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Re: Sheep

Posted: Wed Nov 30, 2022 7:11 pm
by daytime dave
I just found ground lamb at the store today and picked up two pounds. It's an aquired taste, but once you have a taste for it, it's fantastic.
My hat is off to you for protecting your sheep like you do. Lot's of work involved.

Re: Sheep

Posted: Wed Nov 30, 2022 9:59 pm
by markiver54
I personally prefer lamb over beef. Delicious!
Guess that's why I love authentic Gyros.

Re: Sheep

Posted: Wed Nov 30, 2022 10:36 pm
by BrokenolMarine
My daughter was raising goats for a good while and we ate goat and sheep a lot. Fixed correctly, I really like it. We don't raise any ourselves as we don't have the fencing for it on our place and didn't want to invest in it. There are two farms in our general area that do, and they have several of the livestock guardian dogs in with their sheep/goats to protect them. We have a severe coyote problem here, as well as red/grey foxes. Tina had to stop free ranging the chickens due to the coyotes. She lost seven chickens in one day, eighteen in a two week period.


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She managed to put this female down, who was the one who took seven in one day. She came back for number eight. She put down one more a few days later, but there were as many as fifty in the area in three packs. South, East, and West in the wood lines. You could hear them calling back and forth at night. I sat out several nights but never saw one. I'd hear them, or see them on the cams the next day. Smart suckers.

Re: Sheep

Posted: Thu Dec 01, 2022 1:15 pm
by 220
Thankfully its only foxes that are giving me a hard time. Once lambs are a few weeks old they are fairly safe and rarely taken, they do grow rapidly.
Weighed one the other day and it was 23lbs at 14 days, birth weight would have been 8-10lbs so nearly a lb a day for the first few weeks. Healthy grown sheep are rarely troubled by foxes.
Dingos/feral dogs are a different story and can kill a lot of sheep in a single day. Touch wood I have never had a problem. I did have one on a cam once, given we share a boundary with state forest I gave them a call and they sent out one of their professional trappers. We found a bit of sign where it had walked the forestry tracks and they ran a trap line targeting it for a month without luck. Looks like it was just passing through and took up residence about 15 miles down the valley. Farmers further down the valley started losing sheep about the same time and ended up losing around 500 before the dog was shot 18months later.
I imagine coyotes would be a real issue with not only lambs but grown sheep and goats given they are bigger than a fox and will run in packs.

We eat a fair bit of lamb, given 100lb live weight is just about the perfect size to eat they are very easy to process. No trouble to kill, dress and have a couple of lambs hanging in the cool room in under 1 hour. It will take me about half a day to process them. A 1000lb steer is a lot more work and requires a lot more equipment to process properly. I love beef and would class myself as reasonably competent at butchery but still find processing a steer to much to do myself.

Re: Sheep

Posted: Thu Dec 01, 2022 1:20 pm
by BrokenolMarine
We have a young Jersey bull calf (steer) scheduled for the butcher in April. You have to schedule them ten to twelve months in advance here. The calf has a name: Burger. :evil: His full name is Ham Burger. :twisted:

He has a pasture mate about the same age, his "sister." A black angus heifer named "Sissy.". She may hang around, but Miss T is already getting offers. If the right one comes in, she'll make someone nice breeding stock. We want to keep the two mom's we have for now. .. One is a milker, the other is due to drop her calf any day. :D

Re: Sheep

Posted: Thu Dec 01, 2022 2:58 pm
by 220
BrokenolMarine wrote:
Thu Dec 01, 2022 1:20 pm
We have a young Jersey bull calf (steer) scheduled for the butcher in April. You have to schedule them ten to twelve months in advance here. The calf has a name: Burger. :evil: His full name is Ham Burger. :twisted:

:lol:
Daughter has a lamb she is bottle raising currently, its name in sunny, short for Sunday roast.

Re: Sheep

Posted: Thu Dec 01, 2022 3:14 pm
by BrokenolMarine
That's funny right there. A farmer friend of Miss Tina gave my three girls a lamb to bottle raise after feral dogs killed his mother. They knew up front they had to give him back at six months. They were cool with it. Tina named him "Gyro."

My middle daughter goes off to Air Force bootcamp, then to Air Traffic Control school. One of her barracks pod mates is a young lady of Greek decent. My daughter calls. "Really Mom, Gyro?" ;)

Re: Sheep

Posted: Thu Dec 01, 2022 3:31 pm
by 220
BrokenolMarine wrote:
Thu Dec 01, 2022 3:14 pm
That's funny right there. A farmer friend of Miss Tina gave my three girls a lamb to bottle raise after feral dogs killed his mother. They knew up front they had to give him back at six months. They were cool with it. Tina named him "Gyro."

My middle daughter goes off to Air Force bootcamp, then to Air Traffic Control school. One of her barracks pod mates is a young lady of Greek decent. My daughter calls. "Really Mom, Gyro?" ;)
:lol:
Now you have just given me the inspiration for the next name.

Will call the next one Donna will be short for doner kebab

Re: Sheep

Posted: Thu Dec 01, 2022 4:03 pm
by BrokenolMarine
We've had some good names. Our previous milker was Marilyn Moorow.
I wanted to name the next one liza moonellie.