Day at the farm

A beautiful winter Saturday we took the boys for a walk in the paddocks



Skye, Baby Harry very interested in a ewe



Time to give my lamb a drink




There are some really nice looking lambs in the 2012 crop



Oliver helping to collect wood with Lily watching carefully

Oliver and Grumpa (Kim) bringing in the wood with the tractor

Very important job that Oliver takes very seriously

Job done trailer full of wood

Controlled Breeding Plan

We love our sheep and are very proud of the sheep we have bred. We started breeding stud sheep in 2006 after deciding to down size the flock from 250 commercial breeding ewes to 150 stud ewes and concentrate on breeding top quality White Dorper rams. Our first drop embryo transfer (ET)Stud White Dorper lambs arrived in April of 2007

Here are the original first and second cross Dorper sheep in 2005

We have 3 top quality breeding rams and normally Kim will divide the flock into lots of fifty and put a ram in with each flock. However, this year after speaking with the South African inspector Kim decided to try controlled breeding. Using this method the ewes breeding cycle is is controlled and you know when the ewe is ready for the ram.

 Two weeks prior to joining CIDR's are inserted into the ewes and left in place for 14 days. The CIDR's are removed and a hormone injection is given then, 48 hours later, the ram is placed with the ewes.

We are repeating this method with five ewes at a time. This means we will know exactly when the lambs are due and can monitor the ewes closely. We are hoping for 130% lambing or better, we will know after 147 days how the first batch worked out. This method will mean a lot of extra work for Kim so we will be very intersted in the results.

The EAZI-BREED™ CIDR® Sheep Insert is a convenient and effective method for inducing estrus in production animals. EAZI-BREED™ CIDR® Sheep Insert contain the natural hormone progesterone. Intra-vaginally placed CIDR's release progesterone at a controlled rate into the blood stream

We put a harness on the ram with chalk so when he mounts the ewes a red mark will be left. We put the ram and his first five ewes together yesterday, and I think Leroy, the type 5 ram was very busy last night.

The sheep are in the process of shedding their fleece and look a bit ratty.

Pet Sheep

When you have a sheep farm you usually end up with poddy lambs. I personally would never leave a lamb that I thought may not survive the night in the paddock.
When it is lambing time Kim checks the ewes twice a day to ensure all is well with the flock.  If he sees a lamb that is weak or a twin/triplet lamb that is very tiny they usually end up at the house being hand reared.
Our first poddy lamb Baa Baa is now 6 years old although he is a wether and would normally end up on the dinner plate I just could not eat a pet. So he stayed with the flock and lives a happy life.


Sheep actually make good pets, they are very low maintenance and very friendly. Baa Baa is like a dog always looking for a snack of bread or a scratch behind the ears. If, you allowed him Baa Baa he would inside the house lying beside your chair. Sheep belong in a paddock you can’t keep sheep in your garden because they will eat every plant and flower in sight.

My friends daughter feeding Pixie. Pixie is now fully grown, had 2 lambs and still come up for a pat. check out the bottle it is an old beer bottle.

Me giving orders to my friends kids about feeding lambs. Being fed is Speedy. He was a mernio that my daughter found in the middle of the road on a freezing winter night. Sadly Speedy died this year

A friends daughter giving Daisy a pat. She was the best behaved poddy lamb. We had an old green bath mat that we called her grass. We would tell her to lie down on the mat and she would. Daisy is still with us and has a few lambs she also still comes up for a pat.

Here is Baa Baa coming to see what is going on.

Good friend Kerrie holding Pixie

Pixie in her bed after a long day with the kids

We feed our poddies full cream powdered cows milk made up with water to the instructions on the package. New lambs are started slowly 60 to 100 ml and frequently 4 or 6 times a day. We never, repeat never feed the lambs through the night. By the time they are about 2 weeks old they are on 4 feeds a day then gradually this is reduced to 2 feeds per day. We usually wean them at about three months. Although I know people who wean lambs much ealiuer than that.

Breeding Healthy Sheep

Whilst I am certainly no expert in sheep health I have learned a lot about keeping the stock healthy over the past eight years. When we first started breeding there were some skinny sheep in what looked like really good pasture. We drenched the sheep and the next days 2 of them were dead in the paddock. Not a good start to breeding sheep. Kim did some internet research and found Pat Coleby's book "Healthy Sheep Naturally". We read the book cover to cover and it made good sense. Kim also read stories of other farmers who had successfully used Pat's methods. Kim built the mineral stations and the sheep self administer the minerals. This has led to a reduction in the need to worm sheep with commercial drenches. Although in wet conditions worms will be a problem for sheep and cause weight loss, lung conditions and death if not managed carefully. If, prolonged wet conditions prevail we drench and keep the minerals.

 


More recently, Kim noticed some sheep were looking poor again despite drenching and minerals. He spoke to guy a Delta Agricultural at Yass. He explained about the sheep's mineral tank and how the mineral stores can become depleted. He recommended seaweed meal. Kim told him that we had seaweed meal out for the sheep but he was worried about overdosing them. Mr Delta Ag advised us to give the sheep as much seaweed meal as they wanted. So that's what we did. Here is a picture of our beautiful healthy and some very heavily pregnant ewes

We purchased 4 20kg bags of seaweed meal and placed 1 bag in each mineral station. The 20 kg of seaweed meal costing almost $100 was gone in a few hours. It was an expensive exercise that we could not afford to continue. However, Mr Delta Ag told us when the sheep’s mineral tank is full they will stop eating the mineral in large quantities. On the 4^th day the sheep did stop eating the meal in such large amounts. A few weeks later you could not tell which sheep were poor as they all looked great.