BrownSheep- It's been a while

[Bridgemoof]

Aww sorry about bathroom kitty!

Your sheep are beautiful. All that wool really gets in the way of being able to see udders, doesn't it? The ewe lamb is really perfect.

 

[Pearce Pastures]

Sorry about kitty.

 

[BrownSheep]

It's 3 o'clock in the morning and I haven't gone to bed yet. Just relized some of you early birds on the other coast may actually e getting up right now. Goooooooood Mooooooooorning

As a told my mom at 1 when she come out to see what I was doing SLEEEEEEEP IS FOR WEEEEEEEEEEEEEENIES!

I'm off to be a weenie!

 

[Bridgemoof]

GOOOD MORNING!!!!!!! I'm up extra early this morning, so we crossed paths! Night!

 

[CocoNUT]

Sorry to hear about bathroom kitty.
We've got 4 outside kitties who USED to be indoor kitties. They kept TRYING to get out....SCREAMED to get out. Now they're out....and are trying to get back INSIDE! Too bad, so sad! They have MULTIPLE cat houses (with fleece blankets, beds, etc) and lots of food. Instead...they try to jump in the car and run around in front of the fence and drive Gus NUTS! Silly cats!

LOVE your sheep! I especially love the little spotted faces. That little ewe lamb is precious...she DOES seem to have "feminine" features doesn't she?! I'm sorry...I was looking at the pictures, imagining how that wool spins up, takes die, etc! Then I saw you have Yaks! How cool is that!? We should get some photos of those too!

 

[BrownSheep]

It's ok Coco, I wonder that my self actually. It's really soft and has nice crimp but unfortunately I have no time to even attempt processing it. We generally end up throwing it out or putting it in the burn pile. We have enough this year that we'll probably join the wool pool here.

These are our yaks this summer. We only have the two on the right as we sold the bull to a friend to be a sire for their herd ( I just about typed flock) of cows. The red one is actually a Hereford yak cross and is much darker now. She's inherited the softness of the yaks undercoat...MUCH silkier and softer than a cows. The only fiber we get from is what they leave on the fence.


I need to get new photos of them.

 

[HankTheTank]

They are so cool!

 

[Four Winds Ranch]

I love the look of yaks!! Have you ever eaten yak, or milked them? Are they pretty docile, or wild natured? I am just wondering cause inorder for me to be able to get a couple, I will have to have a use for them otherwise my hubby will sell or trade them on me.:/

 

[BrownSheep]

Yak meat is much leaner than beef. They eat about 1/3 of what a cow eats. People around here have been able to sell it for $12/lb.

Yaks are very docile when handled daily from birth. That being said ours were originally range cows and thus pretty wild. We can now pet them while they eat. They ARE NOT agressive. The man we bought ours from said his bull was one of the gentlest bovines he had worked with. They are very good mothers. Ours nursed both her new calf and her 2year old bull ( the one in the previous picture). She wouldn't even let the cats into the pasture with it. She is very predator aware. She probably could easily kill a pack of coyotes by her self. There is a ranch in Montana that actually uses them as gaurd animals for their sheep. They had issues with wolves. They did say they have lost a few sheep to tramplins and gorings during feeding over a couple years. If you raised a bottle calf with a flock I think that could work fairly well.

I haven't heard of anyone around here milking them but that's one of their main purposes in Tibet. I've read they have a high butterfat content. Going off ours gals udder I would say they produces way less milk than most cow but she did manage to feed a bull and a calf, so who knows.

If yours are tame you can brush out their undercoat and make pretty good chunk of change off of fiber.

My only complaint is ours jump our fences. Our fences are really old though (75+) so they tend to give whe they jump on them. They actually can jump pretty high but if it can hold a horse I would say it can hold a yak. The folks we sold the bull to don't seem to have an issue keepin him penned
. They also do best in the cold. We do reach triple digits during the summer though. They enjoy swimming and wading.

When bred with cows ( different species) you get fertile females and steril males. The hybrids are called Dzo's although we call ours a yow.

Hope this helps.

Here they are today

 

[Four Winds Ranch]

Thanks for all the info!! They are truly beautiful looking animals!!! I think I need to see if I can find a bottle heifer around here somewhere! I would love to give it a try with my sheep! Lol, maybe it would be able to keep the cougars out!!!!