Adopt A Sheep At Owens Farm

The traditional December visit usually involve crunching through the snow, breaking ice on water buckets, and marveling at how the wool insulates the sheep so well that the snow piles up on their backs.  Not December of 2011!   Our day was so balmy, we were shedding coats and gloves and wiping mud off our shoes.  The sheep were still out in the field finding ungrazed hay.  A new adoptive family came to meet their sheep for the first time.   His Welcome Kit was under Timmy’s Christmas tree on the big day.    Hot chocolate and Vincent’s home-baked cookies made the day complete. 

One of the great benefits of adopting a sheep is keeping her wool!    The local Adopt-A-Sheep families come to watch their sheep get sheared, and take home the fleece.  The families who live in other states get the fun of receiving a great big box in the mail.

Not just anonymous yarn--this lovely Coopworth yarn is from a family's adopted sheep.

Watching our adopted sheep have a Total Transformation on shearing day.

Some folks process the wool themselves, while others send it off to a mill to be turned into yarn.

The Adopt-A-Sheep families gathered at the farm in May to bring in the flock and administer deworming liquid.   The internal parasites can really gain a foothold in wet weather like this.   We had an amazing day, with adults and children working together to move the flock through the runways and gates that control and sort them.  It’s always cute and chaotic at this time of year, because the lambs are still running with their mothers.

Inserting the offical ear tag and weighing newborn lambs.

The Adopt-A-Sheep families streamed in and out of the lambing barn in March to welcome what turned out to be 84 new lambs to the Owens flock!   What a sight!  The barn itself is filled with pens, each holding a lamb or two and their mother.  Stepping outside, you are met by a mob of older lambs galloping around the paddock for sheer joy.    Baaahhs and bleats of every pitch fill the air,  as ewes and lambs keep track of eachother by sound.  And–as if 84 lambs weren’t enough babies:  our sow had piglets, a cat had kittens, a hen hatched a brood of eggs, and 200 meat chicks arrived in the mail–all in the same week!

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The wool harvest has begun!    The reason we raise Coopworths is for their long, lustrous fiber with lovely crimp–those are the little waves you see in a lock of wool.  For a week, we had a steady stream of visitors as Adopt-A-Sheep families came to watch their sheep being sheared.    Some took their fleeces home for hand-processing, others sent  it to a woolen mill to be spun, and some plan to barter it for blankets and sweaters.  Bartlettyarns in Maine has an interesting business, where you can send them raw fleece plus money in exchange for finished goods or yarn.

There were many highlights of shearing week.  We were honored to have Bruce and his wife travel all the from New York–in a snowstorm–to witness the shearing of their lovely white ewe.  An entire class from Greenwood Friends School came to see their adopted ewe Bonnie be sheared.  These kids get the Bravery Award, because it was a bitterly cold day.   Kristen and Sarah discovered that their twin black ewe lambs have gorgeous fleeces.  They are members of 4H and a spinning guild, and plan to hand-process their wool.

Bonnie was adopted by an entire classroom!

This year’s visitors were also greeted by some unexpected early lambs.  There was a brief period last summer when some ram lambs were in the wrong place at the wrong time, so we have some Katahdin lambs on the ground already.

Helena's gorgeous silvery fleece will be spun into yarn.

Now that everyone is sheared, we wait for lambing to start in earnest, in late February and March.  That’s when the Lambing-Time Slumber Parties are held.   All the Adopted families are invited to spend a Friday-Saturday in the farmhouse seeing lambing time up close and personal.

A dial scale and trap-doors make weighing lambs easy.

The October Adopt-A-Sheep visits were both blessed with lovely fall weather.  There were two important happenings at the farm that week:  breeding season and the weighing of market lambs.  Although not sheep related, there was also a new family of piglets to make s smile.

The kids jumped in and helped weighing lambs.  The handling system is like a giant game of chutes and ladders, with gates and trapdoors and funnels directing the sheep to various places.  After the first few lambs had been weighed,  a spontaneous game arose called “guess the lamb’s weight”.  We pulled out the heaviest, most well-muscled lamb for an upcoming Lamb Tasting Night at Emma’s Restaurant.  Even the lambs we will keep for breeding are weighed, because this gives us valuable information as to their genetic capabilities to grow on grass (rather than being plumped up with grain).  The weights also indicate which individuals and family groups have the ability to maintain their health despite internal parasites.  No matter what control program a shepherd uses, there is always some level of internal parasites (commonly referred to as “worms”) in a flock.

We also walked around to look at the various breeding flocks.  October is a complicated month in terms of daily maintenance.  Because we have two breeds, Katahdin and Coopworth, we have two rams of each to avoid inbreeding fathers to daughters.  That makes four breeding groups.  Then there is a group of young ewe lambs kept separate so they don’t breed, and the market lambs kept separate so they can graze the best forage.  That’s six groups to check daily for water, salt, minerals, and just general troubleshooting.

The piglets were the hit of the day.

