Given that the sires were young Shetland ram lambs, between 4 and 5 months of age and small, as Shetlands are, it is a wonder they bred those big girls at all. The ewes must have laid down for the rams or they snuck up on them when they were lying down. Otherwise they could not have mounted those girls who were twice or more their size. And given that it was completely unplanned and unwanted breeding, I was feeling very unhappy. 

But, as usual, I chose to look for the silver lining in the storm cloud. The lambs have all been strong and healthy, though singles instead of twins. The ewes were those who had previous twins regularly, so the only assumption to be made, is that the numbers of sperm being produced by the young rams was not much yet. It was obviously enough to do the job. A ewe will release one to four eggs and then they will be fertilized by the same number of sperm. The ewes were coming in off pasture then and were in prime shape, fat and healthy. They would have released the greater number of eggs as usual. The only other explanation is that one or more of the fertilized eggs did not continue to become a lamb, though who would know why. All the lambs born have been singles. 

The lambs have been born without assistance. They are robust and alert and know their mothers. They were born outside in the open air and the weather has cooperated by being unseasonably warm. Today it reached 9 degrees, almost unheard of for February in the frozen north. Call it global warming or whatever, it was perfect for babies being born in the open.

The mothers all are fleece animals and with the infusion of the crimpy fine Shetland fleece, their offspring should have pretty exquisite and unusual wool. I am tempted to keep these babies and see how they turn out. 

I think that Tova, the Gotland ewe will be next. She is laying down and getting up a lot, but she is a hogget, or a ewe who has not lambed before, so she does not know what to expect. Gotlands are primitive sheep though, so her instincts should be strong and her mothering ability excellent. It looks like Rosy, my favourite Babydoll next to my Anna, who now lives in a new home, is also bred. Shetland/Babydoll crosses are fairly common and apparently they are sweet natured and have great fleece. 

So, really, there is nothing to be upset about other than yes, this is not what I had in mind, but given all the positives, there is definitely a silver lining. Today, Sharon, the lovely Karakul/Cotswold ewe, gave birth to a beautiful black baby girl with tightly curled fleece. Karakuls are born black and as they age, they become silvery, but Shetlands born black stay black ,so it is a wait and see with her. I am grateful for these babies, strong and healthy, and for their mammas, protective and nurturing and even those rascals who sired the lambs. Boys will be boys, I guess. 

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Darn those precocious breeds of sheep anyhow!

There was another ram lamb born today, a four horned all black half Shetland, half Jacob, born to Jean, my four horned Jacob ewe. I was so set on breeding her Jacob and building some Jacob stock back up. The young Shetland rams had other ideas it seems. Jean's little fellow will have four horns and will be half Shetland. That in itself is a little rare. I am thinking I should castrate him, making him a wether, and keep him for a pet and for his fleece. It will be very interesting to see a four horned half Jacob who is all black. His fleece should be quite wonderful, I am thinking. 

So, upon a very very close inspection, I noted that there are several ewes further along than they should be in their pregnancies, if they indeed were bred to deliver in April and May.  There is over a month to go and the Tunis sheep has a developed udder and is ready to deliver any moment. She is not overly large this time, which makes me think that the entire flock is destined to have singles only. 

I am very disheartened with this knowledge. I had so very much counted on the purebred babies to help along the flock development. If the Babydolls are going to have cross bred lambs, and I suspect Rosy for sure will, as she is very large for the predicted due date of being bred to the Babydoll ram, then a whole year of breeding is somewhat wasted. There are 7 Babydoll ewes, though the ewe lambs may be too young this year and if all of them are bred to those little Shetland baby boys, what a terrible waste of this year. 

We do learn from our mistakes and this is a huge one for me. 

The white wool with the dirty ends was my Karakul Fleece sent to Quebec to be shared for a learning experience last year. Karakul wool in Canada is hard to come by. I did not skirt the fleece, which is remove the manure tags and hay infested neck areas, but sent the entire thing. The receiver could have skirted and discarded the more difficult parts, but she offered it to those who wanted to try it just as is. 

I am not sure what the others did with the wool, but Woolaine Mohair from Quebec, made a lovely bag. She cleaned the Karakul fleece, carded it, combed it and removed the hay from it after it was thoroughly washed. Then she spun it with Merino wool and knit a huge bag, which was then felted down to a manageable size. The bag, being knit and felted, would be extremely durable and strong, and Karakul wool would add to the strength of it because of its coarseness. The wool of the Karakul sheep is actually fairly coarse and almost more goat like, but it is wool. It is used extensively for carpet and rug making in the middle east because of its strength. I am not sure if Woolaine Mohair dyed the wool, but I am thinking so. Merino wool is primarily white and the Karakul she used was also white, but the bag is a beautiful dark chocolate colour. 

