New Guy on the Block
January 14th, 2014 · No Comments · Posted in farming
The woman who sold us our sheep–Friesian ewes–last spring averred we would be too overwhelmed as new farmers to think about breeding them. But that would mean waiting an awful long time–spring 2015–before we had any lambs. Then I met a young woman over the holidays who quickly became my new sheep mentor. Her response was, Why not?
We trucked over to her farm, where she raises sheep and horses with her father, and purchased this yearling ram who had been scheduled for the butcher. He’s a Romney cross, a year younger than our ewes and smaller. But since our plan is to make meat out of the lambs, we figured it didn’t matter too much whether he was an exact match for the Friesians as long as he gets the job done.
There was great excitement among both genders when we let him loose in our small flock. I’ve witnessed a number of courtship rituals and some overt foreplay, but I don’t know if our boy–we call him Buddy–has accomplished his mission yet. If he has, we would hope to see some baby lambs sometime in May or June, around the time the grass is flush in these parts.
We’ll just have to wait and see.
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