Category Archives: Jacob sheep

Why Coated Fleeces Cost More …

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…and should probably be priced even higher.

Every year I choose some sheep to coat–it’s usually those that are entered at a show. This year we took a trailer-full to Black Sheep Gathering (photos of the show). I coated most of those sheep because those who aren’t coated end up with straw buried in the fleeces. I kept coats on most of those afterwards so now there are nine sheep with coats.

Why coat?
1. The fleeces are free of VM (vegetable matter) which could be stickers, seed heads, etc from the pasture, but our pasture doesn’t have any of those. Alfalfa is our most likely VM, and is great to spin a fleece that is completely free of that.
2. The colored wool isn’t sunbleached.
Why don’t I like coats?
1. I would rather see the sheep in the field without coats.
2. Coats need changing as the wool grows, at least four times each year, and maybe more.
3. Coats need repair, especially when worn by horned sheep.
4. Coats can cause felting or other damage to fleece if they aren’t changed at the right time.
5. At this time of year with 6-1/2 weeks to go before shearing I’m running out of the larger sizes.
I changed coats last week and took photos of some.

This is Lily wearing a coat that looks snug. I changed this one but didn’t get a photo.

This is how Breeze looks with the coat removed. There is a bit of sun-bleaching because she didn’t wear the coat all year, but you can tell a difference from the neck wool that isn’t coated at all.

Breeze’s fleece.

Breeze with a larger coat.

I didn’t get a photo of Zoe, but here is one of her fleece. Gorgeous!

Harmony with a coat that looks too snug.

This is what’s under the coat.

Harmony’e fleece.

Harmony’s new coat.

Grazing and Irrigation – 3 – April 23

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The previous post showed how this looked when the sheep went in. The growth of the annual rye was so fast at this time of year that we needed to move them through fairly quickly.

Here is another view of that same area (left) before removing the fence to graze the next section.

The sheep trail out from the barn to access that field.

It was a challenge to set up fence and graze this with the grass so tall. Thanks to my brother for coming to help set this up.

This was the last day before I had to be gone for four days. Dave came every day while I was gone to get the sheep out on new pasture.

Trista and triplets.

Last Lambs

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Most of the lambs came as planned during the month of March. There were some late lambs, also expected, but not originally planned. That is because I unexpectedly acquired a ram in late November.

Ginger Lynn’s Eli was sired by a Meridian ram that I sold a few years ago.The breeder of Eli sold him to someone who unexpectedly needed to re-home him due to a move, so we drove to the Redding area to pick him up. When I got him here I decided to put a few ewes with him. We hadn’t bred the whole flock this year because of the pasture renovation project that has been described in other posts. A 5-month gestation means lambs in late April or early May.

Here is Eli after shearing in January. He is not here anymore because I returned him to the breeder who wished she had not sold him to the other person. I hoped for some nice lambs.

This is lamb # 2555 born April 27, the only ewe lamb from this group. Ginger Lynn’s Eli x Meridian Belle. Belle is my granddaughter’s sheep and this lamb is sure pretty, so she will stay and I’ll let Kirby think of a name.

Jasmine was next to lamb with a ram lamb but I can’t find a photo right now.

Bide a wee Hallie is ten years old and these will be her last lambs. These are two ram lambs, one with 4 horns and one with two.

Here are the last entries for the Lambing Board. Hallie’s lambs were 12 and 10 pounds!!

Belle and her lamb.

Seeing Triple

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I’ve been trying to get the lamb pages on the website updated, so most of the photos I’ve been taking are of individual lambs…and trying to make sure I can read ear tag numbers. If I go out earlier in the morning I sometimes find lambs bedded down next to their moms. There were five sets of triplets this year.

This is Janna with her three lambs–two rams and a ewe.

Bide a wee Trista also has two rams and a ewe. You can’t see the ewe very well–she is mostly black and behind the two spotted lambs.

Sweetgrass Tranquility with triplet ewe lambs.

Addy with her lambs, the first of the season. Addy is a BFL/Jacob cross.

Patchwork Amara was the other ewe to have triplets, but Sparky required intervention and became a bottle lamb. Her story is here and she features in several of the posts since then. Her brothers are 2527 and 2528 on the ram lamb page.