It will be another washout year for fleece for the Fat Ewe Farm. The hay nets were supposed to keep the vegetative matter from the wool, but they do not. The sheep eat through the net and pull the hay out dropping it on the sheep beside them and they still get quite covered in bits of hay. I feel the only way to keep the sheep wool clean will be to coat the sheep. I have a freind who is coating her wool sheep this year and she had coats made locally. I would be interested in knowing the cost of them and whether or not the person would be willing to make some for my wool sheep too. I want to design a coat that is different than some coats and does not need constant changing as the wool grows due to some cords that can be lengthened to release the coat somewhat. I will work on that. 

Thank you Lucy from Woolaine Mohair for sharing your photo of the bag made with wool from the Fat Ewe Farm! I hope I can provide some better quality wool in the future. Here is wishing!

I have just gone through this year's fleeces and was amazed by the Karakuls once again. They are spectacular sheep and we should have more of them. In Canada there are very few purebred Karakuls and coming by a ram has been impossible. 

In the 1950s, the Karakul sheep were imported to North America for the fur trade. The pelts of the unborn or newborn Karakuls are black or brown tightly curled wool which retains the curl only if the lambs are slaughtered at birth. Thousands of Karakul sheep were brought in for the popular lamb fur coats and hats of the 1950's, that is until the  people learned where the pelts actually came from. Once it was discovered that the fur was not fur, but wool from newborn or in some cases lambs taken in utero, people were outraged and quit buying the fur coats and hats. So, the sheep were slaughtered by the thousands. And that was the shame of it all. 

Karakul are hardy sheep, able to thrive in harsh environments and fatten on marginal forage. Compared to the modern breeds, the Karakuls remain plump just from pasture and hay, while the newer breeds must have grain to put weight on the carcass. Even the Karaul cross Cotswold ewe I have is a large sheep with a good thick body. But the Karakuls also produce fantastic fleece, not wool for spinning, but coarse long fibre, as long as 14 inches in a season at no cost to their meaty carcass development. The modern sheep are either wool or meat with a few exceptions, while Karakuls easily produce their spectacular wool and keep their meaty frames filled. They are also pest resistant and have very good feet. 

Karakul ewes are exceptional mothers, raising twins easily and nursing lambs well into four months without condition loss. The rams spot spectacular frames with large horns and are magnificent to look at, though I have only had the pleasure of seeing them in photos. 

I commented on a picture on Facebook recently and contacted the owner of the photo who sent along some with permission to use them in this writing about Karakuls. She is a professional photographer and also has her own Karakul sheep, so the photos are spectacular. I would like to find a ram and next year will diligently try to bring one up from the states. Then I can breed the three Karakul ewes I have and produce some more amazing sheep, hopefully interesting others in the fabulous breed. They are fat tailed, that is the nutrients and nourishment and water is stored in the tail, as a camel stores such in the hump. A well fed prosperous Karakul will have a fat tail. In poor times the tail size diminishes considerably allowing the Karakuls to thrive where others would fail. Amazing! 

Thank you to Betty for the use of her photos. They too are amazing. Amazing pictures of amazing sheep! Amazing! The photographer is Betty Gillis from Texas. Thank you Betty. 

Livestock guardians and older ewes are great babysitters for young lambs. They are tolerant of the lambs and allow them to play on them. Dora, the Karakul sheep, has never had a lamb. She has a very wide fat tail, as her breed is supposed to have, but the rams have never been able to figure out how to breed her. She is here because she is Karakul, a rare breed and has true Karakul fleece. She will live her days out on the farm. Mikey, the dog, is a wonderful, gentle and calm livestock guardian, raised with lambs and sheep. Although he is only a year and a half old, he can be trusted with the lambs. Never has he displayed a tiny bit of rough play or agression with any animals he is protecting. 

Soon the other lambs will begin to be born and then a most wonderful time happens. The lambs run for the sheer joy of being able to do so. They run in one direction and they run back. Once they are a few weeks old, they love to explore away from mom, but not too far. I love the little lambs, Dora and Mikey. What a life to be a farmer - such joy every day. 

Oh my goodness, new lambs are cute and the last four born on the Fat Ewe Farm are indeed among the cutest. Jacob lambs are always black and white, but there are lilac ones too, which is a greyish colour and white. Primarily, they are black and white and they are small when they are born. The new lambs born last week have grown so much already. They were a bit larger to start with than the pure bred Jacobs just born, because Karakul lambs are good sized, but they are also half Jacob. One has the markings of his father, but his body is black, except for the tail, which has a white tip. The little white ewe lamb is just like her beautiful Karakul mother. 

