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Let me at em.
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Mar 18, 2022 05:20
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Glory to Italia! 
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Last lamb from the first wave! Dulcet kindly waited until I had lamb camp people here then had this (you know it) big giant ram lamb. She wasn't pushing very hard and his head was massive so I had to pop him out like a champagne cork then she did the rest. Now we just need to wait until Pennyroyal lambs around the 29th and I'll be done! I've got one more lamb camper coming out tomorrow all the way from Kentucky and then someone is coming out just to hold babies and feed cookies on Sunday. I was going to say then I can rest but I'm getting hay on Monday, drawing blood for someone on Tuesday, and have a goat shearing job on Wednesday so I think I'm going to need another pack of caffeinated pop.
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Mar 18, 2022 22:31
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Someone needs to tell them that this is the year of the tiger, not the year of the ram.
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Mar 19, 2022 11:35
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Aphrodite never really accepted her foster but he's been getting by ok bumming milk from anyone who stands still for too long, but now Betty is sick and not making enough milk for twins so I've got 3 moderately hungry babies to top up a couple times a day. Bucket mom to the rescue! 
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Mar 21, 2022 15:39
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Wild and crazy lambs. The little ones with tails are the ones that nearly froze to death. https://youtu.be/w41iG5En_Xw
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Mar 26, 2022 14:46
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I love this thread. And bucket mom. And the tiny ex popsicle babies.
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Mar 29, 2022 08:08
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Junco aka lovey dove was being a real sweet baby today  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pYmbtBNinM
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Mar 30, 2022 02:49
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Instant Jellyfish posted:Junco aka lovey dove was being a real sweet baby today Judging by the sucking on your finger, looks like they've decided you're their Mum now.
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Mar 30, 2022 06:42
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such wonderful animals
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Mar 30, 2022 10:36
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And we're done! Do I even need to say it? It's a big single ram.  That makes 20 even, 14 rams and 6 ewes. I'm going to try to get pictures on my good camera of everyone tomorrow.
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Mar 31, 2022 23:47
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Look at that massive little man! Thank you for posting all the wonderful lamb pictures every year.
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Mar 31, 2022 23:50
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He cleans up well! He's a big lad.
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Apr 1, 2022 00:36
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Hi thread! Jellyfish, I don't mean to hijack your thread, but we had our first lamb born and I thought the thread might appreciate more cute overload. We have dairy goats, and we usually have a surplus of milk. So 2 years ago we bought a bottle baby meat mix mutt ewe lamb to take care of the surplus and named her Beep Beep. She has a bit of an identity crisis being raised with goats and she is very goat-like. Then I started getting serious about spinning and realized hair sheep is no good for spinning, so last fall we bought Rock the Kazbaa, a Tunis ram. Beep Beep and Kazbaa whispered sweet nothings, but I really didn't think she took as she was only about a year old at the time of breeding and it was hard to tell if she was preggo under the fluff. Until last week. I came home early for an online conference, and as soon as I got out of the car Mr. Celestriad was yelling to me, "Beep Beep is in labor!" Well, crap. There was only 20min to conference start, and my does, especially first fresheners, generally take about 45min to go from start to finish on kidding. We expect first timers to involve a minimum of thrashing and screaming and convincing the dam that yes that is her baby and yes it needs to nurse. I rushed into the barn, where Beep Beep was calmly standing, and licking and baby talking her new ewe, who was already sitting up and thinking about standing. Ooookay, then, so apparently sheep are very different from goats... We have named the little ewe Boop. It's very curious--white meat mix hair sheep plus redhead but white wool Tunis sheep apparently equals paint sheep. She's a chill little thing, again totally unlike the nearly psychotic energy of kid goats, even though she definitely enjoys playing and bouncing too. At a week old, she is already confidently stealing alfalfa hay and beet pulp alongside the big does and being an independent little boss.   
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Apr 22, 2022 03:56
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Yes YES MORE BABY LAMBS! I love Boop, please more pictures.
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Apr 22, 2022 04:11
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Do always post lambs (and baby goats!). Ime ewes are so much less dramatic than goats and mostly just deal with it themselves. I'm glad you had a successful lambing and Boop is extremely cute 
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Apr 22, 2022 15:17
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I would like some pictures of Beep Beep and Boop of course please. Sheep and goats are my favorite ruminants.
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Apr 22, 2022 15:36
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Instant Jellyfish posted:Do always post lambs (and baby goats!). Ime ewes are so much less dramatic than goats and mostly just deal with it themselves. I'm glad you had a successful lambing and Boop is extremely cute Whatever became of your own farm's Beep the Sheep? Are they doing well?
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Apr 22, 2022 15:54
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Neddy Seagoon posted:Whatever became of your own farm's Beep the Sheep? Are they doing well? Beep the sheep went to a farm with a bunch of homeschool kids who adore her to be friends with another bottle baby. It worked out super well for her!
