Lambing season and piglets comming home

We had a very successful and happy lambing season this year. 49 sheep lambs and goat kids were born, 49 were healthy and lived (happily hereafter?). We sold all sheep lambs after a good start of two months with their mothers and to our big surprise we also managed to sell all billy goats. 8 promising goat kids stayed on our farm.

 Two months old, just arrived....

A week later, going outside!

And meeting the other family members.

Terminal sire

We got Bob, a young good looking Suffolk ram, to become father of our Lacaune x East Friesian sheep, we don't want to get more then 50% Friesian blood in our ewes. The Friesians have proven to be too demanding for our low input farming system. The Lacaunes however have shown to be excellent hardy animals. We are looking forward to see how the EFxLC cross ewes will perform, so far we are really satisfied, they are healthy and all which where 6 months or older got in gestation - on grass only since we do not feed any concentrated feed to them. The first offspring of Bob is expected around 25th of February and all of them will be for sale since we want to continue with dairy sheep.

Birth explosion

26 lambs in less then three weeks! Now ten days without anybody on the calendar - we might try to get some sleep before the last 12 ewes are due.

Start of lambing season 2013

All but two of our twenty two year old ewes have lambed within a short (an cold)period. We now wait for the last two and ten yearling ewes.

Na predaj - for sale

Rezervácia mladých baranov, matka Lacaune a otec Východofrízsky plemenný baran línie Wild, z dvojčat dovezených z Čiech. Tieto plemenné barany budú výborným dodatkom vášho ovčieho stáda. Jahňatá sa narodia v januári a februári 2013 a na predaj budú mať minimálnu hmotnosť 15kg. Rezervujte si ich ešte dnes! Moznosť rezervovať si aj krížence oviec Suffolk a Lacaune, ktoré sa narodia v marci. Cena: 3E/kg Bazos inzerát So far the Slovak text of our advertisment. And only a few reactions, very frustating. We got very nice sheep and I am trying to sell our (unborn) lambs. The rams would be perfect to upgrade local sheep herds, but it seems that most will end op as meat. And even as mutton we get too low prices for them.....

Feeding rack - latest fashion

We believe that it is healthy to get exercise when you are pregnant. This includes other mamals as sheep and goats. Therefore our animals sleep, get feed and water on different places so they have to walk. Arnold just made some new hay racks for our sheep. The ones in the stables are in use by our goats and our last year sheep rack has been taken over by our horses. It is a nice iron one but the smallest sheep try (and sometimes manage) to get inside. So now we have two wooden ones which we can adjust if the sizes don't fit.

Two more weeks

Just two weeks left before the start of our lambing season. Our sheep look like hippos. I am getting slightly nervous. Just keeping my fingers crossed that all our animals will stay healthty and wont have problems giving birth.

Not too cold

It is rather cold for a slovakian December month. However our animals don't seem to be cold. We woried a bit about our horse Iris, being old and having lots of Arabic blood in her veins but she is even looking better than this summer (when we just bought her). Our Shetland pony Pjotr is lying at her feet on the picture below.

Weather has changed

Two days ago our sheep were still grazing green grass. Now all is white and we had to bring them home to feed them hay. Feeding hay in the fields is not possible, to many hungry deer around which walk through electric fences to get their feed. We have already tried this last year; all sheep missing and a deer traped in our electric netting. We have made the stable in such a way that they can walk in and out and room around in the orchard. Exercise is good for pregnant ladies.

Wool

From left to right: Friesian, Lacaune and F1 cross. ------------------------ Most of our sheep are Lacaune, a few are Friesian and all our lambs are F1 friesian x Lacaune crosses. Lacaune aren't very wooly and the quality of it's wool is very low. Friesians have the contrary. We have no problem to find people who want the fleeces of our Friesians. The Lacaune's wool goes into the garbage container... Next spring we will have the first wool of our F1 crosses I wonder how their wool quality will be.

Another three months to go

One of our favorite sheep is looking very pregnant. She is two months in lamb and has slightly less than another three months to go. Certainly we do expect twins from her like last year.

Goats vs Sheep

Goats have (taken) their freedom again. Since we have got permission to graze the Alfalfa field next to our meadows and they don't run away we are fine with this. Milk production has almost doubled! They walk great distances browse a bit here and there and enjoy being free-goat. Our sheep (and goat lambs) are still confined. They seem to accept this better than the goats. As long as they get their daily new pasture, fresh water and the weather is not to bad - sheep don't complain.

Big bellies

We stopped milking our sheep the 10th of September for several reasons. Grass was getting dry and did not grow anymore. We wanted to mix our lambs and ewes so that we only had to graze one field. We could also use the time very well since we had a caravaning group of 40 people staying on our campsite. And last but not least our sheep are young (18 months) already given birth at 12 months of age, lactated for six months (with really good productions) and most were in lamb again. So they could use some rest. That second week of september we both had enough rain and nice warm weather. So at the end of September and now even at the end of October we have plenty green grass again. So our sheep are looking glorious! Bellies are getting bigger and we do not (have to) feed concentrates. And even the this year lambs are getting in heat. We hope that severe cold will not arrive till end of December (wishfull thinking) so we can keep feeding our flok on (free) grass till late pregnancy.

Bob did his first job

Winter rest

Bram's job has been done, he will probably be the father of the lambs of all our adult ewes -1. Our largest Friesian ewe might not have been in heat yet. However the risk that his daughters, who share the same field will be in heat soon is too big.

Back

So far only one ewe came back in heat. So it seems that we will indeed have a very short but hectic lambing season.

Plan B

We have 12 ewe lambs from our Friesian ram and our Lacaune ewes. Most were born at the end of the lambing season, at the beginning we got only rams. However a few might have developed well enough to be able to get in heat this year. Plan A was to mate them with a 50% Friesian/50% Lacaune ram which was bought without having seen him... a big mistake. We got an underfed sick looking lamb which is still not even 20 kg at more then 6 months of age. We even doubt if his mother was a pure Lacaune and not mixed with an indigenous breed like Valaska (he is too wooly). So there was need for a plan B. We bought a young beautiful Suffolk ram to sire our young ewes. Bob is his name and he has left a nice farm where the whole familly said goodbye to him to join our herd.

Feeling blue

Bram has joined his ladies on the 20th August... and we are milking both sheep and goats once a day (since 1st of July). It seems that we will have an explosion of lambs at the end of January 2013.

The young ones

Hair dressing