This evening I finally did what I've been dreading all summer. Weaning. I only weaned the ram lambs however. I've watched others like Stephen and Theresa, who leave their rams out on pasture with the moms all summer and it sure seemed to help my rams this year! Holy cow! They are all nice sized and fleeces are looking good. Several are going to be quite single coated, while others will be definintely intermediate.
I took fleece samples of 10 of my AI ram lambs and I'm sending them in to be microned. Its only the end of August but they are 5 months old and its already cool at night here (49 for a low tonight) so it very much feels like fall. Plus i don't like how they are using their horns to harass the ewes. I sent these 10 in as I wanted to make sure my hand was telling me these were the softest ones to hang on to. The others will be soft, but their fleeces will be intermediate and I that is not the style of fleece that I am going after. They would make someone going for the intermediate fleeces a fine flock sire.
I've also caught three yearling BFLs and my BFL lamb to halter train. Clover was halter trained last year but that doesn't mean she will remember what it is :) I'll keep you posted! Only two weeks until Jefferson so I better get my butt in gear! Hopefully they are easier to train with the new halters I purchased! Thanks Carol D for your help with that!
I have room for four Shetlands at Jefferson that I can sell. Four I am bringing to deliver for other people and I hope that the ones I bring will be ones that everyone will want to buy :) I'm very happy with them so far.
If you think you must have one of my F1 ram lambs, do let me know and I can bring them with for you to look at!
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3 comments:
Garrett,
We actually weaned a couple of weeks ago and separated the ram lambs from the ewe lambs two nights ago. Tori and I were getting tired of the fighting and the boys bothering the girls. It has been cool here at night as well. It's 60 right now and was 56 a couple of mornings ago.
We normally wean the end of June and after about 3 weeks, move the ewes and lambs together again but this year we didn't. It worked out well, especially with the great grass growth we've had so the ewes were able to get back into condition as well as continue to nurse lambs.
I've been weaning late August/ early September. Leaving the lambs on the ewe during the summer really does get them off to a good start.
Once in a while I get a ewe who is being really sucked down by lactation, those ewes I remove earlier so they can get a boost before next breeding.
Say, if you micron test in the fall, aren't you getting mostly outercoat? Won't the test be deceptively high?
Hey Juli- I've microned in the fall and its typically the softest and finest micron report I get back. Knowing that they won't typically go down from this one, helps me decide who to keep. Levi the polled ram for example, his fleece sample was barely and inch long but its so single coated I didn't see much outercoat on him. Cynthia or Karen might be better at explaining it than I am!
Theresa - I tried weaning lambs for three weeks and then putting them back out my first year I had them. All of them started nursing again so all that time apart and stress was for nothing! :)
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