Family Farm Friday # 24: This Is How We Do It...

“It pays to plan ahead. It wasn't raining when Noah built the ark.” ~ Unknown

Well, because the now infamous bull semen blog was such a hit, I figured I needed to have a blog about sheep breeding season as well. Things are done a little differently. Mind you, this is how my family spends our 4th of July each year!

First off, we don't AI sheep. In fact, most people don't AI sheep because it's much more difficult than it is to AI cattle (although my understanding is that they have developed non-surgical methods within the last year or so, up until that point surgical AI was the only option). So, instead of choosing which ram (daddy sheep) you want to use out of a book, you look at which rams you own and figure it out that way.

This decision isn't made lightly....we study and study and figure and think and argue and bicker, and then decide. First, we look at each ewe (momma sheep)'s physical traits to see which ram we want to breed her to. For exampe, if we have a ewe that is really heavy muscled, but might be sort of short necked and coarse shouldered, then we want to breed her to the really pretty, long necked ram, instead of one that is super heavy muscled. You get the idea.

Next, we look at their lineage--who is the mom and dad of the ewe. This gives us an idea of that kind of lambs she might throw, what her problems might be, etc. Third, we look to see what lambs the ewe has had in the past. So, for example, if one of our ewes had a lamb that won Grand Champion last year, we want to put her back with the exact same ram this year and hope it works out again!

So after all that figuring, we divide up the ewes for the different rams. We do this by running them through a sorting gate that allows us to separate them into different pens.

My mom keeps a list of which ewes go with which rams so that we have accurate and complete records for next year (athough no matter how hard we try, we always seems to be missing some daddy of a really good one...).

This year, we have 5 different pens of ewes. Our rams are named Italian Stallion, Macho, H2, White Lightning and Swamp Donkey. Clever, I know.

So after all of this figuring and sorting and work, it's time for the magic to happen. Here's the Italian Stallion's first encounter with the ladies this year. Exciting stuff, had to be captured on film!