Cuts of sheep

Season's Greetings from Sabins Farm!

Wishing everyone a happy holiday. No snow here yet and so I couldn't take any photos of sheep in the snow. Maybe in January.

Hay or sheep?

As most of you know, we have had drought conditions in most of Southern and South Easter Ontario this summer. Pastures were dried up and crispy. As a result, many people had to start feeding hay when animals would normally have been out on pasture. Horses,cattle, sheep-they all had to eat something.
Even though there has been rain this fall and the pastures have recovered quite well, most people did not get a second crop of hay. We did not either, but were lucky to get a good first crop in before it rained and also did various neighbours' hay fields as well. As a result, we had hay to spare.

One solution to the hay shortage was for farmers to sell off a lot of their breeding stock. This has brought prices down. Not much yet, but they will probably fall further as time goes by and they run out of hay. Round hay bales are now selling for $50 to as high as $95 a bale for the really big, second cut round ones. Per lb it is about 12 cents. In this area, our usual price is $20 for a 4 x 5 soft core round bale of mixed hay, but not this year!
What do you think is the best plan of action? There are several options:

1. We could sell most of our hay and cut down on our herd of Katahdin sheep;
2. We could sell our surplus hay.
3. We could buy more sheep at a cheaper price as we would have enough hay to feed about 20-30 more ewes. Prices of ewes should be higher next year, as there may be a shortage of them.
4. We could sell some of the surplus hay and keep back enough to feed about 10 extra ewes.

Endangered or rare sheep breeds

 

The above is a chart showing sheep that are in short supply or endangered in Britain. As you can see, Katahdins aren't even mentioned. Of course, they are far from rare in North America, but in England-correct me if I am wrong-I don't believe there are any at all. 

Interestingly, Shropshires, which have been the subject of recent controversy regarding their carrying a gene that makes them susceptible to Scrapie, are right at the bottom of the list with numbers of 1500-3000, which makes them far from endangered. There are also quite a few of them in the United States, although not so many here in Canada.

Sheep dog herding (Guiness Ad)

Sometimes you need a veterinarian

Today we needed to call a veterinarian to do a farm visit for the first time in three years. The problem was an older ewe who needed assistance in lambing. I pulled one twin out with difficulty and it lived, but there was another dead one inside with neck so far back it was impossible for me to pull the head forward. Usually dead lambs can be delivered by the mother once the first one is out, but this was a very big one, and in an awkward position.

The vet one eventually managed to get the dead lamb out by cutting it up. The ewe was older than we thought -9 years. Moral of the story- do not keep ewes that are older than 8 if you don't want to risk problems with birthing, poor udders, missing teeth etc.
Mother and the one live lamb are doing fine now.

Some people would ask why should you bother with the expense of a veterinarian when the ewe is old and only worth about $50 as a cull ewe at auction. The answer is that it is the humane thing to do. You can't just stand by and let the animal suffer a painful death from a ruptured uterus and/or septicemia. Also there is the bonus of not having to bottle feed the baby.

New lambs 2012

Spring came a little early on Sabins Farm this year. We started lambing on February 4th and now have about 30 lambs on the ground. We knew a ram jumped in with the ewes when he was not supposed to. He was only there for a few hours, but voila! At least we know who the culprit was. Mostly twins and just one set of triplets so far.
The ones in the picture are just one day old. They are in the barn with heat lamps, but they should go outside in a few days. They don't mind the cold and it is only about 0 degrees C.

Update on solar power production

As we have had the solar panels on the loafing barn roof now for just about a year, I thought it was time to review the situation. From about the middle of March last year till the middle of February 2012 this year, we have earned about $9100 on our solar power by selling it back to Hydro1, the local electricity producer. That gives us a payback time of approximately 6 and a half years. This is of course assuming that the province of Ontario does not change the contract in some way. However, we did sign a contract for twenty years, so there would be a huge outcry and protest if they were to break it.
If anyone is still thinking of joining the MicroFIT program in Ontario, the payback amounts are a bit less now, but the costs of panels should be a lot less as well. Some contractors are still charging the old high panel prices, so be careful and check around! Solar power contractors have a high rate of bankruptcy including the one we dealt with. Once the system is up and running, it does not really matter, as skilled electricians should now be able to fix things like electrical shorts and blown fuses at a reasonable cost.We did have this happen a couple of times due to thunder storms causing power surges. It helps to have a couple of spare fuses on hand, and you can learn to replace them yourself.

We did purchase a long expandable handle for a soft horsehair broom so that snow could be cleared off most of the winter. This proved difficult when the snow was preceded by freezing rain.