Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Reflections


Dolce
Darla Gay
& Dan
Last night the ewes and their lambs were moved to the only pasture no one has been on yet this season. So we are now at the end of the rotation and will have to start covering old ground. The initial summer growth in the pastures was very good and I am pleased it took this long to complete a full rotation. The "larger-than-ever" flock numbers had me a bit
worried.
Now the lack of recent rains has me concerned. The grounds the sheep have left behind in the last two weeks are absolutely brown. I know with a nice bit of rain everything will bounce back. So I am praying for that rain. I think everyone in the neighborhood is praying...
The lambs are all approaching the 3 month mark in the next few weeks. Time got away from
me and I just realized they will need their first CD&T shots anytime now. Have to get that on the to-do list.
The most recent NASSA news had a wonderful article about micron tests. The author beautifully explained how to understand the data from micron testing; for which I am very grateful. I learned that testing as far back on the sheep as I did only helps the shepherd determine if the uniformity of fleece quality from front to back is improving in the flock. But testing from the hip area (as I did) cannot help determine the "average" of an individual sheep's wool quality. So the micron test results I posted recently are helpful to me in my long-term goal of fleece uniformity. But they don't really tell others much about my flock's fleece. I will have to retest from the last rib area this fall. All my fleeces sold right away this spring (yay!!!) so I can't retest from the shearings. Live and learn. Sometimes the hard way. And yet I'm glad to have this baseline of results for hip fleece so I can see if things are improving in the years to come. All is good.

2 comments:

Karen said...

It was fun to see these three, Sabrina. And I know what you mean about the dry weather-we've not had significant rain for 6 weeks. Back to feeding hay again. I need to find that NASSA News article, thanks for the reminder.

Anonymous said...

It was fun to see these three/...........
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Julie
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