Baymule
Herd Master
Long day, but at least y’all turned the morning into a little fun for the kids. Glad y’all made it home safe, with new sheep. Where were the sheep located?
Margali's Griffin Wood Ranch
- Thread starter Margali
- Start date
- Thread starter
- #902
Ridgetop
Herd Master
They look really nice, but those tails! LOL
Ridgetop
Herd Master
Katahdin tail soup?
Bruce
Herd Master
They look great!
The tails also look just great!
Baymule
Herd Master
I love the long tails. I like it that Katahdin breed standard does not dock tails.
Those are some nice looking girls! Congratulations!
Buffalo OK is an 8 1/2 hour drive for me, long ways for you too. Your husband really loves you! You’d better keep him! LOL
Those are some nice looking girls! Congratulations!
Buffalo OK is an 8 1/2 hour drive for me, long ways for you too. Your husband really loves you! You’d better keep him! LOL
- Thread starter
- #907
Margali
Herd Master
No way I could have driven that far alone. We kept swapping off and I would read book aloud while he drives. I've been "audible" since 2008.
- Thread starter
- #908
Margali
Herd Master
Today's insanity is switching flock record software. I was using HerdBoss which was limited but okay. It's free for under 25 animals and $60/year unlimited animals. I just found out reference animals count in the 25 and it doesn't do inbreeding or pedigree manipulation at all.
Trialing Livestocked which is free for 25 ACTIVE animals and $80/yr for 100 ACTIVE animals. It also does pasture management and a bunch more. It will calculate inbreeding coefficient by a named formula and highlight the shared ancestor!
Trialing Livestocked which is free for 25 ACTIVE animals and $80/yr for 100 ACTIVE animals. It also does pasture management and a bunch more. It will calculate inbreeding coefficient by a named formula and highlight the shared ancestor!
Last edited:
Ridgetop
Herd Master
There is a new thing out now - some form of EID reader - that does everything on the computer for you. It is a handheld device and you just enter all the information about the animal into it in the barn while tagging, worming, hoof trimming, etc. It scans a special ear tag and can tell you everything you entered about the animal right there in the barn. 
The downside is that it costs a couple thousand dollars. The upside is that you don't have to catch the sheep, check the ear tag and then go check your paperwork. Wes Patton got one and loves it. He showed us a demonstration at the seminar at his ranch last year. Best part for me would be that you just aim it at the sheep within a couple of feet and it reads all the stats. You do have to do the initial work of inputting all the info into the computer but then the machine does it for you. Of course, Wes has several hundred sheep, shows and sells breeding stock all over the country so has a use for it and can afford it. It would be a write off, but I can;t afford all the write offs I would like to buy! 
I just use a record book for breeding dates, lambing dates, # of lambs born, and problems. I usually write that stuff on the calendar too as well as vaccinations, etc. I keep all my calendars so I can refer back if I need to do so. Right now I have calendars going back to 2018. They give me a secure feeling. I don't like keeping information on the computer because I can find it easier looking through papers in a file folder. I may be in my Prime, but I am nit a computer person. I do color code my lambs as to who their sire is. I use specific color tags for each ram. I don't have anything yet to ID the dams, but having the ewes color coded is useful. It is surprising how often one set of lambs/ewes look similar on the field and then you see the colored ear tags and say "Oh yes, those are Lewis lambs - I recognize a particular thing about them". Otherwise, I keep all my registrations in plastic sleeves in a loose-leaf binder with tabs on each registration page with the ear tag # to help me find them fast.
The downside is that it costs a couple thousand dollars. The upside is that you don't have to catch the sheep, check the ear tag and then go check your paperwork. Wes Patton got one and loves it. He showed us a demonstration at the seminar at his ranch last year. Best part for me would be that you just aim it at the sheep within a couple of feet and it reads all the stats. You do have to do the initial work of inputting all the info into the computer but then the machine does it for you. Of course, Wes has several hundred sheep, shows and sells breeding stock all over the country so has a use for it and can afford it. It would be a write off, but I can;t afford all the write offs I would like to buy! I just use a record book for breeding dates, lambing dates, # of lambs born, and problems. I usually write that stuff on the calendar too as well as vaccinations, etc. I keep all my calendars so I can refer back if I need to do so. Right now I have calendars going back to 2018. They give me a secure feeling. I don't like keeping information on the computer because I can find it easier looking through papers in a file folder. I may be in my Prime, but I am nit a computer person. I do color code my lambs as to who their sire is. I use specific color tags for each ram. I don't have anything yet to ID the dams, but having the ewes color coded is useful. It is surprising how often one set of lambs/ewes look similar on the field and then you see the colored ear tags and say "Oh yes, those are Lewis lambs - I recognize a particular thing about them". Otherwise, I keep all my registrations in plastic sleeves in a loose-leaf binder with tabs on each registration page with the ear tag # to help me find them fast.
Mike CHS
Herd Master
I do it the easy way (for me) and just provide the labor for whatever Teresa wants done since she keeps the logs.
