Jennifer Hinkle
Loving the herd life
My family and I first decided to start a farm in 2013. We have raised rabbits for a lot longer though. When we first decided to get livestock, We went to an auction and purchased 3 goats. An adult female boer goat and 2 Lamancha young bucks. We had no idea what we were doing. Well the female ended up being sick and died two days after we got her. The bucks we got were too young, one died a couple days after we got him also. The one that lived we named Elfie because he had elf ears. We had him for about six months and then i don't know what happened (he just died). Well after all this, We got into Hair sheep. They are so much easier to take care of. Our first hair sheep we purchased were ewes. One American Blackbelly and one Katahdin. We had them for about six months before we picked out the ram we wanted. When we finally got him he was 6 months old. Our first lambing we got twins from both ewes. All female. So our herd grew from 3 to 7. For some reason it was a year before we got lambs again. Last fall some of our sheep started having seizures and come to find out, it was my memosa tree bean pods that was the problem. Anyways this year so far we have had 3 lambs born. One single birth (female) and a set of twins (female, male). It has been a long 5 years but i think we have found what works for us.
