Here’s an image of a parti-colored lamb from this year’s lambing, which ended a mere ten days ago.
Obviously, I failed to do a semi-daily lambing season series, but I can do a bit of a recap plus a catch-up when we bring the ewes and their lambs in for shearing of the ewes.
Happy to do this provided there’s interest.
I have friends who keep a small stock of Icelandic sheep. Listening to them, lambing season is a challenge – some lambs need to be hand-fed for a while, and all need protection from coyotes & raptors. Maybe the Isle of Man is an easier environment for lambing than the Great South West of the USA?
Check out the Soay (speaking of island breeds).
That was the “low maintenance” breed Randall Burns settled on when he was back in the 90s preparing a bugout redoubt from SV to the mountains outside Portland.
Despite being all but feral, they did evolve away from predators on that little 100ha island. My recollection is that he did eventually lose them to predators.
While developing my semi-feral breed of chicken I had two guard dogs and both of them were cattle dog breeds. One was Blue Lacy which is the Dog of Texas in part because one of its founding breeds was coyote hence had a real keen insight into the enemy. We got her from some folks in Missouri who had sheep but she kept nipping them in their heels the way cattle dogs do cattle. Not so great for sheep so we got her for free.
Quite the marshmallow.
I would be interested.
Reminded me of an image JW sent me years ago… (March 22 2016)
He was teasing me about LEDs, (Light Emiting Diodes), in sheep.
Definitely. The IOM is too small to support predators as large as coyotes, even foxes. Greatest risk is protected avians, specifically gulls, which will attack weak/newborn lambs (especially if the ewe is preoccupied giving birth to the lamb’s twin) in the field, tear out eyes and tongues, then fly away. It’s legal to shoot these vermin but one needs to see them in action to do so. Our fix is to shoot one and hang it on a fence out of view of hikers. Hate to do this, as the birds themselves are magnificent, but it’s sacrificing one to deter many and avoid the heartbreak of a now-blind lamb trying to call for help.
That brings back memories. We raised sheep for close to 30 years, giving the last of them away about 15 years ago, a couple years after the last daughter left home. Funny how they go off to college and leave the animals behind.
We had mostly Columbia, my wife was a hand spinner and they have a good fleece for spinning. The oldest daughter had around 20 Shetlands (“fluffy fuzzy cute little sheep” that are “too cute to eat”) that she also abandoned, plus a few colored Corriedales and some miscellaneous others.
I’m in Iceland right now and all I can think of is how delicious lamb is! At home, it’s always chops, but here, they serve lamb filet, lamb steak—yum!
My daughters grew up eating lamb burgers instead of hamburgers, plus we almost always had a lamb or two in the freezer. With the miniature runt sheep, the Shetlands that looked like furballs with toothpicks stuck in them for legs, we tagged around 1200 lambs. The girls all had eartag backs with their names on them, each started with a few lambs of their own, and their offspring also got the named tags. I’m not sure if that really motivated them, but they all kept track of their lambs among the rest of the flock. Today only the youngest has a few chickens, no more lambs or other animals except their housecats. With retirement and the twice annual snowbird migration we only have a dog, meat comes in packages from the supermarket, and our small fields are rented out to keep them open
As much as I have always enjoyed the taste of lamb, in later life I have had to repress knowledge of its origin. Unlike veal, which doesn’t tempt me nearly as much, I really do need to repress the fact it is the stuff of which cute, young animals are made. This, I think, presents an intellectual dilemma in additional to the emotional one - especially regarding meat which comes out of industrial “processing” of meat animals. My youngest son, now 38, stopped eating meat 20 years ago when our beloved cat died. To him, this death revealed the dilemma. Consistent with his character, once decided, he has stuck with it all these years.
Animals kill one another without remorse or even hesitation. Humans are a part of nature, just as all living things are. If someone wishes to avoid meat, I have no quarrel with the choice. However, it is unnatural; millennia of human history attest to that. We are evolved to eat meat.
Luxury beliefs like vegetarianism or, especially, veganism are only possible in a society in which food is abundant and artificial supplements exist to fill in the nutritional gaps. After the collapse, vegans will be killing each other over a scrap of meat.
