Are Sheep Smart?

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20109-zoologger-the-sharpest-mind-in-the-farmyard.html (via Reddit.com)

After raising sheep for over twenty years I can tell you that sheep will figure out just about anything involving feed. But they will also eat until they die (Enterotoxemia). Also, rams are good buddies until it comes time to compete for the ladies.

Forget crop circles - now we've got a mysterious SHEEP circle | the Daily Mail

Forget crop circles - now we've got a mysterious SHEEP circle | the Daily Mail

Bye-bye, black sheep? It’s in the genes - Science- msnbc.com

Bye-bye, black sheep? It’s in the genes - Science- msnbc.com

Trans-Tasman 'lamb' war breaks out | NEWS.com.au Business

Trans-Tasman 'lamb' war breaks out | NEWS.com.au Business

New Zealand and Australia really take their sheep raisin' seriously!

Newsvine - More Farmers Raising Sheep Without Wool

Newsvine - More Farmers Raising Sheep Without Wool

NEW ALBANY — Low wool prices and high shearing costs have led many sheep farmers to add a special breed of woolless sheep to their flocks, raising fears that sheep shearing may become a lost art.

Albany farmer Jan Kostival bought a flock of woolless sheep last month with the intention of raising them to sell their meat. He was drawn to the Katahdin, a breed that grows hair instead of wool, when he learned they were hardy, self-sufficient and, best of all, didn't require costly shearing every year.

"The Katahdin need little hay and little crop land," Kostival said. "They can take care of themselves."

Sheep farming nationwide is on a slight rise after declining significantly over the past decade, according to the American Sheep Industry Association. The sheep herd fell from about 8 million in 1997 to 6.1 million in 2004, then edged up to 6.2 million in 2007. Ohio ranks fourth in the nation for the number of sheep and lamb operations raising the animals primarily for meat and milk. In 2006, there were 3,300 sheep farms in the state, the association said.

And increasingly, Ohio sheep are going woolless.

Katahdin sheep, a popular breed of hair-shedding sheep, were first bred by geneticists more than 30 years ago in north-central Maine, according to the Katahdin Hair Sheep International Web site. There are 100 million hair sheep around the world, or about 10 percent of the world's sheep population.

The decline in woolly sheep has hurt an industry already facing competition from synthetic fibers and the entry of China and other countries into the wool market. Many fear sheep shearing, once a lucrative business in Ohio, is becoming something of an anachronism.

Howard Strode, 83, of Chesterhill, was a sheep shearer for 69 years as part of a family tradition that began with his great-grandfather. As recently as 25 years ago, Strode said, he made a living off shearing, often banking about $100 per day. Strode passed along the practice to his son and grandson, but said shearing has become only part-time work at best.

There are just a few farms in the area that continue to raise woolly sheep, Strode said.

"The breeds have changed so much," he said. "In the last few years they went for more meat and muscle and less emphasis on wool. It's very discouraging."

Here's a picture of the Katahdin (pronounced /kəˈtɑdn/ [kuh-tah-dn]).

October Gone

I can't believe that October is already gone. The time flies by so fast. Thanksgiving is just around the corner and Christmas won't be far behind. I'm not looking forward to shopping. It wouldn't be so bad if I knew what to get everyone...but I really don't have any clue.

The first week of phase II of the diet didn't show much change. I lost a bit of body fat, so at least I didn't go backwards. I'm finding it really hard to eat. I just haven't been hungry lately.

We're down to 20 ewes with a few more people to come look at them. Although I'm sad to see them go, I'll be glad when it's done.

Lambing Season is Over

One other ewe had her lambs, twin boys, Thursday. Only one of them made it. We are past the point where they can have them, so I guess the other two didn't breed.

The second softball practice is today. Hopefully it will be warmer than last week. And hopefully be more fun/productive.

Easter

It looks like we're going to get our cold weather for Easter. I can only remember one Easter in my lifetime that was warm and sunny...and I was sick that year. My brother, Mom, Dad, Grandma and Grandpa hunted eggs in the back yard. I could see them from the couch, where I was stuck. The cold weather is also going to make the first practice of summer softball less pleasant. I'm kind of nervous, but Mom has talked to some of the girls and they seem excited, so that helps. I'll be glad when we get past the shirt ordering business. There's definitely a benefit to being assistant coach if only to avoid that mess.

The three ewes still haven't had their lambs. I'd be worrying, but their eating and grazing habits haven't changed, so I think the lambs are still alive. They are just waiting to get here. Probably sometime between Friday night and Sunday morning, when it's raining/snowing and around freezing.

Baseball!

Baseball season is here. The first full day of MLB. My friend Reggie Willits made the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim team. He's a backup outfielder. GO REGGIE!! I have two fantasy baseball teams this year. One on Yahoo and one on MLB.com. So far I'm seriously under-impressed with MLB.com's.

There are still three more ewes that have to have their lambs within the next few days...or we have a problem. We have 21 live lambs. They all seem to be doing good. The bottle baby is starting to put on a little weight. She's cute as a button (I've always wondered why people say that. Buttons aren't all that cute.).

