Lamb prices March 12th Hoards Station

Here are the prices from last Tuesday's sale at the Community Livestock Exchange in Ontario- Hoard's Station:

Lambs # Head Low $ High $ Avg $ Top $ Avg Wt 65 - 79 lbs 68 139.90 189.99 164.99 189.99 73 50 - 64 lbs 31 152.40 177.60 166.19 177.60 61 49 lbs and less 27 122.50 185.00 164.50 185.00 41

Considering that we are only two weeks away from Easter, the prices are pretty low.

Lambing spring 2013

These are some Dorper/Katahdin cross lambs born in February this year. OK, I lied. It really isn't quite spring yet, but we have made a few litres of maple syrup already.
Last year, we sold a lot of our better breeding stock lambs and young ewes, so were left with an assortment of first time mothers and very old gals. Three of the old ones developed toxemia and although we managed to save two out of three mothers, most of the lambs died either before birth or shortly after. We also had a lot of triplets and so are bottle feeding a few lambs. Only one old ewe managed to cope with all three by letting them take turns.

Toxemia, apart from the age of the ewes, might also have been due to poorer hay quality last year. We did feed corn as well, but obviously not enough. The treatment is propylene glycol (sounds like antifreeze, but it isn't).

On a more positive note all the Dorper cross lambs have done very well, and not one of the yearling Dorper cross lambs rejected her lamb or lambs. We prefer to let ewe lambs breed at 9 months old or less, so that they just have a single lamb in the spring as this is easier for them to cope with than twins the first time around. By the time they have twins the following year, they will be better mothers and will also be larger making for easier births.

Sheep handling system

We recently purchased a sheep handling system and used it for the first time yesterday to sort lambs from ewes and give some dewormer (Ivomec) shots and vaccinations prior to lambing at the end of February.
  This one is fairly similar to the one we have.

The idea behind this purchase was to make manhandling of the sheep less strenuous as we get older. We wouldn't have to lift them or wrestle with them- or so we thought. The idea is to funnel the sheep from a circular holding pen that can be adjusted to make it smaller, thus supposedly forcing the sheep into the long track called the race and eventually into an end gate. Maybe a dog could entice them to move into the race, but we had to push and drag the first ones into it, and then the others started to follow. We had to repeat this for every ten sheep or so. There must be a better way! Maybe we should try putting a little corn down at the far end. Maybe it should not have been painted a bright blue which might be scary for sheep. Solid panels in the sides of the race did not help much either. Perhaps they will eventually get used to it.

Another problem was that smaller lambs could crawl underneath and escape, or they turned right around and faced the wrong way. By the time the sheep got to the end, there was about a yard of "play" so that when you tried to give a shot, they moved forward or back a yard, breaking the needles and nearly breaking my arm in the process. I then resorted to having Jim stand behind them inside the race so they could not move back, and started giving the shots from that end instead of at the head gate.

One solution would be a squeeze chute at the far end, but they cost about $1000 extra. It might be worth it.

Also, our sheep are Katahdins, so that even in winter when they are at their wooliest, they are not a wide as a traditional wool sheep breed. The race needs to be about 4-6 ins narrower.
Has anyone got any helpful hints on working with sheep handling systems? We really don't want to get another dog. We used to have border collies, but have not had one for several years now.

BR-549

This is a comedy video from Junior Samples to give you a laugh in the New Year-if you like that kind of thing.
You may wonder what it has to do with Katahdin sheep. Well, we leased a rather famous ram to breed to our ewes last fall. They are due to lamb about the middle of March 2013. The new ram's tag number is BRT-549 and he was the top selling ram lamb at the Regina Agribition show and sale in 2011.
The original owner and breeder of this ram is Randy Thomas from Saskatchewan, who is known for producing top quality Katahdin breeding stock. He has shown his sheep at Agribition for many years.

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.