Combining Flocks and Moving Rams

Post date: Sep 05, 2016 11:45:11 PM

This past Sunday morning, we (finally) got around to combining the Santa Cruz Island ewes and lambs with the rest of our mixed flocks of unbred Santa Cruz Island ewes and wether and the Navajo-Churro ewes and wether. We had three reasons for doing this - one was, it was time to incorporate this year's lambs with the rest of the larger flock, to move them all into a larger field with some remaining standing barley for them to graze/browse, and the third reason is that the rams born in 2015 are due to be sheared this weekend, since we didn't shear them in the spring, and we need to pen them up ahead of time in the catch pen which is contiguous with the shearing shed. The two videos below show the ewes and lambs combining with the other sheep. You will be able to see there is a little head-butting with the ewes as they re-acquaint themselves with each other and re-figure out the pecking order. No ewes butted the lambs. Georgie the brown llama moved into this field with them.

The video below this shows the ten yearling lambs - Peabody and his cohort - getting to know their new field. It isn't actually new to them, as this is the field where they were when they were lambs, before weaning. Sahne the white llama moved into this field with them, of course.