Now I'm thinkin' Lincoln

[Bounce]

Welcome to Sheep shopping part two.

This weekend I am going to look at some Lincolns and Border Leicesters. Purebred and crosses, Yearlings $200, bred ewes $250.

Another farm has suffolk/dorset crosses with a little hair sheep thrown in. Prices are $75 yearling, $100 bred ewe, $125 ewe with single lamb. This farmer is ill (and fed up with border closure) so is selling all his stock.

Any opinions and suggestions are very welcome. I have a bad case of want-sheep-now fever because one of my moms meets the school bus with her little bottle fed lamb every day.

[Rebecca, Irena Farm]

The Border Leisters and Dorsets are very nice sheep, very good for your part of the world. The nice thing about these is the wool doesn't tend to break down the topline, parting and exposing the sensitive spine to weather. That's great for me because of our cold rainy winters. I'm sure you get your share of wet in addition to snow.

 

The Lincolns are not supposed to be terrifically cold-hardy mostly because they do have this problem, but you can rarely go wrong matching sheep to climate when you buy local stock. I'd definitely find out how your seller houses them over the winter, to see whether what you have is adequate.

[steve clendenin]

Bounce

PLEASE make sure you are ready for sheep. Just to give you some food for thought. There will be feet to be trimed which require you turning the sheep to its butt or spending quite a few DOLLARS to buy equipment that is suppose to make it easy I tried it and took a beating when I sold it. It took longer and just as much strength and a whole lot more time to get the job done. It seems to work so so the first time you run them througe it but they get wise to it.

Also I have had Suffolk and they don't seem to use there brain much. I mean when I had them it was a show flock and the ewes weighted around 175 # or more and the Rams weighed around 300 or more.

Anoyher thing to think about is. I start lambing in a week and I will tell you right now it is not fun getting up around 3:00 in the morning and going to the lambing barn to check on ewes and be back out there about 4 or 5 times durning the day and evening. Don't plan on going to far for the next 4 to 5 weeks. Pulling lambs from there mothers and spending numbers of hours try to get a week lamb to nurse there mother or trying to get a new mother to take a lamb she just don't want too. If you don't love animals and especially sheep it can be a rought life.

I would love to see a lot of people back in the sheep industry but you need to know the truth about it. THERE IS NOTHING PRETTIER THE A HUNDARD LAMBS RUNNING AND PLAYING. I take a lot of pride in my animals and work my backside off trying to save everone but it don't always work and digging holes is the worse jub I have.

[steve clendenin]

I forgot to talk about sherring. Hard job to do and seems to be even harder to find a sherer to get it done when you want and need it done, because all of them are working at the larger flocks.

[Bounce]

Thank you Steve for the reminder of how much work they are. I had a small flock of Dorsets anout 15 years ago. I have goats now and I trim their feet regularly.

I've been up to my elbows inside a ewe to pull out a lamb (I impressed the heck out of my future hubby that night)I always dewormed but I'm finding out some people don't. My mums from Emgland and I grew up having lamb for dinner. My hubby and teens don't like it. I buy lamb for a treat for myself now and then.

I'm just checking out local producers to find out what works in this cold, humid area. I want to pleasure of having a small flock again, a lamb for the freezer and wool for my quilt batts. The shearers go through this area in June. You get put on a list and they give you a date to be ready for them.

I find Suffolks and Lincolns to be quite large. The feed store lady told me Katahdins are the worst mothers around, but then took me out to see her horse trailer full of bottle babes. She'd lost 3 of her 7 ewes in the last week. That left me thinking that her Dorset/texels weren't so hot either. Texel, Canadian Rideau/Arcotts, Dorset and Suffolks are the common breeds here. I'm just trying to get as much info as possible. Why did you select the breed you have?

[Pipedream Farm]

The feed store lady told me Katahdins are the worst mothers around, but then took me out to see her horse trailer full of bottle babes.