By the next visit, the rams will be pulled out into a separate bachelor group, the ewes will all be together, and the market lambs will be gone.  We’ll be heading into the quiet months of winter, before January brings shearing time and the critical six-week countdown till lambing.

Some Adopt-A-Sheep visits are more “hands-on”  than others,   depending on what’s happening with the sheep.   The August 2010 visit was extremely hands-on, giving everyone a real feel for sheep management.    It was time to bring in the entire flock of ewes and lambs in order to administer deworming liquid and check the ewes’  body condition prior to breeding.

Everyone pitched in to bring the flock down from the far pasture and guide them into the handling system.  Gael The Sheepdog ran behind the flock, while the humans walked along the side.  The sheep flocked together beautifully, and ran down the road into the gathering corral.   Troughs of grain in the corral served as motivation and reward.

It didn’t take long for everyone to find a job they liked.  Toby marked lambs with red chalk to indicate they’d been wormed, while his mom worked the sorting gate.  The Dunigan sisters mastered the “guillotine” gate, so named because it closes from above.  The Kelchners and Emma kept the sheep moving in a continuous stream through the raceway.  The Spaventas concentrated on catching mischievous small lambs who slipped under gates when no one was looking.    Gael The Sheepdog kept a watch on the proceedings, thinking in her head how she could do this all herself if the silly people would go away.

The evening ended with a great feeling of satisfaction.  We had wormed 73 lambs and checked the body condition of 50 ewes, all within a 2 hour time span.   Two families had met their adopted sheep for the

first time.  The next visit would be during October, andthe  topic would be breeding season.  Today had been the first step to making sure the sheep are ready to conceive a successful crop of lambs.

“Midnight barn checks save lives”. This advice echoed through my head as I struggled to wake up for a visit to the barn.    Northerly March winds howled outside, making the prospect of going outside even more unpleasant.  But, with 50 pregnant ewes out there,  the trip was necessary.   On went the winter coat on top of the pajamas, and half asleep I headed for the barn.

The minute I stepped inside the corral,  I was glad I made the effort.  There was a ewe flat out on her side with a lamb’s head sticking out.  He was very much alive, but one leg was bent back making it impossible to be delivered.  The ewe had given up.  A push here, a pull there, and out came the lamb, bahhing and wiggling.  I checked inside for a twin, and yes–here she came.   Despite her fatigue, the ewe took over licking and bahhing.  But what was that sound around the corner?  My flashlight revealed another set of wet, newborn twins just struggling to their feet.   No help needed there.   But wait–who was that hiding in a corner?  There was one–two–newborn lambs nursing.  But what was that white lump?  A triplet had been born and forgotten.  I knelt down to feel him.  Cold. Wet.  Still.  But alive!   No sucking reflex on my finger.    Too cold to even register on the thermometer.  But all was not lost:  we have resusitated many cold lambs.  I scooped him up in my arms and hurried back to the warm house.  I would raise his blood sugar with glucose veterinary products, warm him, feed him, and return him to his mother.   He would live to be a healthy lamb, and extra friendly because of his life-saving first experience with people.  “Midnight barn checks save lives”, I told the lamb as I climbed back into bed later that night.   Or was it morning?

Shearing week was blessed with unseasonably warm weather.  The entire flock came down to the barn, where they will stay until after the lambs are born.  The Adopt-A-Sheep families came throughout the week to see their sheep being sheared and to take home the fleece.  There were many surprises on shearing day.  The yearlings looked  like lambs again with their wool off.  The colored Coopworths looked brown, but shearing unveiled a lustrous silver fleece underneath.  Some sheep fought like tigers:  others folded passively into the different shearing positions.    Everyone was amazed at what a difference the blankets made on the cleanliness of the wool.     Selected sheep had worn blankets since summer, and the wool underneath was clean and free from weeds.  There was very little waste wool to skirt off in the end. (Actually, we shouldn’t call it “waste wool”.  The poor quality and messy fleece goes to the piglets for nesting material).    The next great event will be Lambing Time, when everyon gets to see their sheep’s new babies!

The  winter visit was all about taking care of the animals through the winter–  and Mother Nature set the stage with a snowstorm.   At the Friday after-school visit, we were battening down the hatches for snowfall predicted to began that evening.  We crunched thr

ough the fields,  checking the hay and water supply for the sheep, horses, cows, and pigs.   Gael the Border Collie brought the sheep close to us.  Alexa noticed that the sheep were much fluffier than at the last visit.  They have one more month of wool growth before shearing.
The families who couldn’t make it on Friday came on Saturday.  The snow had been falling all morning, but actually stopped for two hours.   The kids got a real taste of what it was like to check, water, and feed the animals in the winter.  It was a nice day to be outside, but by the time we finished seeing all the animals, toes and fingers were a bit chilled.  The new piglets were a special treat to see.  They were a little shy–but curious about visitors.  They would peek out the door of their shelter, dare to run outside for a moment,  then turn tail and run back in when their courage failed.

Everyone is looking forward to shearing day in January, when they finally get to take home their sheep’s fleece.

Seeing the new piglets was a treat.