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You are here: Home / Archives for Blog

Blog

(Mis-)Adventures in Dyeing, episode 1

February 24, 2017 by Wendy Beer

Our verandah deck is a fantastic place to get all the dyed wool dry and fluffy. Especially when there is a stiff southerly or northerly breeze blowing.

The other day I had carefully laid out some merino wool tops to dry and then late in the day come back to them to see how they were going.

Their status was “not quite”. So I left them on the drying rack and thought I would get them in before bed.

Bedtime arrived and, since it was dark out, I turned the verandah lights on so I could go and fetch the wool.

Annnnnnddddddd there was a great big Orb spider with her web right in my path. Quick decision: leave the tops until morning!

6.30am and dawn was approaching. The wind had picked up overnight and when I went out in my PJs to collect the wool (because Orb Weavers are very tidy and pack up their webs in high traffic areas) I discovered the rose-coloured wool was strewn over the decking and into the rose bushes. 😳  😳

And no, there was no picture (or video) of me giving an anguished shriek and carefully extracting fine merino wool tops from a thorny rose bush….!

Merino Wool Tops sans rose bush!

Weaning lambs

February 24, 2017 by Wendy Beer

Just like with children, weaning can be a time full of drama or … not….

There are several reasons why we wean lambs here at Beersheba Farm.

Mostly it is to do with basic management. It’s much easier to cater to the needs of different age classes of stock when they are grouped together. For example, if there is a ewe that is putting “everything” into her lamb/s – to the detriment of her own body condition – then it is nigh impossible to improve her body condition while she is still lactating. She will just channel all the extra energy and protein into her milk. She’s a good mum! πŸ™‚ By weaning the lamb off it allows the ewe to build her reserves again and take care of herself. Likewise, it is much more efficient to supplementary feed lambs, if needed, as a group rather than have all the “mums and aunties” scoffing the lot.

Another consideration is the pastures at the time the lambs are approximately 16 weeks old. By that age they have a fully functioning rumen (their first stomach which uses bacteria to break down the cellulose and starches in grass) and are not so reliant on their mothers for nutrition. Ideally, the grass is still green and “best” when the lambs get to this point of being fully on grass but also needing high quality feed to grow their bodies. Every farm and district has different environmental conditions and pasture species which influences what is best for them. We have predominately native pastures and a dry summer so it is ideal to wean lambsΒ  while the pasture is good enough for them to grow and their mothers to physically recover.

(Now may be a pertinent time to point out that sheep, like many other herbivores, are biologically designed to get pregnant etc every single year. In fact, if they “skip” a year it can be difficult for them to fall pregnant at a later time.)

There is another reason also: most ewes cycle better when they haven’t been lactating for approximately 8-12 weeks. This can vary a lot with different breeds but, essentially, in some sheep lactation is a contraceptive!

When ewes are being joined there is always the risk that if they have lambs on them from the previous year that the ram will either get the ewe lambs pregnant or damage them by trying to get them pregnant. We prefer to avoid this scenario.

So that brings us to today: weaning Drysdale ewe lambs. (The ram lambs had been weaned at 12-16weeks before they started getting up to mischief!! Yes, they can start that early.)

This season we had much wetter summer than usual and the grass was better than usual. Due to various reasons we hadn’t got around to weaning the lambs and they have been left on their mums much longer than usual. (They are 5-6mths old)Β  And yes, quite a few were still drinking – just in case anyone thought that the ewes would just wean them by themselves …

Today they were separated from their mums and everyone had a worm drench. Then the mums went to a quiet paddock for some R&R and the lambs have gone into the paddock with the best grass along with some grown-up “aunties” for company. There was no yelling for Mum/Lamb and it was all very civilised. The ewes actually quite like it when the kids go off to school…. πŸ˜‰

Being a small farm it means that we don’t have limitless paddocks and large mob sizes. So after joining is completed in April sometime then the ewe weaners will end up back with their mums and aunties until it is time for lambing in August.

We “took” a lovely video this morning of the ewes being taken to their paddock and nary a one was crying for a lamb…. trouble is, the camera operator stuffed up and only took a picture instead of a video…! 😳

Drysdale ewes, freshly weaned

 

Waiting for the Autumn rains

February 23, 2017 by Wendy Beer

Summer is supposed to be dry here. It was wet. Very wet.

The bonus of that was that the native grasses grew nicely and we had some more feed.

The downside is that remaining dry grass and clover has all the nutrients leached out so the quality of it drops markedly. The other major downside was the running battle with flystrike in the sheep. The wet weather over the Spring had damaged the fleeces of the crossbreds especially and that sort of fleece became prime targets for flies. We ended up with quite a few “poodle sheep” and we got more experience than we would have liked in using the handshears and the machine shears. That’s life….

Another downside is the very real risk that all that rain in summer is “too early” and then you get the dry spell – in autumn. When you don’t want it because you’re wanting the grass to grow before the winter slowdown. Tricky….!

So here we are, enjoying cooler nights now but just hoping we don’t get too many dry cool changes before long.

The merino ewes this morning

Joining time

February 14, 2017 by Wendy Beer

Joining time, also known as “tupping” or mating, is the period of weeks that the rams spend time with the ewes – and hopefully get them all pregnant.

Here at Beersheba Farm we prefer a rather short joining time which delivers a corresponding short lambing time.

The rams are out for 5 weeks and this basically allows the ewes 2 oestrus cycles to get pregnant. Lambing is usually completed in around 4 weeks.Β  This greatly assists paddock and ewe management and keeps one of our busiest times of the year from dragging out.

Ewes are in oestrus for approx 24-48hrs every 16-17 days. When that happens you can often notice that a ram will have separated from the main flock of ewes and will be with 2-3 ewes that are currently in season. Ewes in season will seek out the ram and we’ve had many cases over the years of “illicit liasons”, “not-so-covert breakouts” and “shameless flirting”. Sometimes a ewe will reject the ram she is with and seek out another that she feels is “more her style.”

One way or another they certainly keep us on our toes. πŸ™‚

 

Merino ram and ewe away from the main flock.

Welcome

February 14, 2017 by Wendy Beer

Hello and welcome to the Beersheba Farm website – a new adventure for us!

We are located in Victoria, Australia and we have sheep. We love sheep a fair bit, actually.

Through this website we hope to give information regarding our sheep and sheep in general as well as offer our wool and wool products for sale.

 

Drysdale rams, post-shearing in summer.
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