 

Odd, I guess everyone's experiences are different. We've had a small flock (10-20) of Katahdins for about 5 years and helped with a friend's flock (20-50) for a few years before that. We've not had a bottle lambs yet (knock on wood) and have only seen 1 ewe be lost at lambing (deformed lamb that could not be delivered or removed). We have had to graft a couple of lambs onto another ewe. We've not HAD to pull lambs. We have helped weak ewes deliver; but later felt like the ewe could have done it on her own. We watch our first time mothers to make sure they don't get stupid, once they've had lambs they've all been good mothers (some very good mothers).

 

We now have 4 Romney crosses to have something different to work; we'll see this year how good of mothers they are. We like them because they are not too big for Renee or I to handle. My back can't take flipping too big of a sheep.

 

My point is, don't base your sheep decision on only one person's experiences and preferences. Look around for other flock owners in your area and ask about their experiences with breeds that do well in your area.

 

Mark

[tucknjill]

Yeah,

I was thinking about selling all my hair sheep and getting all wool sheep..this years lambing has CERTAINLY made me change my mind. I have spent all my hours on the wool ewes/lambs and had very few troubles with the hair lambs and their mothers. I certainly can not endorse what that lady is telling you about Kahtadins.

[Rebecca, Irena Farm]

I always recommend Katadhins as the best low-cost (relatively), low maintenance sheep. Perhaps the mothering skills are relative (to something primitive like a Blackface or Barb?), but I will concur with Mark (EDIT: and Sam - posts crossed in the mail) that I never pulled, grafted, or bottled until I got out of hair sheep, into woolies. But I also have a limited income so I couldn't invest in really nice ones, or many years of selection, for reasonable market-size lambs.

 

This year I have the hardiest lambs I've ever had. I chose to lamb earlier, this month, which can actually be pretty chilly and nasty in North Carolina with occaisional lows around zero and ice storms (OK, don't laugh!). The wet northeast wind is the worst lamb killer.

 

Anyway, I went with Texel cross lambs this year. I'm not sure whether the hardiness comes from this particular strain or whether it's the Texel blood, but it's pretty impressive to see hours-old lambs bouncing and racing with each other in driving sleet and highs for the day in the teens. I'll have to do more research. Anyway, two seven-MONTH old rams covered a couple dozen ewes so efficiently that I had most of my lambs within the same week. The same will be true of your Katadhins, however - Barbs can start breeding around, oh, four and a half months or so.

 

I've brought in sheep from other farms before and they took a while to adjust to the poor pickins in the pasture. These guys have thrived - I can't wait to see what they look like when we shear in a month or so.

 

My ewe flock is a composite of a "school sheep" wool flock I bought from up north, originally about fifty head, then up to about eighty (shared with someone else), and after my second son was born and then I had the car wreck, I gradually culled down to a couple dozen. Meanwhile, we had a very nice Katadhin ram - his bloodlines are mostly what I culled down to - and a Dorper/Katadhin cross that I wasn't happy with (but his grandaughteres have been not bad) and a high percentage Blue Leister (back to that superior Katadhin ram). The Blue was really good for what he had to do: put lambs on the ground that could survive a period of relative neglect and still be marketable. We used him for three years and then got ourselves some actual terminal sires.

 

The best mothers I have are my Dorsets and percentage Dorsets. One little girl lambed for the first time this time and for two weeks would scream bloody murder if she were literally not touching her lamb. Her mother was really sick last year and couldn't stand and nurse. We thought we'd have to take her lambs until we realized she was rolling over and letting her lambs nurse. You can milk them like cows, even first timers. That's why I can't figure out how to milk these sheep with the tiny teats - I usually get colostrum off one of these Dorsets, but the timing was wrong this year. You just tug a bit on them and cupfuls just jet out.

 

My second favorite ewes are the Blackface/Horned Dorset strain. Talk about some crazy kick-butt mothers. But lambs are born literally able to outrun me - even before my accident. (c: They are a little sensitive to disease, heat, and parasites, but they do great on a fast grazing rotation and twice a year shearing.

