Breeding Time

It's the season of love on sheep farms across the hemisphere.   Just a few weeks ago, we brought our largest ram, Dodge, from the bachelor pad around the corner to be with the ladies.   He will spend the next month or so with the 2013 ewes who already had babies last spring.   If all goes well, they will all be bred and with the help of a marking crayon, we'll even know due dates.   So far, all the ewes seem to have been bred in under two weeks.  We've changed the color of the crayon so we'll know if any of them go into estrus a second time.  If none go into estrus again, that means they were all likely bred and will be having babies within a week of each other.  That's 14 deliveries in one week - we certainly will be busy.

The younger female lambs were just joined by one of the young ram lambs.  We chose number nine, now dubbed Nino, because of his East Friesian appearance and the fact that his mother was a great milker.   So far many have been "marked" by his purple crayon but not all.   He'll be switched to green in another week or so and hopefully all will be bred.    

Adventures in Soap - Making

It's been quite a few months since my last post.  Compared with the craze of lambing, summer has been quiet and uneventful.   Our lambs nursed and grew.   In May, we brought 12 new lambs from another farm to Aries Crossing. They were all bottle fed .   As a breastfeeding advocate, I'm proud to say our breastfed lambs were bigger and healthier than their formula fed friends.  One of our additions died shortly after coming to us but the rest have been fine though slow to grow.

  

Our lambs stayed with their Mammas for many months.  These lambs were lucky. Once we have milking equipment, they won't enjoy such a long nursing period as we'll be taking a lot of the milk for production.

In July we separated the males and females and were left with some engorged Mammas.



They had to be milked to prevent mastitis and the fun began.  We hand milked for a week or so before getting a hand pump.   I got pretty good at hand milking but it is very hard to keep the milk clean when milking into a bucket.  The ewes would step in it or knock it over or just drop junk off their long fleece into the milk.  We decided this milk was not fit for consumption and we froze it.  It will hopefully become milk soap.   The hand pump puts the milk directly into a bottle which keeps it a lot cleaner.  That milk is in the freezer too.   Some we plan to pasteurize and make into cheese for ourselves.

Today, I made my first batch of soap.  We will see how it went in three weeks or so after it cures.  If it works well, I'll be making lots more of it and experimenting with different scents and such.