Tag Archives: Jacob sheep

Wool samples, wet dogs, and a turkey!

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I posted a photo of my rams yesterday. Here are the wool photos:

This is the fleece of Meridian Tioga.

Here is Kenleigh’s Savor’s wool. Tioga’s wool is crimpy and soft. Savor’s wool is lofty without visible crimp. Both are good fleeces for spinning, but have different character.

Portrait of Savor.

Jackie came back to the fair today to help out with the SplashDog performance and give her dog,  Ringo a lesson. These are photos of Ringo learning the game.

And here are some of the pros:

Obviously NOT a dog.

Fun with Friends at Black Sheep Gathering

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What a fun weekend! Three friends and I traveled to Eugene, Oregon for Black Sheep Gathering. This is such a cool event. Sheep show, vendors, classes, and fun events all under one roof.

Everything is packed, sheep are in the truck, and we are ready to leave.

I took only lambs for the show, but was pleased to win first place in a large ram lamb class. My ram lamb, Meridian Granite, went on to win Reserve Grand Champion ram. I’ll be showing him at the Solano County Fair on Wednesday.

There is a huge variety of sheep at BSG. This Wensleydale  was quite an attention-getter.

Black Sheep Gathering isn’t just for sheep. Shelby helped another friend, Julie, show her goats and I even got in the show-ring for one class.

Each of us took advantage of the classes that were offered. Chris took a sock knitting class and ended up with an almost-finished baby sock.

We also all brought plenty of projects to fill time.

One of the highlights of the weekend was the Spinners’ Lead. This entry involves wearing (or displaying) something that you have hand felted or handspun and showing off the animal (or a representative) from which the fiber came. Jackie worked non-stop for several weeks to spin enough yarn for this knitted ruana. Then she helped halter break the lambs and, finally, knit and felted a grain bow. I wore the blanket that keeps my side of the bed warm in the winter and a knit cap. At the last minute I decided to accessorize the ensemble and weave wrist warmers (for me and the sheep) and an i-pod pouch. I also made the lamb’s halter out of my wool, using my rope machine. Jackie won the non-owner division and was awarded a bag full of prizes.

Last, but not least, I took a sharpening class on Saturday. I got lucky and the instructor used some of my dull equipment for his demos.

What a great weekend spending a relaxed time with friends. I will have BSG on the calendar for next year.

I’ll race you to breakfast!

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I’m pleased with the pasture this year, especially considering the number of sheep I have grazing. One 5-acre pasture is subdivided with electric fence (NZ spider fence) into 8 paddocks, each of which can be split in half using electric net fencing. There is one other 2-acre piece that I split in half. Here is the paddock the sheep went into yesterday.

If you go to the “prescribed burning” tag on the right you will see this same paddock (looking from the other direction). See all the dry grass? There was so much tall, rank dallis-grass that there was no green feed growing up through it. We burned it two years ago and with proper grazing I’m able to keep the dallis-grass in check and there is a lot of trefoil and other desirable plants. In the photo above it’s those clumps that are the dallis-grass. The sheep eat it readily if it’s kept in an early vegetative stage.

This is after I opened the net-fence at the end of this paddock and the sheep are going into the new one.

A few lambs who didn’t get all the way around the fence and then started following the ewes back up the fence line on the wrong side. Now Rusty gets to help.

You can easily see the difference between the paddock they were just on and the new one. A paddock is not overgrazed by putting a lot of animals on it; it’s overgrazed by time. Once a pasture is eaten low it needs to rest. If the animals continue to graze it as the new growth occurs, there will be negative impact on the root system and it will take much longer for the plants to recover. So the trick is to eat the paddock evenly and then move the sheep to a new paddock. By concentrating the sheep on a small area they eat all the plants, not just the ones they like best. This also helps with parasite control. right now with the lambs getting so big I’m moving the sheep every day or two. If I go through all the paddocks too quickly I may need to hold the sheep off and feed them in the barn for a little bit. I will probably try to coincide that with my next irrigation when I have to have sheep off the pasture anyway.

Another fence-line photo.

Entries for Solano County Fair were due this week so I needed to figure out who to enter. It was fun to separate out all my yearlings for a look. You get a different feel for the sheep when you get them out of the main group and I hadn’t had a look at the yearlings as a group since they were lambs last year.

This is most of the 19 yearlings in the flock. There are some really nice sheep with with great fleece in this group. I narrowed the field down more and more until I chose my show sheep. (drum roll please….) And the winners are…

…Dazzle and Spring. They both have nice conformation, good size, and consistent fleeces. I have entered these two, the two yearling rams, and 4 lambs. Does anyone want to come help me show? It’s June 22-24, a few days after Black Sheep Gathering.

