Friday, August 13, 2010

Weaning

I have been really busy the last couple months. I have been washing and dying wool and mohair, cutting weeds, cleaning up manure and setting up fences/moving sheep. I weaned all my lambs about a week and a half ago. When I wean I also weigh all of them so I can see how they grew (which ewes are doing a good job and which are not.) Most of the Shetland lambs were 40# and most of the cross lambs were 50-55#. A couple singles were 70-80#. I also weighed a couple of my yearling ewes. I weighed an average (for my flock) sized Shetland yearling ewe and she was 80#. That's good. I also weighed the smallest -way smaller than the rest-yearling ewe and she was 50#. Wow. She's a cull! Way too small. (I have had ewes who were 60-65# and they generally can't keep up with feeding twins.)
Here some the lambs and yearlings are resting together.
This is what the ewes enjoying their "ladies retreat" looked like this morning.
This is what they looked like immediately after I refilled their mineral tub!

The big boys are all in a bachelor group as well. They are being moved around on weed patrol in the winter pens and around the drive way.