Busy, busy – we have had 101 lambs born in the last 10 days! This young ewe lamb was standing on her mother’s back when the ewe stood up. She stayed there for about 5 minutes, trying to figure out how to get down. She finally got the courage to jump off, lol.
Lamb Gymnastics!
Some of the new lambs soaking up the sun in the barn doorway.
We have a new crop of purebred Dorset lambs on the ground! The ewes started lambing around Christmas time so it has been pretty busy around here. Some of the weather has been extremely cold ~ like -35C ~ and the wind chill made it feel like -50C! It makes for lots of trips to the barn to check and bring new lambs into the nursery.
We had our family come for the weekend a couple of weeks ago, and our little grandkids, Brooklyn – 4, Tyrell – 3, and Taylen – 2 enjoyed feeding the bottle lambs.
We are excited to see how this year’s lamb crop turns out. We used 3 new rams aside from the Shaw ram, who is a proven sire. There are some very promising lambs again this year. We will have a pen of top quality ram lambs on offer by May so check back with us later for updates and pictures!
Randy’s workplace, Brandt Ag, asked him to bring some lambs to the Christmas party for the children of the employees. So this past weekend, we took a couple of lambs in for the kids to pet. There were also alpacas, dogs, goats, ponies and of course, hundreds of children! Oh, and I better not forget Santa, Gainer the Gopher (the Saskatchewan Roughrider’s mascot) and a “polar bear”.
Lambs at the Brandt Children’s Christmas Party.
Our ewe flock has been grazing on 160 acres of alfalfa regrowth on the quarter section south of our yard and the lambs are grazing on the quarter section west of the yard. This fall, even with the quardian dogs, we have been having quite a bit of trouble with coyotes killing big lambs and even mature ewes. Two weeks ago, our predation specialist confirmed that one of the ewes was killed by a wolf. We found another ewe on Friday that the wolf got, so we brought the ewes closer to home yesterday.
Driving The Ewes Home
July and August have come and gone already. July was busy with haying. We put up 480 acres of alfalfa/grass hay in big round bales. We also attended the Grasslands Show and Sale at Drake, SK the end of July. We were pleased to have the winner of the Jackpot Ewe Lamb competition and we were really happy with how our consignments sold. Thanks to those that bought and bid on our sheep.
McDermit 314A – Grasslands Jackpot Ewe Lamb Winner
August was a dry month – we only had 1 inch all month and it came in the last four days. Makes it hard on the pastures, but it was good for getting the haying wrapped up. We cut and baled some second cut alfalfa for feeding to lambs and lactating ewes in the winter.
We had a pretty decent hay crop. The yield was average but the quality is better than last year because we got it cut sooner and most of it was put up without any rain on it. Logan has about half the round bales hauled in so far. We put 400 small square bales of second cut alfalfa in the barn.
We weaned the May born lambs on August 5th and they are still out on pasture with the April lambs.
Now it’s time to get ready for the Prairie All Breeds Ram Sale in Moose Jaw on September 7. Hope there’s a good turn out of buyers for the 100+ rams on offer.
This evening, we rounded up the whole flock……….
and moved them up the road……….
to their new, fresh pasture.
It’s been a really long winter and we have had record amounts of snow for our area. We weaned the January born Dorset lambs on Saturday. It’s hard to believe that a year ago, when we weaned the lambs, there was no snow at all.
Here is a picture of the newly weaned lambs.
Below are pictures comparing the handling system between this year and last year on the same day. Pretty crazy! Needless to say, we couldn’t use it to wean the lambs.
Winter is upon us and we’ve already had more snow in the first three weeks than we had in six months last year! We hope we don’t get any more all winter, but of course that’s not going to happen. On the positive side, we will have good moisture in the spring to get the grass and crops growing!
Ewe lambs running through the snow for their grain. Photo credit: Melanie Straka
The fall-born lambs arrived between September 29 and October 10. It was beautiful weather and they are thriving. Their mothers had lambed back in January…. were weaned in March…. and rebred at the end of April/first part of May. One of these “super-ewes” as we call them, is 10 years old! The lambs are sired by herdsire, Shaw DAE 09W.
Some of the lambs basking in the morning sun.
August has absolutely flown by! The days are noticeably shorter and the nights are cooler. Fall isn’t very far away!
We weaned the May born lambs the first part of August. We plan to keep most of the ewe lambs as we are still increasing the flock.
There will be a nice selection of ram lambs available for sale that will be big and ready to go to work this fall.
The January ewe lambs have grown like crazy on pasture this summer.
Some of the May born ram lambs that we will be offering for sale will be out of the same sire as these January ewe lambs.
We have consigned 5 rams and 10 ewe lambs to the Prairie All Breeds Ram Sale in Moose Jaw, SK on September 8. See pictures and information on our entries on this page.
We recently had the Shaw ram out for 2 weeks so we will be getting winter lambs between January 5 and 20. Hope the weather is decent!
Haying is all done and the bales are all hauled in off the fields. Our next project is some trenching and running electric wire for new water bowls. There is no shortage of things to do!