Today, Jean the Jacob had brought her babies out to meet the flock at a distance. They had already learned the safe place was next to mother and Jean is excellent at calling them to her. I put them in the barn tonight because it is snowing quite hard and the ittle ones are so new, they cannot regulate their body temperatures as well as the fully insulated mother. Though she is very instinctual, she did not want to keep them in the barn or shelter out of the snow, so I locked them up until morning for their safe keeping. 

This morning, though, the babies were out and Lena the Karakul was eating. Lena's twin girls were curious about the new comers and came prancing over. The all white girl is very bold and her sister followed her. Jean's babies did not want to meet the other little lambs though, and they sniffed eachother and then hid behind mother. It was absolutely adorable!

Lena, the 70% Karakul mother of the two ewe lambs born 2 days ago, went to eat and left the babies close by. They did not know where she was, being so young and with so many other sheep there, and even though they called and called, she did not come. The lambs went to the livestock guardian dog, Joe, smelled him and stayed with him until mom came and collected them. Then they joyfully wagged their tiny tails and had a drink of warm milk and were content. 

Livestock guardian dogs are not guard dogs. They are dogs bred for centuries to stay with livestock, prmarily sheep, but they can be trained for goats and chickens, even pigs. They guard their charges with their lives, fiercely fending off any would be predators. There are two guardians with the sheep, brothers, Mike and Joe. They are a year and a half old and already have assumed full time responsibility for their sheep. When they want to relax, they go "home" to their sheep pen. In the winter months, there is not much for them to do, and they are allowed out of the pen, which they easily jump. We are in a heavy predator zone, backing on to over 300 acres of crown land which is primarily wild bush. Coyotes, bears, foxes, big cats and other predators live in that zone and if these dogs were not here, I am sure our losses would be substantial. As it is, to date, with Mike and Joe and the other livestock guardian dogs, we have not lost a lamb to a predator, other than the ravens, who ate one at birth. 

There is an arial predator that hunts the farm at the crack of dawn. The livestock guardian dogs do not fend it off for some reason. Robbie, the border collie, is the only dog who is trained to arial watch and he does a great job when he is outside. As with most young border collies, he is not to be trusted yet on his own though, and when I am not outside, he is either tied up or inside with  me, so he cannot fend off what comes from the sky. 

The farm has other livstock guardians that do not live with any particular group of livesetock, but are general protectors. There are four more of them, two females that are spayed and two more males that patrol this farm and the three surrounding it. We do not see so much as a jack rabbit or gopher at the farm yard. Nothing ventures to come that near or it is chased away. The dogs first intention is not to kill, but to drive prey away from the farm, though they would not hesitate to tear apart a marauding visitor. They often come home with new scars and scratches, so they are doing some fighting away from the farm too. The females stay home most of the time, and Jade stays 100% of the time, so even if the others are off fighting, she remains home to guard. They have a certain alarm bark when there is danger and also a warning bark to let the predators know they best stay away. 

I am grateful for my big livestock guardian dogs. Only Harley is a purebred Maremma and the others are mixes of mostly Maremma and Great Pyrenees, though Ofcharka has Anatolian Shepherd and Akbash in him as well. Not every dog makes a good livestock guardian, though, even bred to be such. Some find the tantalizing taste of blood more than they can handle and they kill chickens and waterfowl, and sometimes even kill sheep. Fortunately for The Fat Ewe Farm, we lucked out and have the best of the best. Thanks my buddies. You always brighten my day with a wagging tail and cheerful smile for me (Jenna really has a big smile!). You are the best!

Wow, what a surprise, well, two surprises! Two little ewe lambs wrere born to Lena, the Karakul ewe, sometime late this morning. I had been out to check on the porbelly piglet earlier and did not notice the babies. They were mostly cleaned off and dry. Fortunately the weather cooperated and it was 8 degrees and sunny. Lena had her lambs out in the open in the corner of the pen on nice clean hay spilled over from the feeders. She had a choice of the calf shelter, a small old granary or the barn, all of which have nice clean fresh straw in them, but typical of primitive sheep, she chose to be outdoors in the open. The first lamb she had was in January in the middle of winter three years ago and she had it in the snow. 
Lena is an excellent mother and had the babies nursing and their tummies full. 

It took me quite a while to unravel who the sire is, though. The ram was not put in with the ewes until December 1. That means the earliest lamb to be born full term would be five months later on May 1. These lambs were definitely full term and well developed, strong and healthy. So, then, I tried to remember if any of the rams somehow got in with the ewes and to my recollection none had. So, then what? 

