NH Homesteader's journal

[NH Homesteader]

Breeding. I want to start with 2 ewes and a ram and see how it goes, eat the offspring every year. I have to find out how quickly some of the breeds get to butcher weight, that's another consideration. I don't want to winter meat lambs if possible. That would give us enough meat for us, if we find a market we would get more ewes. Also if we can shear the lambs before slaughter I would think that would give us enough fiber as well...

 

[frustratedearthmother]

Sounds like a good plan to me! Betcha wouldn't have any trouble moving the lambs if you got too many to eat.

 

[NH Homesteader]

Nope around here there's a good market!

 

[NH Homesteader]

I think we are going to try to butcher birds this weekend, and do the pig next week at some point. We have 8 birds to do, and a friend has some meat birds that need to be done like, yesterday. So since he's eager to do his, we'll team up and get them all done. Then next month when we do our big batch of meat birds, he'll have a few turkeys to do and we'll get them all done then too.

 

[tortoise]

Shearing fall lambs for fiber would be a waste - it would be too short to work with. BUT, you can send those hides out to be tanned wool-on. Those are lovely.

My sheep are a meat/wool cross that was developed my someone much more talented and experienced than me. We haven't butchered a lamb in fall yet because they're so dang small. We're going to this year to see what the yield is. Mutton tastes lovely. We usually butcher about a year and a half old.

The bigger farms around here lamb in May/June. DH wants to lamb EARLY, like early March. It's such a pain to be dealing with lambing in the cold, heat lamps and such. Plus you have to shear twice basically - crutch out the ewes before lambing and then shear after. It's not ideal. We should be shearing them near the end of gestation to get them to eat more and then we don't have to shear twice. i don't see a point in lambing early since they're not really big enough to butcher in fall.

i'm going to try to talk DH into breeding later this time!

 

[NH Homesteader]

DH wants to learn how to tan so that would work too!

 

[NH Homesteader]

Now DH is back to wanting to butcher the pig this weekend. Well, get it hanging anyway. And I was thrilled the chickens were going, lol. I told him we could just butcher all weekend... He didn't sound thrilled with that idea but maybe I'll convince him!

Got down to 30 last night. Finally feels like fall, brr!

 

[frustratedearthmother]

Holy Cow! I'm not ready for 30 - 30 sounds like winter around here! Fall is 50, lol!

 

[NH Homesteader]

There was ice on the water buckets! The hose was part frozen. Not ready for that, I can't lug buckets.

Oh and the hose decided it needed to blow out in one spot so it sprayed all over me and I got soaked. It was soooo cold! I need a new hose.

 

[NH Homesteader]

Oh and unlisting my Nigerian. I can sell her in milk for $350+ and each kid unregistered for $100 in the spring, but DH thinks I should consider keeping her and says I can have 5 does and he won't mind. So who's going to argue with that? More money, or more milk... Either way!