Sparky and me!

Lambing Season is between Winter and Spring

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I’ve talked about this before–the seasons. Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter, and Lambing–right there between Winter and Spring. It’s a busy time. I wrote one blog post at the start and the one about Sparky two weeks into the season. It was an intense two weeks and now things have slowed down considerably. I’m waiting for three ewes to lamb by the end of the month.

March 9 three ewes had twins and one had triplets. This is Janna with triplets and Sandie and Beauty with twins.

Jacob sheep with triplets

The next day Juniper lambed with twins.

It was beginning to feel like the next new season–spring!

Peach
Pink flowers of western redbud.
Westerben Redbud
Daffodial

Janna and lambs moved into a stall a couple after lambing. This gives the ewes and lambs more space to move around, but it’s easy to keep an eye on them for a few days before they go out with the other sheep. That’s Farm Club member, Lisa, holding the lamb.

More signs of spring.

Flannel Bush is one of my favorites.

Cindy lambed two days after Juniper.

A cloudy sunset.

The rooster and one hen roost every night on this panel between the hay and the lambs.

Jazzie lambed that night with twins, lambs #22 and 23.

Amara seemed the most likely to lamb next and she went into the lambing area. That leads up to the post about Sparky.

Meet Sparky

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Lambing started only two weeks ago but is almost over (except for the lambs that will come at the end of April due to acquiring a ram around Thanksgiving). I like to keep my blog posts in chronological order, but I’m giving up on that for now. I may share other lambing photos later, but for now I’ll write this story.

It was only a week ago (Thursday, March 13), that Patchwork Amara lambed. I had put her in the evening before and didn’t see anything when I checked the barn at 2 a.m. When I went back at 6:00 I found a big lamb in good shape and a small lamb that at first I thought was dead. When I picked her up she wasn’t completely flaccid like a dead lamb would be and I could see her take shallow breaths. She was very cold.

I brought the lamb to the house and put her in a dishpan of warm water. As her body warmed she started to move her legs. After I’d warmed her enough I wrapped her in a towel and went back to the barn. I set up a heat lamp and moved Amara and the big lamb to a clean pen. Lisa was helping for a few days and when she came to the barn I gave her lamb holding duty.

I milked colostrum from Amara and tube fed the lamb.

While we were feeding her we realized that Amara was having a third lamb.

Those big brothers were 9.2 and 8.6 pounds. Sparky, as Lisa named her when she showed a spark of life, was only 4 pounds.

I found a size Small coat for Sparky, It was way too big and eventually Lisa cut some off.

Sparky was spunky enough after the tube feeding to nurse on her own. Throughout the day we made sure that she was nursing.

The next morning Amara was tired of having three lambs and was getting a bit aggressive towards Sparky. I didn’t feel comfortable leaving her there and decided that she would be a bottle lamb. That was 6 days ago.

Farm Club members came on Saturday and Sparky was a favorite.

I picked up my grandkids at the airport yesterday and we went to the barn right after we got home. Ten-year-old Kirby.

Eight-year old Kasen. The kids are taking turns bottle feeding, although the next feeding is in a few minutes (11:30 p.m.) and no one has volunteered for that one.

Sparky has had plenty of attention. The kids are taking her out of the barn and letting her run around in the grass. I tried to share a video here don’t know if I can make it work. Let’s try this YouTube link.

Lambing 2025

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I’m 9 days into lambing and haven’t had a chance to share any of it. Here is Day 1 on March 6.

There was a field trip from a Waldorf school in the morning. I had told them that I couldn’t promise lambs, but maybe there would be some. There were not. However, they had plenty of time to pet sheep. Notice Jade enjoying the attention.

I had a tax appointment after the kids left and when I got back I found Addy with triplets.

After I brought them into the barn the first order of business was to erase last year’s Lambing Board. This shows 88 lambs from January 25 through March 7 plus other notes squeezed in. So we ended lambing last year at the same time we’re starting this year. That was partly because we wanted to take a trip to Texas to see the grandkids and the eclipse in April. I didn’t want to have lambs coming if we were not here. This year I’m back to a more normal schedule.

Cashew lambed the following day. There were no lambs the day after that. A slow start.

