I'm absolutely hopeless at keeping my blog up-to-date aren't I? Well here's a well deserved update :) We're still milking the ewes once a day (yes even Christmas day!) we got up to 54 ewes in milk this season and we found milking them very enjoyable (most of the time anyhow.....wet sheep, ick!), we also milk recored so we know our best ewes and who to keep rams and young ewes out of, we also had one c-section performed on farm (very interesting :)) due to a case of lambing sickness, we got 2 live lambs and the ewe milked beautifully! We also had one malpresentation which required assistance, but overall the ewes did very well delivering healthy live lambs-even the yearling ewes, one of which even had triplets! I've chosen my breeding groups for this year and have put Amun (awassi) in with the main milking flock and Vlad (east friesian) in with the young dry ewes, I can't wait to see the lambs! Hopefully I'll see some more colour this year too. I'm hoping to take some pics of the 2009 lambs (all grown up!) soon, including a pic of our very handsome up and coming herd sire Cairo whose dam peaked at 3.5 litres per day! He's promising to be a big boy once mature! We're looking at a June/July lambing and we'll hopefully have around 80 ewes to milk for the 2010 season, not including the ewe lambs which will only be put with the ram if I think they're big enough later in the season. We've really made some progress with our cheese room, we're now the proud owners of a 160L pasteurizer/cheese vat and we're moving ahead with council and sydney catchment authority approval, so we should officially be making cheese (and yoghurt!) this June, we can't wait! In the mean time there are plenty of things to do, like designing and making labels, and keeping our soap orders moving.
Until the next instalment, and I promise it won't be as long!
Vanessa
PS I've been having some serious computer issues (sorted now thank goodness) so some emails may have got lost or misplaced.
2 comments:
yes, shepherding and milking are not conducive to blog keeping. First you need time to sit at the computer. Good to hear the progress though. I've just squeezed my holiday in between dry-up and shearing. I hope you get yours this year! We made a pact to be finished milking by christmas but the maidens took a bit of convincing.
Certainly does! This is our second year milking over christmas-if we were in America our off period would be over christmas, but then I'd be milking on my birthday! Our first lamb was born on the 6th of June 09 so we've been milking for 7 1/2 months now......and the ewe who lambed first is still giving 700mls a day. We're more than likely going to dry off the end of this month but I'm not decided yet, I like them to be back in lamb before I dry them off. I've also being looking at a reasonably priced auto lamb feeder (mixes and dispenses) for feeding the ewe lambs, I already have homes for my wethers.
Nessa
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