The Goodness of the Earth

What is this trio of eaters eating? Something delectable and delicious?

A hearty bowl of grain? Something sweetened with molasses? A savory bowl of fresh-picked dandelions or morning glory? Concentrated alfalfa pellets?

Nope.

 

2016 Lamb Crop Yield Data

I’m finally getting around to analyzing my lamb yield from last spring, driven by my need to plan vaccine purchases for 2017 lambing, which is driven by my need to analyze what went wrong from last season!

 

Necropsy of the Lambs

The Country Living Expo was yesterday. It was fun, as usual. One class I attended was a demonstration of sheep necropsy, taught by Dr. Kerr. Donated was a near-two-year-old ewe from Eastern WA that had been unthrifty her entire life. Her owners had purchased her from out of state as a nice show sheep, but she failed to thrive. They tried all the usual things to treat her, and nothing seemed to help. Knowing that she would not be successful as a production ewe, and couldn’t even be shown in her current condition, they decided to donate her to this cause, and try to learn what was wrong with her. The ewe was quite thin, with a BCS of 1.5. But, she had normal stool and otherwise had no obvious outward symptoms. It was reported she came from a farm with good husbandry, and was being maintained in a barn/feedlot type setting with a lot of other sheep.

 

Summer Doings

We still have good green grass, but not for much longer with this string of no rain we’ve had. It’s unusual for it to get hot and sunny consistently before 4th of July here; but the entire month of June has felt like August! There is a possible thundershower in the forecast for next week, so crossing my fingers the pasture gets some watering. It sounds like our hay will be delivered next week, which will be a welcome backup: I can feed out of that store if I have to rest the pastures for a while. The pasture pictured above is mostly reed canarygrass. Though it is often an unmanageable pain in the butt, it is a great grower during dry times, since it has such deep roots. It will likely tap the water table no matter how long we go without rain, so it can continue to grow back after being grazed. It produces a huge volume of very nutritious grass, as well.

 

USMARC

I was tidying up some photo folders, and founds some shots from last summer, when I toured the US Meat Animal Research Center (MARC) in Nebraska. The tour was arranged as part of our annual Katahdin Hair Sheep International (KHSI) “Expo” conference. Our educational sessions were also held there, in the large auditorium they have. Timely, since last month, the New York Times published a very damning article about MARC. I’ll provide a link to that at the end, in case you haven’t seen it. But first, I’ll present my view and experience with MARC.