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Apr 22, 2022 15:56
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Okay... just remember, you asked me to talk about goats and sheep lol Here's Beep Beep in all her glory. Yes, she's on a goat milking stand. Yes, I have trained her to do so. Yes, it's a struggle every time until it gets through her sheep brain that's what I want to do, and then she's happy to act like a goat and get delicious beet pulp. She's a hair breed, but she still gets a pretty decent winter wool coat on her, as you can see. I have no idea what breed Beep Beep is--probably mostly Katahdin. She is extremely loud, and makes it very clear when she Wants A Thing, usually delicious beet pulp.  Here's Rock the Kazbaa, our Tunis ram. He's way too cunning for a sheep. He broke out of our fenced pasture once by working at a corner until he got it loose, and now he checks all the corners to see if he can do it again. He's not over-fond of people, and doesn't like to be touched. He is going to really hate me in a couple of weeks when I shear him. He currently lives with our buck in the bachelor pad and although the hormonal boys like to get in shoving matches and have Certain Feelings About Things, he cries whenever I take the buck out for nightly feeding. His "baa" is extremely deep.  I haven't taken any more pictures of Boop yet. I will see if I can grab one over the weekend. She has an odd teat defect that people might be interested in seeing, so she can't be bred. She has 4! teats instead of the usual 2, and one is very clearly non-functional. Both likely are--supernumerary teats usually don't work. But she is damned cute! I'm hoping Boop's wool might be usable for rugs, as I like to experiment with tapestry weaving and her color is awesome. I am going to post a post for each goat and her offspring to try to keep from WALL O TEXT and to properly introduce everyone.
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Apr 23, 2022 02:35
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First up is Celeste. She is a 2-year-old purebred Nubian and this is the second time she has kidded. Her first time, she was only a year old (buck managed to tear off his apron to get to her) and she gave me a gorgeous daughter, Andromeda. She's a beautiful doe out with a great pedigree and this year she produced 9.3lbs of milk on her first milk test, so she should earn milking star credit. We will see how her lactation curve continues throughout the year. She was a month from kidding in this picture. I can't find a picture of the buck I bred her to. I repeated the breeding that begat Andromeda, and she looks just like her dad. He was a horrible fence breaker, but a very sweet boy. Celeste kidded triplets, one doe and two bucks. I sold all of them--the doe's new owner came from 5 hours away to pick her up. First up is an ear action shot of the doeling, and next is the two boys loving on me and somehow not holding a grudge for being neutered. Goats are REALLY good at holding grudges.  
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Apr 23, 2022 02:43
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Next is Erin. She is a 4-year old purebred Nubian, and she is very special to me because she was the first goat born on my farm. She's my favorite (shh, don't tell the others). She's also quiet, which is extremely rare for a Nubian goat... She is one hell of a milker. Last year, she capped out at 11.3lbs in a single day. This was her 3rd time having kids. Twin boys, then quadruplet boys. I bred her to the same buck that I bred Celeste to, for the third and final time. Really really hoping for a doe after 6 boys... As you can see, she was huge. A beached whale. I was expecting quadruplets again. She kidded 2 days early, quads as I expected although one was stillborn--a doe. And then she got very sick. She wouldn't eat or drink and was acting really off. About 30 hours after she kidded, I noticed her squat and grunt like she was in labor. Oh God. I had to reach inside her, and sure enough, I found another doe dead inside her. She frickin' threw QUINTUPLETS and nearly died doing so. We shoved medicine in her round the clock and I knew she would recover when she started bossing Celeste around. She did get mastitis, which is an infection in the udder, so badly that one side didn't really recover. One side of her udder is doing great, and the other side is only operating at about 50% capacity. Even so, on her first milk test she managed 7.8lbs. The three surviving kids had to be hand raised because she was so sick. She had 2 really cute boys--the first one I was calling Hairy Potter because he looks like he has lightning bolt on his face. They were both sold to a great home and first-time goat owners.   And, FINALLY, she threw a GIRL! A tiny, tiny one--average weight for a Nubian kid at birth is 6-7lbs, and she was a whopping 4.2lbs. But oh, she was worth the wait! This is Queen Maeve, and she is every bit as spoiled as you can imagine. I have never seen a goat with her coloring before!   Here she is at about a week old, sulking in the sink for scale: 
Celestriad fucked around with this message at 03:19 on Apr 23, 2022 |
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Apr 23, 2022 02:54
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Here's the last doe who kidded this year, Andromeda. She's Celeste's daughter and she looks just like her sire. She is a yearling, 14 months old and she clearly took her size from her sire as she's already as large as her dam. This was her first time kidding. She's a love bug, but she got a lack of brains from Celeste too... She was the first goat we tried to disbud (burn the horns off of) and we did a terrible job of it, so she has little horn stubs. She's got a great build, wide and deep. I bred her to Flagstaff Moment, who is a special boy. He's the great-great grandson of my favorite goat of all time. His great grandma was one of the top 10 milking Nubian does in the entire US, and his dam milked for 600+ days straight on her very first lactation. He is a sweet, spoiled baby who whines if he doesn't get enough attention. He is a buck, and so somewhat dangerous and dumb when he's fully in rut, but he's always a gentleman to us.  Andromeda kidded twin does two weeks ago. She was convinced she was dying when they crowned, but that's par for the course for a first-time mom. She started off as a great mom, and then suddenly decided she only wanted the doe who looks like her and actively attacked and bit the little roan girl. So she lost baby privileges and it's about broke her poor dumb brain. She's finally getting better after about 2 weeks. She has a really lovely first-timer udder, and is managing a bit over a 5lbs a day. I expect her lactation to improve. The little doelings have Flag written all over them. They're wide and deep and are the most vigorous kids I've ever had. They were playing at an hour old. They'll both be sold once they're tattooed and registered. I currently only have Flag as a buck, so I don't want to keep a daughter from him right off the bat due to inbreeding concerns. Here they are at about 3 hours old. 