It's time for Little League summer softball. I'm head coach this year. My brother's going to assistant coach. My mom is taking care of all the paper and leg work. I'll be glad when we get that part over with and can concentrate on softball. The focus is going to be on learning the fundamentals. I figure, if we get those down, winning will come on it's own.

Saturday's Are Nice

It's not a workday and it's not Sunday (where you have to worry about Monday, which is a workday). I spent the morning getting feed, cleaning out self-feeders and fixing fence. Every year I say I'm going to clean out the self-feeders (feeders where the lambs can go and eat their fill whenever they want) after we start individually feeding them and not wait until spring when we have a new lamb crop. And every year I fail to do it, so it's always wet and moldy. Luckily we've figured out that a shop-vac will suck that stuff right outta there. It was really dusty this year. I had it from head to toe. Warning: The black widows and wasps are already out.

We've decided to bottle feed one of the lambs. The mom only has one working food source and the bigger girl seems to be cleaning it out before the little girl can get to it. She ate 1/4 of a bottle this morning and 1/2 tonight. She's really too cute. She's teeny-tiny and has a bleat that breaks your heart. It sounds a lot like a newborn baby when it's really wailing.

I upgraded my Ubuntu to Feisty Fawn. It's a beta version, but for what I've used it for so far today, it's worked great. The best thing is I didn't have to install any printer drivers or anything to get my printer to working. Yea!!

Happy Birthday Sydney!

It's Been a While

I know it's been a while since I posted, but that shows how truly boring I am.

We've had a few more lambs and lost a few. We have four ewes left to lamb, but I think that one of those isn't bred.

I've been playing with Ubuntu; installing, reinstalling, tweaking. I did get MLB.tv/audio working...but then I broke something else and did a clean reinstall.

I always think of things I want to rant about/post on here when I'm away from a computer, and then when I get back to one I've either forgotten what I was going to post or it just seems silly when I think about it.

I want to say a belated happy birthday to my brother. I love ya little bro.

Update: Dad just called and we have two more lambs, a boy and a girl. So now we are down to three (or two if I'm correct).

Huge

Another ram lamb was born last night....and he's HUGE! He is almost as big as the February lambs already. And he got up really quick. I was surprised. Usually when they are big, it takes them a while to get going. Not him. Like all sheep, he was thinking with his stomach as soon as he was born, but it does run in his family. His mom was looking for food in the middle of labor. I'd say that within thirty minutes of being born, he had stood up and found the food source. They always want to shake as soon as they stand up and then always end up falling in a heap. But I learned last night that they really do get rid of some of the wet when they shake, since I was standing right next to him when he did it.

All of the other lambs look good. I will probably let the two others that are in the nursery out today. The babies are running around the pen. That's usually a sure sign they are strong enough to go out.

We may not be up in quantity, but I think our quality is good. As Dad says, "We've taken worse ones that that to the show".

Time Change

The lamb crop is slowly growing. We've lost a few and gained a few. The ones that have made it are looking really good, and are mostly girls. We have eight ewes left to lamb.

I love the long evenings that come with daylight savings as much as the next guy (or girl), but it isn't worth all of the problems it gives me at work. I would be happy if they would leave it one way or the other.

I love seeing the green of the grass and trees budding out this time of the year. I hope we don't get another freeze that, well, freezes them.

Lambs and Ubuntu

This weekend has been productive. We've had four lambs yesterday and one this morning. The totals are twelve live lambs (eight females and four males), and we've lost five. There are eleven ewes left to have lambs. We don't have as many as we did last year at this time, but the ones we have sure look good.

Also this weekend, I successfully installed Ubuntu Edgy Eft (6.10) onto my usb external hard drive. I thought that installing and using Linux would be fun and I might learn something in the process. I was right. Using this guide and steps 1-3 of this guide and a little googling, I was able to get it going. From this, I learned that my SATA controller shows up as /dev/sda vs. /dev/hda that the guides have, and so my external hard drive shows up as /dev/sdb. I point this out in the hopes that it might help someone else that is as newbie-ish as I am. Also in the BIOS (which you want to be careful messing around in), on my Dell Dimension 8300, to set the boot order I had to go to the boot sequence menu, put CD-ROM first and Hard Drive second. Then go into Hard Drive boot sequence (can't remember right now exactly what it was called) and move USB up to the top. Also, the default setting in the GRUB bootloader menu file has to be changed. To do this, use Step 11 in this guide. If you reboot before editing this file, you might get an error and it asks you if you want to edit the file (or something like that). Choose to edit the file and find the place that says "(hd0,x)" where x equals anything other than 0. Change the x to 0 and hit enter. I believe it tries to start up again and it should go into the login process. Then after you're logged in, you can change the menu file.

I was able to change my monitor settings, but I haven't figured out how to get my Canon Pixma ip4200 to work. It'll work using Turboprint, but the free version puts the logo on it and I don't think I want to pay for it, so I'd like to get the driver working. I got tired of messing with it and decided to play with other stuff and come back to it.

