norseofcourse's journal - spring and show update

BrownSheep lol - sounds good to me! I don't know yet if I'm prepared to deal with her offspring, but since I'll be going through my first 'round' of processing lambs this year, I'll have a better idea of how well I will deal with it next year. I will hope for all boy lambs next year!!!

I did find a decent picture of the ewe lamb sheared, so you can see her conformation better. Thoughts?



At least one of the five quail I moved inside has started laying again - I got an egg today! The little quail that had been injured still seems to be doing well, but for the past few days she hasn't laid any eggs. She is still eating and drinking, but not quite as much as before. She has been less active, and is often just standing with all her feathers puffed up. I felt to see if she was eggbound, but I didn't feel anything. She seemed to be a little more active today.

And I got a drum carder! It's an older one but in very good shape. A craigslist find that I am very happy about

She's a nice looking ewe. My two ewe lambs from 2013 I kept back and bred to their sire for 2014 lambs, I got single ram lambs out of each. One succumbed to parasites (the one I bottle raised) at about four months old and the other one I just took to auction about two weeks ago.

I would keep her and breed her back to her sire. You can always eat that lamb if it's a boy, and there's no problem keeping the inbred lamb for breeding if it's a ewe. I have two ewes in my flock out of full siblings; I haven't had any issues with internal parasites with them, and the one has been lacking in the repro dept, but the other one is on the ball with producing lots of heavy lambs for me. They are complete opposites in terms of production, lol.

There's no reason why you can't breed her back to her father. Just make sure, if she has a ewe, to breed the lamb to an unrelated ram.

I went to the Ashland Fiber Festival today, had a good time. I got a ball winder, and watched a demo on drum carding - got some good information for using mine. Once I get this latest batch of wool skirted and sorted through, I'm just going to have the mill wash and pick it. Then I can experiment with drum carding. And, I saw Roving Jacobs!

When I got home today, the little quail that had been injured was dead . She had been doing really well, but then she stopped laying eggs, and while she still ate and drank, she just wasn't as active as the others. I thought maybe she was lonely, but she must have had something going on. She's the first 'farm animal' I've lost... I've been very fortunate so far.

Earlier this week I was using a pole saw to cut down branches for the sheep, and I pulled a back muscle. It still hurts a lot, so there's some things I haven't been able to do. Good thing I'm not still milking, I don't think I could manage that.

Tomorrow may be a hard day for me. It's the day my first lamb is due to get processed. He's going to be processed by someone with their own farm, who has processed their own livestock before - pigs, sheep, goats. I had a good long talk with him and he knows what he's doing, and while he doesn't like the initial part, he does it quickly so they don't suffer. Some friends of mine have offered to take 'little boy' so I don't have to be there. I may take them up on that, it may be easier on me if I don't go. I've been ok so far, but it's all been theory. Tomorrow I face the reality.

I still have a couple of months before it's time to process the three wether lambs from this year. Getting through tomorrow will be one small step towards dealing with that.

Well, I held it together till 'little boy' was loaded onto the truck (then I lost it for awhile ). This is hard. I saw him born. Part of me wanted to go, to make sure everything happened with as little stress to him as possible - but I really didn't want to be there for 'the end', and I'm sure I would not have been any help anyway.

I do know now that I'll need to make some type of loading system for when it's time to take the wether lambs in a couple months. I was able to get little boy into his transport crate without much trouble, but the lambs are more nimble and not as used to me. I want to be able to load them as easily as possible, less stress to them and me.

My back still hurts, and another quail is sick. Heck of a weekend...

I'm getting better about not thinking about 'little boy'. The first time I counted 7 sheep and wondered who was missing, then remembered, made me feel bad but I was able to put it out of my mind. Now I look at the little wether lambs and I try to prepare myself for where I know they're going. I think keeping the ewe lamb will help, at least I sure hope it does!

Just a few more days till Elding goes back in with his flock! Not sure who will be happier, him or me. It will be nicer not having to feed and water him separately. I thought about doing a Lambing 2015 thread, but after some initial posts about Elding and the ewes, it would be pretty boring lol.