Sorting lambs

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Today was the day to start evaluating lambs. I need to choose lambs for shows, for sale, and the ones that I want to keep. When they are all together and mixed up with the ewes I have a hard time comparing them. Two friends came over today to help with sorting and to find out the criteria I use to select lambs for sale or show.

Rusty and Mobi hoped that they would get to help also.

First we separated the ewe and ram lambs. Then we separated the 2 horn and 4 horn ewes. I sorted out some that I have decided to keep and some that will not be registered because they are too light. We narrowed the field down to lambs that I will offer for sale and/or will show. I need to figure out which lambs to take to Black Sheep Gathering in June, the Solano Co. Fair in June, and the CA State Fair in July.

This is the group of 4-horn ewe lambs that  are available for sale or show.

This is the group of ram lambs before we started sorting them.

The ewe lambs were glad to head back to the pasture.

Irrigation time again

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I live on the western edge of the Central Valley in CA.  We get winter rain and it’s dry all summer. The only way that things stay green here is through irrigation. One reason that we wanted this property was because it was part of the Solano Irrigation District and we could get irrigation water without having an ag well.

When I order water the water tender opens a valve at the west end of this ditch (left in the photo). This is not on our property, but the water flows down this ditch and then onto our property by opening the valve at this end.

The water flows through a pipe that goes under the fence and the water comes up in this standpipe and out the hole into the ditch in the pasture.

This view is still looking west. The water is starting to flow from the standpipe down the ditch at the north end of the property. The ditch turns south and gets the water to the rest of the pasture. The ditch is supposed to have high enough sides that the water is contained and only flows out where I dig a cut-out that lets the water into the pasture. The idea is to open a few areas at a time and be able to fill those cut-outs in as you open more. Ideally the pasture would have just the right amount of slope so that the water would flow evenly. Easier said than done. One problem with our place is that we don’t have the equipment to re-ditch the property. I’m using the same ditch that we had dug (by a neighbor with a tractor and ditcher) when we first started here. I see the alfalfa farmers re-ditch every time they irrigate and I’m jealous. I’ve looked into a pipeline system in which there wouldn’t be a ditch, but a buried pipe with valves that could be open and shut to control the irrigation. Unfortunatly the cost is completely unrealistic for my business. So I keep plugging away with the shovel and hoping for the best.

That is a mowed alfalfa field on the north (top of the photo) and our property is the green field. The standpipe is in the northwest corner of the property and the ditch in one of the photos above is along the north fenceline. You can see the water flowing down the ditch going south and that part of the pasture is already flooded. The sheep have to be in the corrals and barn when I’m irrigating. (So I have to feed them hay for several days every 3-4 weeks. I usually have the water on for 36 hours, but it takes several days for the field to drain enough to turn the sheep back out.)

That ditch that takes the water south dead-ends on this ditch that runs east-west and carries water to the other 5 acres. This view shows the south west corner of the property.

Here is the south east corner. I strip graze this 5 acre pasture. The strips run north-south and are separated by a 3-wire electric fence. You can make out the strips in this photo. See that black thing towards the top? That’s a portable water trough that I plug into the water pipeline that we installed a couple of years ago. The water trough is on one of the fencelines. I have just finished grazing the strips on either side of the water trough. The next two strips are more lush. They are ready to be grazed next. Notice the very pale green in the strip above the water trough? This strip is hard to irrigate and for several years I couldn’t get much water on it. That light green color is medusahead–a very unpalatable grass. Ideally I think burning it would be good, but I don’t think I can do that. We just bought a better heavy-duty weed-eater and I think I’m going to try to stay on top of the medusahead by using the weed-eater. I hope that I can make an impact on it this year. It renders that strip of the pasture unuseable. I noticed tonight that my irrigation water was getting there. I hope that if I can keep the medushead at bay then something else will start growing there.

Fashion photos with sheep

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A few weeks ago I was contacted by Jenne Giles of Harlequin Feltworks in San Francisco who asked if she could do a photo-shoot at the farm. It sounded like fun so we set it up and yesterday was the day. The photographer of the day was Allison Harrell She and her crew arrived mid-morning along with suitcases of props and lots of lighting equipment. Here  are some highlights.

I showed everyone the farm and Allison took some time to figure out locations for the various scenes.

First location was a stack of alfalfa. The model here is Kara, wearing one of Jenne’s striking felt creations.

Kara is joined by Emily and one of my lambs.

Next location with new outfits. Emily and Kara were joined by a ewe and a goat in some of the photos.

