Farm Animals: Sheep

My birthday was on Saturday. I turned 33! That’s so crazy. I don’t know why 33 sounds so much older than 32. I had quite the birthday! 🙂

Jershon and I woke up and left our house a little before 8 am because we had to drive an hour to Holden, MO to get my birthday present… our first 3 sheep!! About a month ago Jershon told me that he wanted to get sheep for my birthday…which surprised me because I had come to terms that we probably wouldn’t be getting sheep this first year since we didn’t have fencing or a barn done and ready. But he decided to just speed up the process and get some fencing done and build a small shelter out of pallets for now.

He contacted the sheep farm that I had been planning to get sheep from (they have the breed, Finnsheep, that I wanted to get) and asked if there were any ewe lambs available…they didn’t have any left for this year. So that was disappointing.

I wanted Finnsheep for a variety of reasons but one of the main reasons is because they are a friendly and docile breed.  You can read about Finnsheep here.

We decided that maybe we wouldn’t get sheep this year after all. But then the lady messaged him back and asked if we wanted to start with some wethers (castrated males) instead. She said that as wethers they would be gentle and easy to handle and it would be a good first experience for us. So we decided to go that route.

She sent us some photos of the ram lambs that she had and we chose 3 of them with the plan of her wethering them before we picked them up.

I sent a photo of them to my friend Ashley (a good friend from our grad school days in Iowa and she has Finnsheep…that’s where I learned about the breed so I’ve talked to her a lot about our sheep plans) and told her our plan of wethering them. She messaged right back and strongly suggested that we  not wether one of them in particular because he has amazing wool and needs to pass on his genetics. haha.

So after talking with Jershon about it, we decided that it would be best to have at least one ram anyway since we plan to breed our ewes when we get them eventually and it would make sense to have our own ram instead of trying to find a Finnsheep ram to borrow at breeding time.

We decided to keep that one intact and just have the other two wethered so they could be the ram’s companions.

…fast forward to Saturday… Jershon and I (and Crosby) drove to the sheep farm to pick up our lambs. We put the back seats down in van, lined it with a big tarp to catch any poop or pee accidents and then put in Merv’s crate to transport the lambs… hoping that they would all fit in there.

We spent about an hour or so at the farm talking to the couple who have the sheep and having them educate us on how to care for them. When they showed us the stall where our lambs were being kept waiting for us, there was a happy birthday sign on the front of the stall that Donna had put up there for me. That was so sweet of her. :). The lambs quickly ripped it down though. haha.

The lambs were pretty quiet as we drove home which was surprising. Once we got home we had to figure out how to transfer them to the paddock that we had set up for them (where Remi the pig and Merv currently live as well).

We thought about carrying the crate over to the pasture from the driveway (the ground was too wet to drive the van over closer) but that was too heavy. We thought about using a bucket of treats to lure them in but we were afraid that they would run away. We tried doing a leash of sorts but that didn’t work and one almost got away.

Eventually Jershon and his dad (his parents were visiting for a few weeks)  just carried them into the pasture. At first we had the first lamb inside Merv’s fence thing (that goes with his crate) that we had carried out to the pasture so Merv could just observe them at first but Merv barked at the already scared lamb and the lamb ended up knocking over the little fence and jumping out into the pasture. So we just let them roam the pasture anyway and ended up taking Merv out for a while.

 

I stayed in the pasture/paddock with them for quite a while, quietly and slowly following them around and talking to them so they would get more used to me. They were pretty scared at first but calmed down a bit by the end. They definitely still had adjusting to do before they were really comfortable around us and think of us as their shepherds.

In the past few days they have been warming up quite a bit and coming up to us and letting us pet them voluntarily. 

Here are the details about each one of them…

Our Ram’s coloring pattern is called black badgerface. His name is Swen… named after my Swedish 2nd great grandfather.  Learning about Swen (and his wife Thilda and their family) was what inspired this whole dream of getting sheep in the first place so it feels very fitting to name our first sheep after him.  Our first ewe will be named Thilda. He was born April 7th so he’s almost 3 months old.

(you can read more of this story on my Swedish Unit posts)

We have a black colored sheep (which looks more like dark brown right now because the tips of his wool are sun-bleached, but underneath it is black) wether lamb named Dan. He is named after Swen’s son, Dan, my great-grandfather.  He (the lamb) was born April 12th, one month before Crosby.

And the last one is a black piebald (which is mostly white with some black spots) wether lamb named Karl.  He is named after my Swedish great-great-grandfather who is Dan’s father-in-law.  He was born April 27th so he’s the youngest of the three.

 

 

So all 3 lambs are named after my Swedish ancestors.

I am excited to get to experience having sheep on our farm. I know it’s going to be a steep learning curve with certain aspects of it but we’ll just figure it out along the way.

 

I spend a lot of time looking out this window as I nurse Crosby and put him to sleep.  It’s a dream come true to look out my window and see my own sheep grazing in my pasture.  I’ve been dreaming about this for about 2 1/2 years now (we even did a Sheep Unit a couple years ago) and now its really true! 🙂