purplequeenvt - Ivy Knoll Farm

[purplequeenvt]

I love to read your journal dailt since I get to see picttures daily, your sheep are beauitful it makes me want sheep too.
what breed would be a good starter sheep for me. where I live it is hot and humid and mild winters

There are so many breeds out there that it would be hard to pick the best starter sheep. A lot depends of personal preference and intended purpose. Most breeds should do pretty well where you are. Things to consider would be size, amount of fleece, temperament, etc.

What would you be looking for in a sheep?

 

[purplequeenvt]

If you have never witnessed the sport of Lamb Racing, you have totally missed out!

These are the rules of the game....
1. The mothers MUST be busy eating
2. You must start out racing wildly around the pen....

3. You must take turns leaping and cavorting across the pen
4. Points will be award for height, style, and distance
5. Once everyone has had their turn to jump, then everyone must race around the pen again.

This lamb gets big points for distance, but he is lacking in height and style.

Molly gets huge points for height and style, but her jump was a little short.

Finally....Cami wants everyone to remember to floss their teeth!

 

[purplequeenvt]

More lambs at play......

Twins, Maud and Rebecca

 

[Queen Mum]

I love it. The lambs all look so happy and playful. I love the pictures of them leaping up in the air.

 

[purplequeenvt]

I like to do "butt checks" frequently during lambing season to get a sense of who is bred (or not) and when they are getting close to lambing. We started out the season with 26 "bred" ewes. This is the number of ewes that we purposely exposed to a ram. As we got closer to lambing I was able to decide which ewes were bred and which ones were not.

Of the 14 that we bred to be due in March, 11 are either due in the next couple weeks or have already lambed. Of the 3 "naughty" sheep, 1 appears to be bred to my Dorper X ram for lambs in April (which is fine because she is an unregistered BL) and the other 2 don't appear to be bred at all (this could change though). We also have one sheep that we bought in November and bred to the Dorper X, but it looks like she got bred (please to the Blue-faced Leicester!) before she arrived and she looks like she will lamb soon.

We have 11-19 ewes bred to lamb in April. 11 ewes that I am 98% sure about, 5 that are yearlings, and 3 that are mostly likely not bred, but they were in with the ram until after the New Year, so they are a maybe.

So from an original count of 26 we have between 23-31 bred.

I shudder to think how many lambs we could have from 31 ewes. Whose idea was this again????

 

[purplequeenvt]

Wall-E likes to give massages....

 

[elevan]

How cute!

 

[Queen Mum]

Wall-E's mommy looks a bit skeptical about the massage. Or maybe she is just kind of fatigued. Having such an ambitious lamb can tire out any mommy.

 

[autumnprairie]

I was laying down taking pictures when QM baby goat decided I needed a massage too and proceeded to dance on my back. I wish we had taken pictures of it

 

[Queen Mum]

I was laying down taking pictures when QM baby goat decided I needed a massage too and proceeded to dance on my back. I wish we had taken pictures of it

It was just so cute! That baby LOVES AP. He thinks she is just the best 'people' in the world. He sucks on her shirt, and wants to eat her hair. And now he wants to give her massages.