I found a really neat date calculator here:
http://www.calculatorsoup.com/calculators/time/date-day.php
You can put in the gestation date appropriate to your animals, the breeding date, and get the result! Icelandics have a slightly shorter gestation date than many sheep breeds (142 to 144 days), so with Elding going in with the girls on October 25, their first possible lambing date should be March 16 of 2015. Winter isn't even here yet, and I'm already thinking about spring

My back still hurts, but not quite as badly. I've iced it a few times, and I'm being very careful about bending or stretching. Some movement helps, so I try not to sit for too long at a time.

I did a lot of reading about the quail, and decided the sick one was likely something upper respiratory. Today is day three of dosing them all with oxytetracycline, and I think she's showing some slight improvement - so fingers crossed she gets all better. It's 7 days of the treatment, then at least another 21 I won't use the eggs. I decided to save them anyway, and use them for crafting (they make blowing out the insides sound easy, we'll see about that).

I've learned a few things since I got the quail.

First, I learned that I don't eat all that many eggs! Even with little quail eggs, I have more than I can use (5 to 6 quail, and not getting eggs consistently from them either). However, if I can find a market for the eggs, I might look into raising them to produce a bit of income in the future.

I've also learned that while having them in the house (well, back porch) for the winter will be more convenient, it's also messier. There's a layer of fine dust on anything within a couple feet of their cage at least.

Yesterday was a cold, rainy, icky day. Today was still overcast, but we're in for a few days of nice sunny weather coming up. Most of the leaves are already off the trees, but I'll get some updated pictures of some critters to share.

Is it too early to say 'come on spring!' ? LOL

The countdown to 2015 lambing season begins!!!

Elding, my ram, is ready. Stop with the pictures already, and let me out!!



His wool is growing in (he was sheared September 25), so it's getting harder to see his conformation. He's not a great ram, but he's not terrible either. I think he has better shoulders than he does hindquarters. His wool is nice, and so is his temperament, which is an important consideration to me.

The girls are already at the pasture gate. Who's this coming??



Hey baby, whispers Elding. Hi handsome, replies Gracie.



I didn't get any good pictures after I opened the gate and let them all together. The girls headed out to browse on what they could find, and Elding followed, chased, stuck out his tongue, and made weird gurgling noises. Mostly the ewes walked or ran from him, but Gracie seems to be the closest to being in heat - she squatted and peed several times. Brosa seems to be next closest. I think Rose was in heat within the last week. I don't know if it'll take her 17 days to come back in, or if putting Elding with them might bring her back in sooner. Rose has been the first to give birth the past two years. This will be Rose and Gracie's third lambing, Brosa's second, and #3's first (#3 is the ewe lamb from this year that I'm keeping, don't know yet if I'll name her).

Come on spring!!!

I got up this morning to a shell-less egg and a dead quail I don't know if the shell-less egg came from the quail before she died, or from a different quail. The dead one was the one who had been showing the same symptoms as the other quail who died. They'd been on Duramycin-10 for 7 days, and she had been improving, so I was sad to see she didn't make it.

I'm not so sure quail keeping is for me. Maybe during the spring and summer, when I can keep them outside. If I do this again in the future (or if these quail make it though the winter) I'd like to make a nicer coop for them for outside.

139 days till the first possible lambing date I have a feeling that Rose, hussy that she is, came back into heat not long after I put Elding in. I saw her nearly stand for him on Sunday. That's the closest I've come to seeing an actual breeding. That's ok - the fun part is the births

Lots of leaves have been coming off the trees, we keep losing daylight in the mornings and evenings, and we've had two light frosts so far. The past couple of days have been unseasonably warm, but it's turning colder again, and by the weekend we're due to have lows below freezing, and possible snow. Winter is on the way....

You might want to try tylosin for the quail. Sorry you are losing them. Yay on the breeding line up!

I would like to raise quail to repopulate the wild ones. We should have CA Valley Quail all around us but there are none, not sure why. The problem is they are our state bird so it is illegal to raise them. Go figure. But are quail harder to raise then chickens?