Friday, June 18, 2010

New sheep, shearing, blueberries

Yesterday we were given 16 sheep and a potbelly pig! I didn't go pick them up, but some of my family did. Sheep aren't really "my" thing, but I have to admit that some of these lambs are pretty cute! There are a couple of rams, several adult ewes, a wether and several young lambs.



so cute!

and "Dora" the potbelly pig. . . NOT very cute to say the least!

We've been picking blueberries at a local farm fairly often. Yum!


This morning we sheared the last llama, Salty. She broke out of the chute that we had made and sheared the other llama in. So, we brought her back to the stalls and put her in a little area so she couldn't move all that much, except her hind end - and she danced around a lot the whole time. She wasn't very happy about it and tried to kick and spit at us a few times, but we got it done and I'm glad it is DONE! It's definitely not the prettiest haircut, but it'll do.


me telling her to NOT spit at me!

Almost done. I don't think we got a pic of her all the way finished.

Here's Peppercorn with her new haircut that we gave her the other day. She behaved MUCH better than Salty!

That's it for now. Have a great weekend!

Suriyah

6 comments:

Candi said...

Hello!!
What are you all going to do with the sheep?? (They aren't our thing either:)

Suriyah said...

WELL, sell some, eat some and keep some :). We originally got sheep to help keep the pasture down, but it has turned into something else too.

Dairy sheep are a new thing in the US, and to make a long story short, you breed a dairy ram to a meat ewe, and then cross the babies back on dairy rams, since there are not many dairy sheep in the US and it is very expensive to import.

Almost 100% of all sheep cheese is imported from other countries into the US. To capture just 20% of that market, there would have to be something like 125 thousand producing dairy ewes. Right now there is only 15 thousand. You can find out more info here - www.sheepmilk.biz

SO, that is what the plan is with some, and I think we're going to do some meat sheep also.

SWiggins said...

I have heard that sheeps milk cheese is fabulous.

Good Goats said...

Yep, I've heard that too. Hopefully we'll be able to try it one of these days.

Tami Soto said...

Where did you pick your blueberries?

Good Goats said...

Blueberry Acres in Moodys, Oklahoma.