Help me determine is my sheep have started “showing” in their pregnancies

[MMGardens]

I think it admirable to having the goal to help save a threatened heritage breed.

Thanks! I think we’ve decided to just have to diff kinds and breed them separately for different purposes. I don’t think the GCN will be very good for milking, but my katahdins have been working for that, so we will use our katahdins for milk and meat, and the GCN for meat and wool / hides and see how it goes from there

 

[Mini Horses]

we will use our katahdins for milk and meat

they are milkable!!! What kind of production do you get? Taste? I've no sheep but great cheeses from sheep milk. You get good cream? I'd sure be milking them if I had those...many have good udders, good volume.

I've tried to get "others" to milk one of theirs. Easier than skinning a hog

But some are not into the process that's fine.

 

[Baymule]

I is one of those infernal “others”

 

[MMGardens]

they are milkable!!! What kind of production do you get? Taste? I've no sheep but great cheeses from sheep milk. You get good cream? I'd sure be milking them if I had those...many have good udders, good volume.

I've tried to get "others" to milk one of theirs. Easier than skinning a hog

But some are not into the process that's fine.

So the first one I tried to milk ended up dropping a lot of weight (she was so very vigilant to protect her baby she was just neglecting to feed herself so I have to feed her separately now) so I had to stop milking her, but I was milk sharing and not separating her lamb from her and still getting 4-8 oz per milking twice a day without emptying her out completely which I didn’t find to be bad. Mostly I’d only milk the side her baby hadn’t just nursed from. It tasted very similar to cows milk and I made yogurt with it. Super creamy thick yogurt so I imagine it must’ve been a cream heavy milk, but the cream didn’t separate easily.

I just milked another ewe a few days ago and got 4-6 oz easily out of one side just trying to make her not so engorged because she wouldn’t let her babies nurse on that side. She’s got a great udder with nice big teats that made it easy to milk. I won’t fool with the small tiny teat udders anymore for milking


My mama who lost her lamb had small teats and I did have to milk her a few days to stave off mastitis and while I did get milk it wasn’t nearly as easy and I never got much more than 2 oz at a time from each side


After Betty (the one with the very large udder) gets her twins to 4-5 weeks I may pull them to wean and try to start milking her then and see how far I can get


I’d love to make some butter if I can figure out how to separate the cream

 

[Baymule]

Don’t wean until 6 weeks minimum, 8 weeks is better. Close lambs up at night, milk in the morning and then let the lambs out. Pen the ewe next to the lambs so they can be “together”.

Use some of the milk in your coffee! Or make ice cream.

 

[Mini Horses]

I’d love to make some butter if I can figure out how to separate the cream

Cream separator. Goats give "naturally homogenized" milk -- sheep do too. It will rise slightly but, not a lot and not like cow milk. Also, the butter doesn't taste like cow does, plus it's white. Cows process the forage differently and cream is tastier. I wanted butter, it was disappointing because it lacked the fresh cow butter taste...even after aging the cream. Great cheese!!

I have a separator that I bought lovingly used, plus a cheese press, from a family who sold their goats and had this top notch equipment. It's used during my peak milking times. But....

 

[MMGardens]

Cream separator. Goats give "naturally homogenized" milk -- sheep do too. It will rise slightly but, not a lot and not like cow milk. Also, the butter doesn't taste like cow does, plus it's white. Cows process the forage differently and cream is tastier. I wanted butter, it was disappointing because it lacked the fresh cow butter taste...even after aging the cream. Great cheese!!

I have a separator that I bought lovingly used, plus a cheese press, from a family who sold their goats and had this top notch equipment. It's used during my peak milking times. But....

Oh okay that’s good to know because that was the main thing I thought I wanted from the sheep milk

I think long term I’m going to work on more pasture and end up with a mini dairy cow and use the sheep more for meat and pets


I’m really fighting to keep weight on my lactating ewes

They are grazing, have all the alfalfa hay they can eat, and now I have them up to 3 lbs each a day of lamb and ewe pellets

I dont know what else to do except maybe dry lot them with only alfalfa hay and pellets so they can’t waste any belly space on nutritionally poor forage they may find


I just brought fecals on them 2 weeks ago and the vet didn’t think it was parasite related, just said to feed more but I can’t force feed them and I don’t want to feed them an inappropriate amount of grains


The lambs look fabulous the moms just look ragged

 

[Mini Horses]

My heavy milking goats will easily consume 12# of good grains plus hay, Alf/orch mix, per day. Yes, that much. Basically a lb per lb of milk given. Now, I'm talking 1.5-2 gal a day production.