Griffin – Lilac or Black?

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In the Jacob world sheep are either black and white or lilac (and white). Lilac refers to a color that is Not Black. That is usually gray maybe with a brown cast. This blog post shows photos of several lilac sheep. Many time people think Jacob sheep have brown spots, but that is because tips of the dark wool become unbleached. The wool is still dark at the skin. When you describe the Jacob sheep’s color you look at the facial markings. If the hair is black or gray(ish) that dictates the label for the color.

Griffin is a ram that was born in February 2024. Last fall when this photo was taken I wasn’t sure of his color but now I am. In this photo he looks black and white. Remember, it’s based on the facial markings. It may be hard to tell from just a photo as well.

This photo was taken shortly after shearing in January. The eye ring that is often part of the lilac coloring is obvious and the fleece looks gray.

In this photo it is much easier to tell the difference in color between Griffin on the left and Sterling on the right.

Griffin’s fleece looking at the cut side.

Griffin’s fleece, on the right, with a lock of wool on the left from a definitely black and white sheep.

The lilac trait is recessive so breeding two lilacs should produce lilac lambs. When there is a black and white parent the appearance of lilac lambs means that there is lilac somewhere in the ancestry of the black parent. In Griffin’s case, both parents are black and white. There is a lilac great-great-granddam on his sire’s side and a great-grandsire and on his dam’s side.

Sometimes we wonder if all “not black” Jacob sheep have the same lilac genetics. This is being investigated now.

I took this photo a few days ago when Griffin was stuck on the fence. He must have had his front feet on the tray of the feeder and caught his horn over the top pipe along the fence. I couldn’t get him off and had to get Dan to help.

Shearing Day 2025 – Part 1

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We were lucky on Shearing Day. It was cold in the early morning, but there was no threat of rain and the sun was out.

The day before we took our trailer to Trish’s farm a few miles away. We loaded 21 sheep to bring them to our place for shearing the next day. It turns out that one of the 21 was mine–I had forgotten about the ram lamb Trish borrowed in September to breed some of her ewes. So now I have 9 rams–that’s a few too many!

These are Trish’s sheep the next morning. I remember that ewe on the left from last year. See her photo below.

Her hair style makes her memorable.

John got here at 9 and we started with Trish’s sheep. This ram is Starthist Goldhill, sired by one of my 2-horn rams who is no longer here.

Farm Club members were on hand to help with all the jobs. They kept the shorn sheep out of John’s way while he worked.

After all 20 of Trish’s sheep were shorn we moved panels around to load them back in the trailer.

They fit better after shearing.

Then John started on my rams. This is Eli.

For those of you who may not have watched shearing, the shearer follows the same pattern on all the sheep.

I recorded video of shearing four or five sheep. I haven’t had time to edit and post those videos yet, but because of recording I know how long it took to shear those sheep. What do you think?

John is shearing each sheep in under 2-1/2 minutes. Some are close to 2 minutes!

More shearing photos in the next post.

Sheep and an Owl

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I wandered out back with my camera–the real one–so I could take better photos of sheep. I like to update the sheep page on the website every year when the sheep are in full fleece. I did not update the website yet, but I took some photos with that in mind.

It’s wet behind the barn and we have a lot of piles of brush to burn (to the left out of the picture). The sheep can’t go on the newly seeded pasture so space is limited. There is a concrete pad and then a wooden bridge over the lowest spot.

As I walked towards the pasture gate the sheep were hopeful that I’d open the gate. Jade led the way.

Many of the sheep weren’t happy about the mud just past the bridge and decided they had to jump it. These are two 2024 lambs and I can’t sort them out by name yet.

This ewe is Jannie.

Cindy.

This is Sandie…

…and her twin, Pecan.

Jade.

Patchwork Bettylou, the ewe that had hernia surgery in October.

Here are three of the 2024 lambs. Harmony, Zoe, and Lily.

I walked out behind the ram pen and stood under this palm tree wondering if the resident barn owl is still around. It’s impossible to find owl pellets because, even if pellets could drop through all the old dry palm leaves, the blackberries grow around the base of the tree.

While I was standing there the owl flew out of the palm tree into one of the sheoaks.