Celestriad fucked around with this message at 03:31 on Apr 23, 2022 |
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Apr 23, 2022 03:07
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Goats! 
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Apr 23, 2022 03:10
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Finally, we have a bit of a different delivery. I had this little girl flown in from across the country, from one of the top Nubian breeders in the US. This is Kachina Doll, and she was born early in the year and came to us about 3 weeks before Celeste kidded, so she stayed in the house with us until she had playmates born and consequently thinks she's a people. Her grandsire on one side is one of the top 5% of Nubians in the US, and her granddam on the other side is one of the top 10 milk producers in the US. I love her angry eyebrows. She's spoiled spoiled spoiled, and also the smartest goat I have ever owned. She's a whirlwind. Here she is Kachina dancing on the couch. (The ears provide lift.)   I think there's a goat somewhere in this picture, but I don't know where? 
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Apr 23, 2022 03:13
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If I may, what is the purpose of debudding? I would think if they had dangerous horn patterns you might not want to breed then and not sure why you would do it otherwise.
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Apr 23, 2022 03:31
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Multiple reasons. There are such things as hornless goats, but if you breed a hornless goat to a hornless goat, 25% of the offspring are sterile hermaphrodites, so it is really not a good idea. You have to have a hornless goat to be registered--part of breed/show standards. But there are lots of practical reasons too. Goats are not kind to each other. They attack each other all the time to establish dominance and pecking order, and particularly in dairy goats a horn to the udder could end her milking career. Another reason is that when you milk a goat, you are in a very vulnerable position, half under the goat and with your back to her. They're good and loving girls, but if they throw heads they could horn you in the head. There have been instances of goat owners taking a horn to the gut when a goat takes exception to something, and goats take exceptions to a lot of things like hoof trimming, whistling, checking tails, etc. I personally had a close call when Andromeda's sire injured himself. I was cleaning the wound, and while he is a good boy it HURT and he didn't want me to do it. He smacked me with his solid bone head hard enough that I saw stars. If he had horns, I would have lost an eye. Meat goats are not subject to the kind of close handling that dairy goats are, and they keep their horns as part of the breed/show standards.
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Apr 23, 2022 03:38
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Thanks for the response! Makes a lot of sense.
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Apr 23, 2022 04:15
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I’m going to cross post this thread in that thread and that thread in this one so if anyone has missed both threads they can catch up on the pictures posted in both threads today  New baby chicks cam thread has mugshots up on https://jackshenhouse.blogspot.com/2022/04/chickam-chicks-2022.html https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3999599&pagenumber=8#lastpost
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Apr 23, 2022 10:37
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learnincurve posted:I’m going to cross post this thread in that thread and that thread in this one so if anyone has missed both threads they can catch up on the pictures posted in both threads today Here from the chickam thread. These babies are all so cute
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Apr 23, 2022 12:54
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look at all the lil ruminants!