 

I had a third strain in my original lot, of Suffolk/Polypay/Columbias. They were prolific but didn't do great when intensively grazed. I ended up doing most of my culls among them. It may have been that particular strain, but I bought some other Polypay/Suffolk ewes this year and haven't been happy with their foraging ability, either. I'll see how their Texel cross lambs do and go from there.

 

Finally, I had quite a few Rambouillets and crosses. They were great foragers as you can imagine, but they were terrible to try to handle, with or without dogs. Not really a beginner's sheep. I made a real mess the first year I tried shearing myself - wow. These were the first to go. I'd get some again as they would do fine here now, maybe a quarter percentage to cut down on the nasty shearing expererience. No, come to think of it, they have to be awfully nice sheep and really cheap, like free maybe. No, probably not even then (although I'm known locally as the Queen of Free Sheep, or, North Carolina Sheep Rescue and Rehab).

 

My future direction will be Dorset/percentage Dorsets with Texel terminal sires, I believe, unless they prove to be unthrifty in the Southeastern heat and high parasite pressure. But I doubt it - I had these two rams for the worst three months of our long hot summer (July through October) and they did great. My Blue Leister ram, who was born in the south and had a teeny bit of Katadhin in him, didn't do so well. The baby Texels had to clean up after his early run and those are the lambs I'm having now. The Blue Leister always did that, though; he was a really seasonal breeder.

 

See, now ya did it - and you thought I could be long winded about dogs? (c:

[Bounce]

This is wonderful. I really appreciate everyones help. The feed store lady is the only one who has knocked Katahdins, everything else I've heard has been good news. She gave me bad advice when I bought feeder pigs from her. They weren't thriving so I started to feed them free choice and they're big and happy. I was wondering how knowledgable the Katahdin guy was, he called his girls ewes (rhymes with blue) I've always called them ewes (rhymes with go) and he had interesting theories about inbreeding and parasite control.

[Cheri McDonald]

I am new to all this but our trainer has nothing but Katahdins. They have just begun lambing and I've gotten to see a couple births, keep asking him TONS of questions. He said that he went to Katahdins years ago because they are such good mothers. I am having a blast learning all this stuff!

 

My 8 year old niece went with me one day. She was thrilled about seeing a day old lamb, she asked Jer what it's name was. I had to hide my smile when he told her that the lamb had a number, then quietly added that you never name what you eat. She looked so shocked. And I asked her where she thought that hamburger she had for lunch came from. What a mean old auntie, huh?

[Rebecca, Irena Farm]

Hey Bounce,

 

Around here ewe rhymes with "blue" except for up in the hills (Appalacians) where some oldtimers call them "yoes". My mother in law is linguistically aligned with the hill accent and calls my mamas yoes. She also says winder and watuhmeller, and "git along," meaning "you're kidding!", among other neat vestiges of that culture.

 

I'm sitting on the porch swing updating my farm records (at least in theory). Now I take back those complaints about my geeky husband - he's the one who installed the wireless setup so I could do this. My bottle lambs are snacking on the lawn and the rest of the lambs are racing in the pasture. It's about 35 degrees F and the wind is what they call a "lazy wind" - can't be bothered to go around you so it goes right through. But these bottle lambs need some exercise, so here we are. I don't mind, it's MUCH warmer here than out at the lambing paddock.

[Bounce]

You paint a pretty picture with your words. This is definitly "Yo" country. I've never heard them called anything else.

[Jordi44]

I've never had Lincolns, but know a lot of breeders that show them - and have seen a lot of nice ones come out of Canada. They seem hardy and I've heard good things about them. They're heavy enough build to have good market lambs and with some effort, you can create craft markets for the wool. They seem a bit more docile than the Suffolk types, from what I've seen. Picking sheep is just like picking a dog - do you're homework to make sure you find the right match. Lambing season is well underway down here, so there should be plenty available soon, if not now. Look around, if you want to ease the urge, you could probably find a bottle baby or two to keep you busy.