Ohiogoatgirl's Escapades & Adventures- Pulse check! pg14

[ohiogoatgirl]

More rambling... You guys be glad I don't post *all* the ramblings in my brain, just the ones I narrow down to...

I was thinking about ram lambs and future plans and considering if I keep a 2018 ram lamb sired by Butthead. Then after 2018 breeding I can sell him and still have a son from him that will be a fine wool to breed to the Icelandic and Jacob ewes I would like to add in the future. So even if I don't bring any in this spring I can have him to breed to them in later years. And hopefully avoid the feeder-hogging-push-n-shove that I deal with Butthead currently.

I was also thinking what am I going to do with Fitzwilliam if next summer I can't narrow down ram lambs to keep vs wether. I don't need a ton of rams. And his 'package' is already hefty and I don't know that you could get a band over it now, let alone in several more months. I could see if someone in the spinners guild would want/need him in their flocks. And while I am a little attached to the lovable lug I think I could put him in the freezer if it meant keeping a few really promising ram lambs.

Wethers. I am going to be so tempted to keep every lamb!

 

[ohiogoatgirl]

In other news.. I am playing with this seed mix calculator. Really cool! You can sign in and it will tell you your approximate first and last frost dates, average yearly rainfall, and hardiness zone. Then you can put in your goals with three priorities and it will help you make and calculate out a seed mix. You just use the drop down choices. And it is a seed company so it tells you price per lb, seeding rates,... And you can fill it out and order your own seed mix based on what you need. As you fill it in with the drop down choices it recalculates and shows you percentages of how well those crops do as far as drought, nitrogen fixing, frost tolerance, diversity,...
https://smartmix.greencoverseed.com/

So today while cleaning I have been re-watching (mostly listening to) some speaking events about cover crops and grazing, etc. The mixes I have come up with while messing with the calculator have been at about $80 per acre (plus shipping). I would really love to try an acre or two half acre sections! But so much to do and no time to do anything it seems. Plus I don't know with these areas if it would be worth it because I would have to be hand broadcasting this, most likely.

 

[Roving Jacobs]

I'm glad I'm not the only one who goes around and around with breeding plans! I originally had 7 breeding groups selected and then decided that was way too many and have cut it down to 5 which keep getting reshuffled.

If you ever want a jacob, cormo, or longwool cross ram I can hook you up I met some nice finnsheep this year too.

 

[ohiogoatgirl]

I'm glad I'm not the only one who goes around and around with breeding plans! I originally had 7 breeding groups selected and then decided that was way too many and have cut it down to 5 which keep getting reshuffled.

If you ever want a jacob, cormo, or longwool cross ram I can hook you up I met some nice finnsheep this year too.

Ha! I feel like if I don't rein myself back that will be me next year! Let alone the future years...

Thanks, You were definitely on my list of hopeful ram shopping! And those *Gorgeous!* fleeces at Great Lakes fleece show
I have yarn from a Jacob lamb fleece you had in 2016. Really lovely to work and spin!

 

[ohiogoatgirl]

The breeding groups have been together 16 days now. Going by estimated heat cycles of 13-19 days.. And assuming at least two long cycles, so say 40 days from introduction.. That would be Nov 11.. So I could put the sheep back all together in mid-November and mark the date for clean-up breedings and late lambs with mystery fathering. Or I could wait another cycle and put them together in early December..
I would like to know who fathered which lambs.. But I also don't want to be doing all this extra chore malarkey Right now I am leaning toward putting them all together mid-November and crossing my fingers.

 

[ohiogoatgirl]

Since I separated the rams Sept 5 if anyone managed to get bred before that they'd be due by the end of January. If anyone managed to get bred like ASAP of putting the groups together than earliest lambing should be the last week of February/beginning of March. Anytime after Monday will be time for two cycles to have passed. Which would make lambing as late as first week of April. On October 26 I definitely saw some flirting, tentative wooing, grunting, and flehman lippy-ness going on with Fitzwilliam. And a couple short flirting bits with the ewes peeing then skittering away.
So now I need to decide how to go about ending the groups...
Do I leave them until the end of the month or longer?
Do I pull the rams into the smaller paddock (like before breeding groups went together) and hope they don't force through?
Do I put Fitzwilliam and his two ewes back with the main group and just have to figure out baby-daddy-whodunit if I get lambs later than mid-April?

I had been planning on the last one, just putting them all back together. But I want to think about it now if there might be good reasons to do otherwise.. Or if I should wait longer before putting them together..

In other news Midget is still smitten with Fitzwilliam and I seem to catch her a lot being friendly with him at the corner of the paddock fencing where they can see each other and kind of nose through the fence. Of all the ewes it wouldn't surprise me if she has thwarted Butthead's 'affections' and would hold out to for Fitzwilliam. She has seemed to bond with him oddly. I am guessing because Pigpig lambed just after she lost her lamb. But Pigpig doesn't seem to care much about him now and Midget does seem to. Silly sheep.

 

[ohiogoatgirl]

11/14 I put the sheep all back together. There was a bit of chasing and running and rebel-rousing. But I watched to make sure no one was getting too wound up and then put in some fresh hay, spreading out pats of a square bale across a big section of the paddock and they seemed to all calm down. Since then there hasn't been any ruckus amongst them so I am crossing my fingers that the ewes are all bred to their respective beaus.
Now I just have to worry about everything else until lambing starts!
I have been feeding them a mix of sweet mix, cracked corn, and alfalfa pellets. I only started with the alfalfa pellets when I separated the rams, and since the grass isn't really producing now. A mix of 2-2-1 respective as they were listed. Which I recently calculated to come to about 11.5% protein. I wanted to up that a bit now.
I am considering switching it to 2-1-2, which raises the protein calculated to 12.8%. I wasn't sure if I would need to adjust it again to give the ewes some more protein in later lambing or not. Like mid-January? Since I am aiming for lambing in March to early April.

 

[ohiogoatgirl]

HAPPY THANKSGIVING EVERYONE!
I was busy as a bee yesterday but just had to drop in before I head to work today. Hope everyone had a great day with family and friends and safe travelling!

 

[ohiogoatgirl]

I'm tired and hope to post more intelligently tomorrow but needed to get this off my brain now...
~Butthead.. Keep him another year and deal with his idiot-ness.. Keep his best ram lamb (or two) to replace him?
~Fitz.. Love this sweet guy but considering he won't fit a lot of my goals going forward.. Selling him vs wether him and keep him a few years vs possibly find a spinners flock who would want him as a wether?
~Hair ewe.. She is katahdin, Romanov, Finn (Eventually I'll remember that!).. So all those breeds are not very seasonal breeders and she is likely not either.
She is looking pretty barrel shaped and rounding out. If she was bred the last possible day before coming to me she'd be due.. literally any day now.. And since I didn't separate the rams until September she could have been bred by either (though much more likely Butthead) she could be bred and due basically anytime. Only thing to do is count back from whenever she lambs.
Also, depending on how her lambs turn out I need to really think about if she will stay on for producing meat lambs or to sell her on so I can focus on the rest.
~OhEmGee, For Realsies, how am I ever going to narrow down all the lovely lambs in the spring to decide on wethering or selling any?!

 

[Latestarter]

decisions, decisions... You can always enjoy the babies up till they're grown or gone.