Baa-log

This is my first Baa-log. Thanks to my dad for the title ( sheep people like corny sheep jokes, don't ewe?) My goal is to do a sheep blog once a week, so to start out here is a little of my sheep background.

Wool drying at Mt. Vernon last summer

For the past eleven years, my family has had sheep. Currently, we have about a thousand head of ewes and their lambs on our commercial lamb to finish operation. Commercial means that we are primarily raising lambs to sell at market. We lamb our ewes in three groups, 450 head the end of January and beginning of February, 400 in March and the rest in April and May.

Lamb 100 this spring.

 Our ewe flock consists mostly of ewes we raised – only about 200 in the flock were purchased, and we raise our own replacement ewe lambs (ewe lambs that are not sold to market). About 700 head of ewes are bred to black face (black face means black sheep) rams. These are the lambs that we sell to market as they are fastest growing. The others are bred to white face rams, and hopefully have lots of white ewe lambs that we can keep for replacements! I love my sheep and really do miss working on the farm year round when I am at school. I try to go home and help whenever I can, and my parents like to plan working sheep, shearing and barn cleaning around when I am going to be around to help.

Little I ewe

I am a major sheep nerd - not only have a I shown sheep in FFA, 4-H and Little I.....

Reserve Round Robin and Grand Champion Sheep Showman at Little I

But I have also sewn with wool and competed in several different contests like Ladies Lead and Make it with wool. And knitted lots of wool things like bags and scarves.



Wool Peacoat



And I was on the wool judging team last year at SDSU. :)

Our Judging family at awards in Houston!

Moral of the blog: I love my sheep - look forward to more sheep blogs to come!! In the meantime feel free to ask me about sheep, wool or anything else!