Life on the farm

One day I will be back on here.

Life is just incredibly busy here on the farm. We are doing better this year at farmer's market than we did last year. Some of that was because it was a primary voting year, but a LOT of that was the fact that it rained almost all of the market days. Twice it downpoured hard enough 1/2 of an hour before we closed that two of our tents were destroyed. Of course, it was the only two purple tents at markets. I was far too busy at our skirting clinic to take any pictures. I had hoped to do a second clinic, but we had to cancel due to the weather for the 2nd time this year!! I am hoping to try again for fall, unless I manage to get everything skirted myself. If I have time, I will take pictures of the fleeces as I skirt them and post them here. Off to the hay field, again!!

Sorry all!

I know I've been away from my blog a lot longer than I wanted to be. Life is just BUSY! And we did not lamb on purpose this year. Although, we did have a surprise Horned Dorset ram lamb born, and 6 weeks later the Finn ewe I bought bred gave us ONE ram lamb... I am teaching a group how to skirt fleeces at the end of April. Hopefully I will get some pictures and can post them here. I need to get some lamb pictures, when it is not raining, and post those here as well. The sad thing is it so much easier just to post a sentence or two on Facebook. Oh, well. I will be back!

New posts

At some point I will start posting regularyly here again. I have a show Saturday in New London at the Elementary School in the gymnasium and the following Friday night at the Bradford Fire Station from 5:30-8:30 (I hope!). I will take pictures and post items I have available for sale after the 8th. I want to start blogging more again. Facebook is nice as I can just post a line or two and be done. But, I think my account may have been hacked... So, I may be pulling away from FB and going old school!! TTFN.

Good information from a man who knows a LOT more about sheep than I do.

Sheep101 Don Drewry · about an hour ago · After raising sheep for 50+ years and giving advise on the for 25+ years. Here is a top 13 list of things to keep in mind, especially if your new to sheep. 1) Have a vet that considers you their client. Sooner or later you will regret not having one and most likely that will not be during business hours. The more "reasons" I read why people can't use a vet the less I believe them. 2) Assume every ram can be dangerous and don't normally work or feed inside of a pen with a ram. 3) We all think our sheep are special but they are really just sheep. This means if you can't get your sheep to stay in an electric fence or get lambs to grow well on a quality milk replacer it really is most likely something you are doing or not doing as sheep really will stay in electric fences and quality milk replacers are better not worse than the alternatives and this is routinely proven on many other farms than yours everyday. 4) If a sheep has access to even a blade of grass you need a worm management plan. 5) Keep on hand at least 2 dewormers from different classes and oxytetracycline and Bo-Se. When you encounter an issue very often one of those will buy you time to get a better treatment. 6) Colostrum Replacement powder really does work as well as frozen Colostrum and is way easier to use. This does not mean Colostrum Supplement is a smart buy. 7) FAMACHA scoring really is a good way to tell if a sheep probably has barberpole worms. The few times this isn't the cause aren't worth the delay in treating. 😎 A rectal temperature can quickly tell you if an infection or pneumonia cause is the problem or not eating or metabolizing enough feed. 9) Total use of antibiotics is usually less if you treat earlier than later. 10) Ewes down in late gestation are usually ketotic or hypocalcemic. Learn how to diagnose and treat. If either happen very often fix your ration. 11) Lamb tubing really is easy and saves many lambs. If you are reluctant to tube a lamb get over it you will keep more alive. 12) I completely disagree with anyone that feels bloat is an inevitable occurrence if you raise sheep. It's not. Pasture bloat occurs you put hungry sheep in a pasture with too many legumes. Grain bloat (acidosis) occurs when sheep eat more grain than they are used to. Your fences or gates will fail some day. You know this. Do not store pails or grain, tubs of grain or bags or feed outside the sheep pen. All belong behind another door or wall or fence. 13) Dewormers, antibiotics, coccidiostats, vitamin, energy drenches are NOT interchangeable. Just because you have one of these on hand doesn't mean it's at all useful for treating something one of the others address.