Just had to put this picture on of our cat in the lamb hay feeder!
Well, it’s hard to believe it’s the last day of July! As far as the sheep go, it is a pretty uneventful month on the ranch. The ewes are just busy raising their lambs on the pasture and the lambs are just busy growing!
They are looking really good. We will be weaning them next Saturday, August 4 so then it will be noisy around here for a couple of days.
I am looking forward to sorting through the purebred Dorset lambs. We will be selecting the best ram lambs to offer for sale and I will be posting pictures and information soon, so be sure to watch for them!
Ram sales have been brisk. We are sold out of January ram lambs and have 3 February ram lambs left. We will be consigning a few May born ram lambs to the Prairie All Breeds Ram Sale in Moose Jaw, SK on September 8. The rest will be sold off the ranch.
Our Anatolian Shepherd pups, Zeus and Zorro are now 7 months old and are very big already!
July has been quite hot and humid but we have had a good amount of rain this summer and the grass is plentiful.
The first cutting of hay is yielding about half of what it did last year due to late frosts in May and also alfalfa weavils. We have some beautiful second cut just about ready to go down though.
We attended the Grasslands Sale at Drake, SK on the weekend and the prices for purebred ewes and rams are still strong. It looks like there are lots of new producers getting into the sheep business. Lamb prices have gone down a bit but are still decent and optimism is good.
Spring lambing is almost done. We started on May 1 and the weather has had its ups and downs. Lots of cold, windy, rainy days with a few nice sunny days here and there. The lambs are doing well and the ewes are milking like crazy on the lush new grass and alfalfa. We feed our ewes “Silent Herder” mineral in the summertime, which prevents bloat. We start them on it 2 weeks before they go out on the alfalfa and they seem to know when they need to eat some. We haven’t lost anything to bloat since we started using this mineral.
The llama and her cria are out in the pasture with the ewes and lambs. The cria is quite amusing to watch when he gets playing and running around.
Yesterday was a beautiful day, so I tattooed, tagged, vaccinated and dewormed the purebred Dorset ewe lambs. These photos show the method I use to tattoo. It’s kind of messy, but it doesn’t take very long and then they will always have permanent id even if they loose their tag.
Recently, I sold an orphan lamb to some friends. She was used to being with other lambs, so when she was taken away and was then by herself, she was quite distressed. Our friends had put her in a pen in a corner of their garage where there was a mirror leaning against the wall. They decided to move her to a different corner of the garage, but this caused her to cry and cry. So they put her back in the original corner where the mirror was, and she ran straight to the mirror and looked at her “buddy” and stayed right by her reflection! So, I learned a valuable lesson that day: Since sheep don’t like to be by themselves, if you only have one orphan lamb, give it a mirror so it doesn’t think it’s alone! LOL! (Thanks to Jason & Angie for sharing the story and photos).
Yesterday, we had our son, Carson and his wife, Rebecca, and their two little kids, Tyrell (2) and Taylen (7 months) come visit! Tyrell enjoyed helping feed the bottle lambs…….
and riding in the wagon with his little sister, Taylen!
We wean our lambs between 60 and 90 days old, so 
this past weekend we weaned and weighed the December-January born lambs with help from son, Nolan and 2 1/2 year old granddaughter, Brooklyn! The biggest ram lamb weighed in at 91 lbs at 79 days old and the biggest ewe lamb was 80 lbs at 70 days old!
We are very happy with the whole pen of lambs. I will be posting pictures of the ram lambs in the next few days. They will be on our “Rams For Sale “ page. Be sure to check them out!
Yesterday, we bought 2 male Anatolian Shepherd pups to add to the sheep guardian team. We named them Zeus and Zorro. They are 9 week old brothers. Zeus is short-haired and Zorro has a longer coat.
Anatolian Shepherd Pups, Zeus and Zorro
One of our Great Pyrenees dogs is 13 years old and is slowing down, so it was time to get replacements trained. We thought we would try Anatolians for their speed and agility in chasing down and catching coyotes that threaten the sheep flock.
Zeus and Zorro Resting
Zeus Nose To Nose With An Orphan Lamb
About Anatolian Shepherds
Anatolian Shepherds are livestock guardian dogs that originated in Turkey. They have acute hearing, exceptional eyesight and great strength to take down predators. They are known for their strong protective instincts. Males mature at 26-31 inches at the wither and weigh about 150 lbs.
#492 With Her Twins - A Ewe Lamb And A Ram Lamb.
Winter lambing is well underway and the weather has been fantastic! We had a small group of 20 purebred Dorset ewes lamb in December/January and now we are lambing out another group of 30. The new lambs are doing well, bouncing around and playing. When they get tired, they enjoy soaking up the sun on these beautiful days.
#923 With Brand New Triplet Ram Lambs.
We will be selecting some of the top ram lambs and ewe lambs from the Dec/Jan group to go to the Grasslands Sale in Drake, SK in July.
Check back often for more pictures and updates!
