Sheep

Busy lambing and welcome to Tom & Jerry

August 5, 2017 by Wendy Beer

It’s been steadily busy here on the farm as lambing in the Merino and commercial flocks hits the final week. Next week should see the start of the Drysdales and English Leicesters! This year there have been lots of twins – probably a result of the flush of green feed the ewes had in January prior to joining.

Every year there are some challenges. This year has seen a lot less difficult births (a good thing!) but there have been a number of ewes that have failed in their ability to raise twins. Some, thankfully, just needed a helping hand to get them back on track to being a good mum. This was the case with Petunia, one of the Merino ewes. After she lambed she effectively abandoned her newborns and it was the maternal behaviour of one of the alpaca that alerted me to this.
Petunia and her twins ended up in the hay shed having some “quality bonding time” and she then remembered that she did indeed want to be a mother. Unfortunately, she didn’t have a lot of milk the first few days so Iris and Fuchsia had a few bottles to help them along. They are now all back out in the paddock. 🙂

About a week ago we found a young ewe with a vaginal prolapse. These are usually quite troublesome to deal with and despite initial success in having things “go back the way they should be” that success didn’t continue and a couple of days later we were consulting with the vet upon which we realised we’d effectively run out of options. 😥 Nature is a cruel mistress sometimes but we do our best to protect our animals from the worst. The decision was made to put the ewe down but we also decided to try and extract any lambs immediately afterwards. To our surprise, and relief, this procedure was successful and so although the ewe couldn’t be saved her little twins were.

Despite their slightly unorthodox arrival, little Tom & Jerry are going from strength to strength. 🙂

Merino shearing completed for 2017

May 27, 2017 by Wendy Beer

The last few weeks have been busy with getting ready for shearing and then the actual shearing (for nearly a full week) and now just catching up on everything else!

The fleeces were quite good this year but some did show damage from the summer rainfall events we had over December/January.

Shearing here is a small affair compared to my neighbours and “the big guys”. I only get in one shearer (that I trust) and a neighbour helps with the classing. We generally do 100-130 per day. (Pretty small compared to the thousands at some places! hehe) Normally, the wool is pressed into large bales as we go. This year I had to put the wool aside and then bale it after the event.

One question I get asked is: “why do you shear when it is getting close to winter??”

The answer is a little complex but I will attempt to explain.

One major factor has to do with the tensile strength of the wool fibre and the role that different phases of reproduction have on it. In this case, when the ewes lamb and then lactate it puts stress on the system and they divert protein from wool growth into their pregnancy and milk. This can cause a thinner/weaker area to develop along the fibre. If the stressful period is nearly halfway between shearings then the fibre can have a “break” (ie. “tender”) right in the middle. So, a fleece that is a very usable length of 8-10cm all of a sudden becomes downgraded because its length will be 4-5cm when put under tension. Processing puts stress on the fibres and for combed wools the minimum length is 5cm/50mm. Sound wool (ie. not tender) is much preferred by the processors and tender wool gets a discounted price. Since shifting the shearing time to May the merino wool from the farm has greatly improved tensile strength which means better product (less pilling and less wastage, also the fibre length is maintained at the 10-11cm).
With the weather becoming cooler the sheep adjust their metabolism accordingly. Cool weather is becoming the “norm” and so if colder weather/rain comes after shearing then they handle it better than if, say, they were shorn in the warmer weather and then a cold snap happened. Sudden cold weather in the summer months is more likely to cause problems.
The shearing off of the fleece stimulates wool growth and oil secretions so post-shearing there will be a surge in wool growth which helps to provide the sheep with some growth going into the winter and the extra oils provide protection from the wet and cold. Each breed is a little different. For example, the Drysdales grow their wool so fast anyway that within a month of shearing they have over 25mm of growth. The Merino ewes I have are also growing wool quite fast (comparatively, to some lines of Merino) – they are almost at the point of being able to shear twice a year.
There is also the benefit that because at lambing the ewes feel the cold more, they lamb in more protected areas which helps to reduce lambing losses due to wind/cold exposure.

Shearing is a necessary activity for the health and well-being of the sheep. Done in a professional manner it is all completed in under 3 minutes per sheep. When the sheep has been released it is generally relaxed, will chew its cud and often they have a scratch (they can finally “get at that spot”!) Sometimes, they even try to come back into the shed…!

Crossbred hogget fleece (first shearing, 10mths growth)

Strong Wool Breeders Association Annual Sheep & Wool Fair – May 7th 2017

May 9, 2017 by Wendy Beer

On Sunday we went along to the annual Sheep & Wool Fair that is run by a small group of “Strong Wool” breeders. In this case, “strong wool” refers to wools over 30 micron and used for rugs/carpets. The breeds are: Border Leicester, English Leicester, Cheviot, Drysdale, Romney, Perendale and Lincoln.

Representing the Drysdales were Gilbert and his sister Gillyflower. Naturally, they took out Champion Drysdale Ram & Ewe. 😉 Gilbert’s fleece also snared Champion Drysdale fleece and the Champion Medullated Fleece.

Three young English Leicesters came too and they collected Champion English Leicester Ram & Ewe. Their dad’s fleece took out Champion English Leicester fleece. And, to top it off, a skein of grey English Leicester yarn I had spun up won a blue ribbon (1st).

Silver English Leicester yarn, spun from raw fleece

Arrived home totally exhausted, of course, and hope to do some more shows later in the year.

Maybe we will see you there?? 🙂

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! 🙂 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 lambs 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) 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…. 😉

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…! 😳

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.

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.

Sheep

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