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.

Starting to sell spring lambs

The lambs are growing fast this year, mostly due to the heavy spring rains, current warm weather and so lots of grass. We have sold a few already as breeding stock, and hope to put a few ewes and lambs in an upcoming purebred auction this weekend. Contact me if you want details.

Also, we need some really good Katahdin sheep photos to blow up to a large size 11 x 14 or so for our display at various farm fairs this summer. I hate to use ours, as we do not want to be accused of unfairly promoting our own sheep, when we are representing the breed and  Katahdin sheep breeders in Ontario.
This photo was taken a couple of weeks ago and you can see all the mud in the pasture.

Top price at Hoards

We got top price for our heavy ram lambs at Hoard's on March 29th. Live weight price was $1.85 a lb and they averaged 98 lbs.

Sold some young rams

Yesterday we took 4 young rams to Hoards Station livestock market. They were last years ram lambs that we had kept for potential breeding stock, but they weren't really good enough to keep any longer, so off they went to the auction. We got about $175 each for 4 of them. Not bad  as even if they had been sold as breeding stock, they would not have been more than $250 each