 3-4 years old that have lambed multiple times each and have twins/triplets. I've seen their lambs from this past spring and they're lovely healthy looking animals. But such frequent lambing, ( the STAR system does 5 lambings in 3 years) nursing and subsequent mastitis (I suspect) has left them with udders that are blind on one side, that is, they only make milk on one side so a lamb can only suckle on the one nipple. That's fine for a single lamb but what about for twins, triplets or quads? Who feeds the other ones? Well the short answer is that the shepherd is responsible. So as I mentioned in a previous post, we'll be out in the cold and dark bottle feeding lambs. It doesn't sound too bad does it? But feeding colostrum to lambs is a 5 times a day commitment and after that they still need 3-4 feedings every 24 hours. So your day looks like this: feedings at 6am, 11am and the bedding gets cleaned now, 4pm and then before bed at about 9 or 10pm. For newborns there's a middle of the night feeding at 2am. Plus each feeding can take an hour or more and you have to factor in the prep time for mixing milk replacer as well as the cleaning of equipment afterwards. Suddenly it's looking like a full time job! Which is is for the first month until they are eating hay and grain and having less frequent feedings.

So you may be asking yourself why on earth I'd want to do this. Well for several reasons, the main one being economy. We would like a flock of good quality meat sheep with mid grade fleece so that we can have meat lambs and spin the wool. We are getting 4 Rideau Arcott and 1 Charollais. However, the going rate for a good breeding ewe is around $200-$250 and there's the cost of freight and breeding. So a flock of 10 ewes, bred and transported would cost around $3000. I don't have that much money so we're going another route. Our 5 ewes are costing us $750 and are bred to a lovely Suffolk ram, that's basically half price. By the spring we aim to have raised 10 lambs with 5 ewe lambs being kept in the flock and 5 (or more) lambs for market. If we make an average profit of $200 per lamb sold then it will more than balance out the cost of feed for the lambs and any butchering fees, equipment etc. Plus I'll still have those 5 new ewes for a total of 10 breeding ewes. My flock will have taken lots of work but cost me $750. The following year we'll let the younger ewes raise their own babies, do the same thing again with the older ewes and keep 5 ewe lambs back for a total of 15 ewes. At the end of the summer we'll cull the older ewes leaving us with 5 one year old ewes and 5 two year old ewes.

Will it be worth it? We think so or we wouldn't be willing to try. If we get lucky I'm hoping that we can make enough money to buy an older livestock trailer and save the transportation fees of our market lambs and for other farm use. Trailers are SO helpful. I can live without a truck, but the trailer is a necessity!

Other reasons we're getting sheep are that they are good close grazers and that will be very good for our pastures, trimming them up nicely. Sheep also do well in orchards and that's something we're starting to work at rejuvenating this fall. The trees bore apples but are definitely in need of some pruning and there are some 30 foot pine trees growing up in there and shading them out so the pines are coming down. I guess we can always limb them and them use them as posts for a run-in shelter for the sheep. Hmmm, that seems like a good idea.

Once the pasture for the sheep is finished this weekend, I'm going to turn my attention to perimeter fencing. We measured it all out and will need approximately 110 posts and 7 rolls of barbed wire (1320 ft each) to make a 4 strand fence all around our pasture along the neighbours, the river and the road side. We found a local family who make posts and charge $1.75 each so we might use them for a good number of the posts with some larger posts from the feed store on the braced corners. I'll leave that up to Steve. If we can get the posts in the ground before the weather turns nasty that would be good but for right now we're a bit short of money and have other priorities (like bills) to pay first. Fencing can wait for now.

The new chicks are all snuggly warm and in their boxes in the garage but next week we'll be moving them over to the garden to a poly tunnel shelter. We built a frame out of 2x2's and then put PVC pipe over in hoops to support the plastic roof. The frame both holds up the hoops and gives us an anchor for the heat lamps to hang from. I'll take pics once it's all ready to go. The plan is to raise them out beside the greenhouse for the next few weeks while the tomatoes/cucumbers etc finish up and then we'll move them into the greenhouse when the plants are removed. They can scratch up the ground, remove any bugs and fertilize it for us. We'll probably keep the meat birds for 10 weeks which puts us into December and then will dig over and rest the greenhouse for a few weeks before getting ready for a very early spring planting.

This weekend is going to be just crazy busy. But I know that all this work will pay off in the end. Have to go. Hope you have a good weekend. Look for more about the Rideau Arcott breed of sheep tomorrow.

Elizabeth

I'll cover bottle raising lambs in a later post, likely in January as we get closer to lambing time.