🐑🐑 Breeding Decisions 2025 🐑🐑

Our 2024 lamb crop was amazing!!!

Every ewe had a ewe lamb and one had twin ewe lambs!

Our herd exploded from 10 ewes to 21 ewes!!!

Some thoughtful culling was in order!

If a ewe had ever needed lambing assistance-culled!

If she did not produce twins after her first year-culled

If she had ever rejected one of her lambs-culled

If her lambs needed feeding assistance because she was older and her teats were now too low-culled

If she wanted to eat grass in the wrong pasture-culled

If she consistently threw lambs with straight fiber-culled

If the suspensory ligament on her udder was weakening-culled 

I culled rams too!!!

If his name appeared more than twice on a 5 generation pedigree-culled

If he was hard to lead on a leash-culled

If almost every ewe in the herd was his sister-culled

I ended up with 2 rams and 12 ewes, which some would say is the perfect sized herd.

However, lambing is underway. We already have 8 ewe lambs and 6 ram lambs, and 2 ewes haven't lambed yet! At this point, I am wondering if I need to open my closed herd and purchase an unrelated ram. Or learn to do artificial insemination. 

I have reached many of my herd goals: All white wooly fiber, all teats pointing downward, all animals easy to work with (no wild flighty beasts), most tails are wool free, most ears have thicker hair to keep them safe from the desert sun, and no lambing issues.

I have watched many a livestock video telling me to test for genetic conditions and then stay the course and line breed even with a small number of animals. Others say to keep breeding my top animals (and sell or eat the others) but increase the number of retained rams in the herd to maintain some genetic diversity. 

I think I might do both. The only genetic disorder I can find testing for is Spider Lamb Syndrome, a condition associated with black faced meat breeds. I have never actually seen this disorder in real life. But since my herd was a mix of breeds from the beginning, I figure it can't hurt. 

The genetic problem that plagues my herd is a sparse hair/sunburnt ear problem. Ironically my last purchased ram increased this problem exponentially. If a ewe he was bred to had thin hair on her ears, her lambs had close to none. If she had plenty of hair on their ears, her lambs had sparse hair. This problem doesn't seem serious enough to cull a ewe, but it is serious enough to not keep a ram. 

If I lived at a lower elevation and in a climate where the sky was overcast most of the time, this would not be an issue. In the desert mountains of Utah, sunburnt ears on lambs is unsightly and painful. 

I need to try and eliminate it!  

If I were to purchase a new ram, I would not know what his wool or his ears looked like when he was a lamb. I most likely would not get to see his mother's udder, and his disposition might be terrible. All of the same, except for the udder conformation, could be said for artificial insemination. A costly choice that might result in my herd going backwards instead of forward. 

Lambs 2025

Why Sheep Milk?

But buck goats smell bad!!! 

And goats love to get out of their pens and jump on your car!!! 

So we tried A2A2 milk cows!

Yay! No more eczema! 

And no more dents in the car!

But cows are big and bulls are scary!

And it takes 2 years for a calf to produce milk.

While waiting for our 2nd cow to produce a calf and give us milk,

I discovered Milk Sheep!

And now look at the treats my family can enjoy!!!

 Sheep milk is rich and creamy. Rams smell fine and are small and manageable. And no more eczema!!!