Make-up artist & hair stylist, Elizabeth, found a new role as she negotiated with Amaryllis to be part of the day’s activities.

A little grain works wonders.

Amaryllis cooperated quite well for most of this portion of the shooting.

Location 4 was the pasture.

Paulette invited her self to be part of this scene.

Doris and her triplets posed quite well also, although I didn’t tell them that this wasn’t all  about them.

The last location at our place was the chicken house.

Rusty worked all day to make sure that everything was in control.

It was very interesting to see what goes on “behind the scene” of something like this. My shop was tuned into the dressing room. Jenne’s dresses and scarves were stunning. She uses Merino wool for her felt and the pieces are lightweight and soft. Accessories included everything from dozens of pairs of colored tights to frilly rubber swimcaps. Allison had her laptop with her so that she could show Elizabeth the look that she wanted with the make-up and hair. (Anyone who knows me will understand when I was surprised to hear that it would take about an hour or more to accomplish the make-up and hair part. I’m lucky if I remember to comb my hair when I get to my car–which is where I keep my comb.)  While the models were getting ready and changing in between locations Allison was busy getting the lighting just right and setting the scene.

I thoroughly  enjoyed this day and meeting all of these delightful women.  To see more of my photos you can find Meridian Jacobs on Facebook (become a fan while you’re at it) and also be sure to look at Jenne’s blog. The “real” photos (Allison’s) will be coming later.

Thanks for a fun day, ladies!

Tay Sachs and Sheep?

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Friday was an interesting day. Veterinarians I know had agreed to help with the project of testing my flock for the gene for lysosomal storage disease. I’ll back track and explain briefly.  A gene for lysosomal storage disease has been identified in Jacob sheep. Carriers are unaffected but if two carriers produce an affected lamb it will develop symptoms of the disease and eventually die. There is interest among some breeders in identifying carriers so that they can either avoid the problem (don’t breed carrier to carrier) or remove the problem (cull carrier sheep). But there is more to it than protecting our flocks. Researchers at Texas A&M and New York University Medical Center found that this disease identified in Jacob sheep is the same as the lysosomal storage disease in children, known as Tay Sachs. So there is interest in maintaining a carrier flock of sheep for use in studying human medicine. One of the members of the Tay Sachs Gene Therapy Consortium stated:

“The goal of identi­fying and eliminating Tay-Sachs in Jacob sheep in order to conserve the breed is a noble goal. But we who are working on a human gene therapy cure are very happy that you did not succeed and kept the car­riers for the last decade. These sheep are genetically significant.”

This article it will give more background.

First up was to do ultrasounds on the sheep and one goat that will be part of the UC Davis VMTH Livestock Nursery at the CA State Fair.  I have provided sheep for the nursery for the last couple of years and because we’re breeding out of season we like to check and make sure they are really pregnant.  I’m pleased to announce that Stephanie, the Toggenburg goat, and 3 ewes are pregnant and will be at the fair in July.

A protocol was developed to enable sheep producers to gather blood samples from their flocks themselves. The DNA test can be done with a few drops of blood on a filter paper. It was recommended to use a special lancet and take the blood from the ear. The Farm Club members and I worked on that a few weeks ago but it turns out that we didn’t have the right supplies and it was a struggle. While I was waiting forthe correct supplies I talked to my veterinarian friend who suggested obtaining the blood from the jugular vein as you would for any other blood test. It’s easier on the sheep (minimal pain) and easier on the person (if you know what you’re doing).   In this photo I’m getting a lesson on how to do this.

I’m pleased to say that after a few missed attempts I was able to get four in a row. Then I figured that I at least knew how to do it and I went back to helping move sheep. We had a “clean” person who labeled and handled the samples, 2 people drawing blood and the rest of us caught and held sheep so we could work through the whole flock quickly. Oh, one of the Farm Club members was the photographer and took all these photos. Thanks,  Shelby.

It was a little more difficult getting blood from the rams. This is Tioga.

My son, Chris,  helped move sheep.

As much as I love my donkey sometimes she makes things more difficult. She is standing right in the gate where the sheep are supposed to go.

These are some of the samples that will be sent to NY for testing.

This is Sid, a wether who will go home with Jackie when he’s old enough.

Thanks to the veterinarians who helped with this project and to the Jackie, Shelby, and Kathy of the Farm Club.

Sheep photos

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Here are some recent photos I like.

This is a yearling ewe, Prancer.

Lambs are getting big.

The photos below are disappointing. I took hundreds (literally) the last few nights when the lambs were running and playing. I think I figured out that my lens isn’t fast enough for the low light. The lambs are most active just as the sun is going down and I can’t seem to catch the action.

Any advice is appreciated.