Feelin' a bit sheepish...

[Beekissed]

Heading out early tomorrow for a 4 hr trip to see/buy some more sheep. Should come home with 6 new additions, 1 ram lamb and 5 ewe lambs. Hope to get some longer torsos, a straight back line, wide and deep bodies and, hopefully a little color into the flock with these additions. Could be we'll have some lambs we can smile about next year. This year there is only a few that I'd offer up for breeding ram lambs, one in particular.

 

[Baymule]

Yay! More sheep! You KNOW we want pictures!

 

[Mike CHS]

Good luck on getting what you want.

 

[Beekissed]

We didn't get what we wanted. The lady had departed from Katahdins and was breeding up on Texels! Well, we didn't know that and she didn't tell us, so we had committed to buying 6 sheep from her already. We drove the almost 4 hr trip, found out that she had very few Katahdin lambs in her flock and those she was keeping. She's 76 and she was very confused about all the breeding ins and outs and had really run down that flock in just one year! But, she's sweet and we had committed and a few of the Texels had great conformation...and Eli saw meat instead of breed, so was eager to go ahead and buy them. I didn't have a chance to pull him to one side and talk it over. Plus, her lambs were born the same month as mine but were smaller than mine...all the while receiving grain supplements and out of Texel genetics.

So, we now have one Katahdin ewe lamb(mine) and Eli has 5 Texel/Katahdin or possibly all Texel(not sure how much Kat or if any, as her records were a mess!) lambs, one ram and four ewes. I think she could tell I was none too thrilled with the situation and so she took $100 off the total price of Eli's sheep and took $25 off the price of mine, which I thought was very sweet.

So, we'll play with my Katahdin ram lamb and his Texel/Texel/Katahdin ewes and his Texel over my Kat ewes this year, just to see what the crossing looks like but it's likely most of them will be sold off the land. They DO have meaty and well balanced bodies, nice and neat little Katahdin looking heads(not a bit like a Texel), but they are all white....not a smatch of color in any of them.

I do NOT want to have to shear but here I am with Dorper and Texel crosses in the flock....how did this happen???? All I wanted was Katahdins, period. So, I have my small flock of mostly Katahdin ewes(only 3 are pure Kat and 2 are mixes) and my 2 Kat ram lambs, while Eli has an all Texel or Texel/Katahdin cross group.

Still it was a nice day, we visited for 2 hrs with those nice ladies and was on a mountain top farm with a spectacular view, sun on our faces and we drove home with some healthy, chunky butt lambs for a decent price, so I thank God for it all. He has a plan and it HAS to be better than any plan I make, so I'm just going with the flow. What happened was supposed to happen.

So, did we get what we wanted? Nope. But I'm sure we got exactly what we needed!

 

[Baymule]

I read this with a smile on my face. You sure have a knack for finding the obscure "deal" and running with it. Ok, so now you have Texels. Here you go off on another adventure and will see where it leads you.

 

[Beekissed]

I read this with a smile on my face. You sure have a knack for finding the obscure "deal" and running with it. Ok, so now you have Texels. Here you go off on another adventure and will see where it leads you.

Hopefully nowhere towards raising wool breeds, that's for sure! My intent is still Katahdins, so hopefully this is just a little detour until we can build enough pure Katahdin into our flock so we can cull out the Texel sheep. Since we aren't going towards registered stock, I'll be happy if we can keep ewe lambs that are at least 3/4 Katahdin and only if they shed out. If not, we'll keep breeding out the Texel genes until we reach full Katahdin/shed out capabilities once again.

But, there's just something about these Texel ewes that's kind of cute....they have a pleasing symmetry of shape that catches the eye, so I'm not sorry we have them on board at the moment. That may change, according to what happens down the line, but for now they are kind of cute. They are also one of the wool breeds that is supposed to do well on grass based systems, so that's a plus.

 

[Beekissed]

@Baymule, a few pics of the lambs and the farm they came from...didn't get some really good broad side pics so you could see their conformation but will try to do that tomorrow.

These lambs are the same age as most of mine, born in mid April. You can see a little bit of Katahdin influence in the heads/faces of most of them, but the bodies are pretty much Texel.

The one on the rt. in this pic is pure Katahdin(my pick out of her flock) but the others are Kat/Texel cross(all of Eli's lambs from this trip).

....and my dead dog, Blue. Just kiddin'....

In this pic, our lambs are in the forefront and you can see they are larger, though the new lambs were being creep fed grain.

 

[Baymule]

That is a pretty farm, rolling hills and GRASS! Those lambs look good, got some nice butts on them LOL.

 

[Beekissed]

That is a pretty farm, rolling hills and GRASS! Those lambs look good, got some nice butts on them LOL.

This farm is huge at 600 acres and they have several barns, silos, grain elevators, several tractors and various haying equipment, houses, etc. They have very little stock on this farm and all that grass you see is just cut for hay. It looks good from a distance, but there's very little diversity in the grass nor is it all that lush. In other words, it's screaming for some managed intensive grazing as the only people working this farm is a 76 yr old grandma, a 54 yr old mom and a 16 yr old boy. It's a mountain farm, with high elevation, spectacular views and fresh air aplenty, with no close neighbors.

You can imagine how much Eli and I have to damper down the coveting as we drive away from that place. You know the routine...."what I couldn't DO with a place like that!!!!!"

 

[Baymule]

You can imagine how much Eli and I have to damper down the coveting as we drive away from that place. You know the routine...."what I couldn't DO with a place like that!!!!!"

I sure do. When we bought our first sheep, we followed directions to the ranch. As we came around a bend in the road, there was a magazine picture worthy beautiful ranch. White pipe fence, green lush pastures, a winding lake with 2 brick homes on the shores, black Angus cattle, it was gorgeous. Slack jawed, we could only admire....... thinking about our raw land, barely fenced with no amenities, I told BJ, "Those sheep are going to be so pissed off when they get to our place."