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Apr 23, 2022 13:02
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Celestriad posted:I haven't taken any more pictures of Boop yet. I will see if I can grab one over the weekend. She has an odd teat defect that people might be interested in seeing, so she can't be bred. She has 4! teats instead of the usual 2, and one is very clearly non-functional. Both likely are--supernumerary teats usually don't work. But she is damned cute! I'm hoping Boop's wool might be usable for rugs, as I like to experiment with tapestry weaving and her color is awesome. You absolutely can breed a sheep with extra nipples, most of mine do and some are even functional. Very convenient when a ewe can nurse triplets at once. Extra nipples are really only a problem for dairy animals and even then I doubt it’s a real crisis. Lots of folks just band them off and pretend they don’t happen. Edit: have an article about them in dairy sheep Instant Jellyfish fucked around with this message at 20:51 on Apr 23, 2022 |
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Apr 23, 2022 20:05
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Just posting to say I love your goats (and sheep) and am always happy to learn, especially when accompanied by pictures. Celestriad posted:Multiple reasons. Do you know how the genetics works in this? Is the gene/are the genes for 'no horns' also somehow tied to sex traits, despite both male and female goats having horns? I have this cute mental image of goats being allies to our nonbinary pals, but would like to get a better understanding.
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Apr 26, 2022 09:45
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Mules have no gametes 
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Apr 26, 2022 10:07
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Chaosfeather posted:Just posting to say I love your goats (and sheep) and am always happy to learn, especially when accompanied by pictures. It's called polled intersex syndrome, there is a bunch of new-ish research out there about it. They are XX individuals and are SRY negative but develop testes due to a deletion in the FOXL2 gene which is in charge of sex determination in goats. It can also cause structural changes in XY goats. For some reason the mutation that causes the polled trait in goats is very close to the mutation that causes PIS so they tend to be inherited together. Polled is a dominant trait and PIS is recessive so you only see problems with homozygous polled goats. There's some interesting articles out there about it if you like dense scientific articles about goat genes!
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Apr 26, 2022 23:45
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Can’t get them to breed if they ain’t horny
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Apr 26, 2022 23:45
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Instant Jellyfish posted:It's called polled intersex syndrome, there is a bunch of new-ish research out there about it. They are XX individuals and are SRY negative but develop testes due to a deletion in the FOXL2 gene which is in charge of sex determination in goats. It can also cause structural changes in XY goats. For some reason the mutation that causes the polled trait in goats is very close to the mutation that causes PIS so they tend to be inherited together. Polled is a dominant trait and PIS is recessive so you only see problems with homozygous polled goats. There's some interesting articles out there about it if you like dense scientific articles about goat genes! Awesome, thank you so much for the advice, I think I will take a look. It's very interesting! I wouldn't have expected polled as being the dominant trait.
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Apr 27, 2022 06:57
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learnincurve posted:I’m going to cross post this thread in that thread and that thread in this one so if anyone has missed both threads they can catch up on the pictures posted in both threads today Thanks. I came from the Chickam thread. Awesome goats! Digging the lambs too!
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Apr 27, 2022 13:30
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How's the current flock doing? I'm curious who stayed and who was sold and all that!
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Jul 28, 2022 14:58
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Things have been hot and lazy around here! I always struggle posting about the sheep in the summer because things are pretty hands off unless something goes wrong. I didn't even post updated pictures here??? I'm really falling down on the job. July is a big sheep selling month so a ton of last year's leftover rams went for meat at Eid. In non-meat sheep sale Biscuit and his brother Alberic got a new home together, Peregrin/Harrier/Buzzard all got castrated and went to a pet wether home which was awesome because they were a good friendly bunch, Jobi/Jacana/Jubilee (a 2 year old ewe) all went to a breeding home, and my last 2 CVM/romeldales Valkyrie and Hijinx went to a friend who still breeds them so they'll be good productive ewes. The cormo ewes are still all for sale because their home fell through due to gas prices, as are a number of adult jacobs because hay is going to be $$$ and I need to get my numbers down. Bialy, my last cormo ram, passed away this week at 9, which is pretty dang old for a big ram. Here's updated but still extremely out of date pictures of the lambs. I should try to get some pictures of at least my keepers soon because I need to take registration pictures of them. 2201 Swift  2202 Dapple *keeping  2203 Peregrin *sold as a wether  2204 Kestrel *potentially has a breeding home lined up depending on how his horns look in September  2205 Iago  2206 Merlin  2207 Magpie  2208 Junco *keeping, she's still gorgeous! and so friendly  2209 Argus  2210 Albatross  2211 Harrier *Sold to a wether home  2212 Phoebe *keeping  2213 Buzzard *Sold to a wether home  2214 Bunting *last ewe lamb still for sale, she was struggling a bit early on but is doing well now  2215 Robin *might keep this one  2216 Jay  2217 Jacana *sold now named Leah  2218 Jobi *sold now named Ruth, the twins get to stay together  2219 Drake  2220 Rook *might be keeping this boy too  Horns weren't great this year and ended up with 14 rams so a lot of these boys will end up in a freezer at some point but luckily the friendliest of the bunch already went to lovely pet homes.
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Jul 28, 2022 16:00
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| # ? Dec 8, 2025 01:36 |
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What prevents Magpie from being a keeper? (I am not challenging your decision; I'm curious.)
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Jul 28, 2022 17:58
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