So now I have the best of both worlds. If I want to boot up in Windows, I just turn off my external hard drive, otherwise I leave it on and I'm in Ubuntu.

I also got to see my family this weekend. My nieces' birthday party was yesterday. I think everyone had a good time. Levi and I played basketball for an hour and I'm feeling it today. Then they came down to Dad's today and had lunch. That Colin Dade is such a cutie!

It was just a pretty darn good weekend.

Triplets

I don't know what is with all the triplets being born the past few years. Another set was born last night. Two boys and a girl. They are all legs.

Spring training baseball games started today, so you know what will most likely be on my tv, pc, or XM radio for the next eight months.

A Good Birthday

I had a really nice birthday. There weren't any problems at work, my dog got a haircut, I got a perm, and Jerry took me out to eat. We didn't have any lambs born in the cold. The three lambs are moving out of the nursery in the morning. I'm calling the little boy "Mr. Freeze". His ear is still floppy. The ewe that's been out by herself all this time will be very happy to have company.

Thanks to everyone for your birthday wishes. Another year in the books.

There's Nothing Like A Hot Shower

I got to take a hot shower tonight. It was wonderful! Made even more so by the fact that I was frozen from mistakenly waiting on a ewe to have another lamb when she was only having the one. But that one was up and eating when I left, so it was worth the wait. We lost two this morning. Why the sheep wait until the coldest days of the year to have them, I'll never know. But we're still above 50%. The poor lamb tonight is the only boy so far, and poor boy he was. She had him out in the pasture and when I got to him, his ear was stiff. I rushed him into the nursery and put four heat lamps on him and dried him with a towel, then laid that towel over him. Eventually he got warm enough to attempt standing. His ear became flexible again, so I don't think it was damaged. The two lambs I was worried about yesterday are running and hopping in their pen. I think they are going to be okay. Dad's named one of them "Spock" because one of her ears is lazy. Now I just have to teach her to do the Vulcan sign with her hooves...

I got some early birthday cards today. My sis sent me one with a sticker I'm gonna wear tomorrow. Right now I'm feeling all 29 years.

What A Day

You know that old saying "mama said there'd be days like this"? Well, I don't ever remember my mama saying that, but if she did today would be one of those days. It started first thing this morning. I got out of bed and went to brush my teeth. Turned on the hot water and...nothing. It froze up last night. But my morning routine wasn't all that interrupted without hot water. I sit down at my computer to make sure things are going okay at work and I get a message that something's messed up. Great, well, I'll have to get to it a little later because I'm supposed to go check on the lambs this morning. I put my Michelin man suit on and drive to Dad's.

I knew it was a bad sign when I walk into the nursery and the lambs are shivering. They hadn't eaten all night. Some mom's have a thicker teat plug (it is exactly what it sounds like) than others. That it is a good thing because it prevents mastitis, which is what the first ewe had on one side. Back to the story at hand; Apparently the enzymes in the lambs mouth and/or the sucking strength wasn't enough to break it loose. I got it un-plugged and tried to get the lambs to eat. It always seems like if a lamb goes more than a few hours without that first shot of milk, it is almost impossible to get them to going after that. So Dad and I milk a bit out and feed the lambs with a bottle. Dad then decided that we might try mixing some vitamin D milk and honey to get something in them and might make them hungry to try eating on their own again. We decide to leave them for a while.

So it's back to home and the problem at work. I decided that it would take too long to try and fix it from home so I drive into work. Let's just say I made good time. Once I get to looking, it's not a problem really, just a matter of timing.

So it's back to home and check on the lambs once more. It didn't look like they had made any progress, so I tried to get them eating again. I was successful with one, but the other one didn't act very interested and it had a wet mouth. I think maybe it had already gotten a little bit on it's own. So my day is starting to look up.

Jerry and I make a quick trip to OKC, and then it's time to feed. While I was feeding I saw both lambs eat at least once. I don't think any more will be born tonight.

So that was my day. It started out pretty bad, but gradually got better. The lambs aren't out of the woods yet, but I'm beginning to see some daylight. And still no hot water. Cleaning up tonight might be a little interesting, but on the bright side...we do have cold water. I'm trying to look at the glass as half-full...of cold water. ;)

By the way, Happy Valentine's Day! I got beautiful roses from my Honey. I hope it was a good day for everybody.

More Lambs

Two more baby girls were born tonight; all legs and ears (a very good sign). We may have a rush of them this week. It'll be the first time in a few years to have one on my birthday if we get one Friday. Dad was telling me tonight that by this time last year, we had already had about 23 born. Oh well, better late than never. And they are coming out girls. Ewes is good!

Ashy in Action

Well, here she is. She's still the only lamb and she's getting a little lonely. Actually her mom is getting lonely. There's another
picture of her in my public gallery on Picasa.

I was going to post that Sunday, February 18th would be the series finale for "Reba", but when I went to find the link for it (and then decided I wouldn't give The CW the benefit of a link), they've changed "Series Finale" to "Season Finale". I can only hope that this means another station has picked it up. Tune in for updates...