The lambs were born in May last year as well, May through June actually. They were separated and weaned from the ewes at five months old, or so, in mid October. The oldest would not have been quite six months and the youngest closer to four months. While it is not unheard of, it is also not that common for a young ram to breed so early. That is the only possible solution for the mystery of the sire for these babies. The Jacob ram lamb was the largest and early born of the boys. He was a single and grew very rapidly with all his mother's milk for himself. His colouring matches the black and white ewe lamb almost exactly. The other trait is the tail. Jacobs have long tails and Icelandics and Finnsheep have naturally short tails, or rat tails. The ewe lambs born this morning have long tails. So, by deductive reasoning, the sire of the lambs was the Jacob ram lamb at five months old. There could be other babies born in the next week or two, but then the timing would be off because the rams lambs were already gone by the next cycle. So, if no more babies come in this week, the next ones would be expected by the Jacob ewe, who was bred a full month earlier than the others, if she took. The ram was sold and left with four Jacob ewe lambs, but she was put in with the Blue Faced Leicester ram. If she has babies in the next two weeks, they are purebred Jacobs and if they come in May, they will be BFL crosses. 

I am absolutely thrilled, though not prepared, for these babies. I am going to the store tomorrow to get a lambing kit, nipples and bottles, in case, a tube for tube feeding, also in case, disposable gloves and colostrum, all in case. The tails will be docked tomorrow, if not today, and the lambs will get a vaccination shot. They do not appear to need selenium and vitamin E, which prevents white muscle disease. 

Welcome little girls. You are a delight and so precious. I just want to hug you to bits, little ones. 

Dora is a purebred registered fat tailed sheep, a Karakul, one of the most common breeds in the Middle East, but rare in Canada. She is one of two Karakul ewes that I have, but the other sheep is only 75% Karakul. Dora is unique as far as sheep go. She has always been friendly and will come for a little attention. She does not appear shy, but is reserved. This is observed when it is feeding time. She does not rush in, nor push the other sheep out of the way as some others do, even though she is substantial in size. 
Karakul lambs are what the fur industry craved in the 1950's. The Mongolian lamb fur coats and hats were tightly curled black fur , which actually was the pelts of newborn or even lambs in utero. When people learned that the fur was not fur, but the skins of the babies, the lamb fur coat trade fell in and countless Karakul sheep were sent to their slaughter. The meat is very lean because fat is stored in the large tail, much like a camel stores water and nutrients in its hump. The coats of the sheep change colour and texture, becoming lighter and coarser as they age. Dora is going to be 4 years old and was pure black at birth. The sun bleached her wool the first year and it appeared a reddish brown, but when sheared the undercoat is black. The wool is excellent for felting and is strong and long, which is also wonderful carpet and rug wool. Dora has not had a baby, likely because the rams do not know how to deal with the extra wide fat tail. She is kept on the farm for her beautiful coat and her lovely disposition. Dora loves her livestock guardian dogs as well and is often seen having conversations with them, though it is telepathic. What a lovely girl she is, my Dora, named after my aunt, whom I loved so dearly too. 

The ewes on the Fat Ewe farm are bred, that is the older ones. The younger ones were also exposed to a Babydoll ram, though some of them were likely too young to cycle. This is the last year for some of these ewes on the farm. Decisions have been made to keep only one or two of some breeds and two other breeds for registered stock. The Babydolls will be the farm breed. They are so sweet natured and easy going, as well as easy care and everyone loves their smiling faces. Even the crosses mostly have the mild temperament of the Babydolls, despite what other breed they were crossed with. 

After lambing the other breeds will put up for sale and advertised until sold. The last year's lambs not for breeding will be sent to the abbatoir for lamb meat for the coming year. The idea is to reduce the number of bales of feed purchased and possibly put coats on the sheep to keep their wool clean for the spinning market. The spinners who do come to purchase fleeces are dedicated master spinners and do not mind a little vegetative matter, however; everyone would prefer clean fleece, me included. 

It is always hard to sell animals for me, especially the ones who were born here on the farm, but I need to have a few manageable groups that do not eat me out of house and home during the cold winters. I know I have mentioned this in the past and have worked towards this end as well, yet I have acquired new animals in the mean time. The idea behind that is to have one or two of some breeds so that I can make samplers of the different wools and sell them in packages. There are two Shetlands coming bred, and a group of Romneys, plus a suri cria. Suri fibre is in long ringlets and is very soft and lustrous. One suri animal is enough for me. The only other animal I would like is a second cow to keep little Kylie Kyloh Highland company. Then the elimination happens, but not until the babies are born and on the road to a good start to life. 

Aren't the sheep beautiful? I sure do think so.