Arrival of fall lambs

We normally aim for lambing to begin in February, but this year lambing has started extra early! We ran the entire flock together through the end of July, thinking ewes wouldn’t begin their heat cycling until later in August, but are realizing Churros must cycle year round. Four lambs born so far, two first-time ewes and two who lambed earlier this year.  Likely more are on the way given how round a couple more ewes are right now. It’s fortunate the weather has been so mild – these 3 guys and 1 gal are off to a great start. Happy early little Christmas presents!

2012 fall ewe lamb

Zhin Chooh & 2012 fall ram lamb

More spring photos of the Churros

2012 lambs on the ground

A healthy new lamb

Another ewe lamb! This one is white/natural color with an auburn spot on the back of her neck and tips of her ears. She is the first lamb out of the first lamb born on our farm last year.

our first white lamb!

purebred Churro ewe lamb

Little lambies

We thought we could get a cute photo of Alice in an empty water tank surrounded by our early crop of lambs, but their crying for their mamas caused Alice to cry, and so we just have shots of panicked lambs and a crying girl. Oh well.

Our nine lambs continue to do great, however! Another ewe is due to drop any day now, three could be lambing anytime this spring, and six to eight more are due in June.

Columbus photobombing in the background

Our black and white flock

Oops! One jumped out!

Lots of ewe lambs, and one baby boy

We’ve had four sets of twins and one single so far, and just one ram in the bunch! Four are black, four solid white and one badger face/black & brown. So so terribly cute! They were loving the warm weekend weather, lots of sunbathing snoozing.

Interestingly, our black Navajo Churro ram, Payton, has thrown four of six black lambs, with one white and one badger (black & brown). We recently purchased a white ram, Wo-Chi, so maybe we’ll end up with a flock of furry Holstein-looking sheep!

E. Friesian/Churro crosses - twin ewes four & five

Purebred Churros - ewe lambs six & seven!

Purebred Churros - ewe #8 and ram #1!

First lambs of 2011

What a fuzzy little teddy bear face!

One of our foundation Navajo Churro ewes, Paz, and our East Friesian/Border Leicester cross, April lambed this week — April with twins and Paz with a singlette, and all three white ewes! These were sired by our Cotswold ram, Winston, who we sold three weeks ago along with our two purebred Cotswold ewes. The singlette carries his stamp in particular, while the other two are bit more mutt looking. The rest of our ewes should be having purebred Navajo Churro lambs, sired by our black fused horn ram, Payton.

E. Friesian/Border Leicester/Cotswold mutts

Christopher Columbus’ Day

Baa baa black sheep….We have a new addition, Christopher Columbus! Born on Columbus Day out of our favorite, friendliest Churro, Hernanda. She didn’t get bred last fall like her flock-mates, but fortunately cycled in April and was bred by our Cotswold ram. The biggest surprise was the lamb being black! The sire, Winston, has natural cream-colored wool, and probably doesn’t have a single color gene in him, which means Hernanda here, herself brown, will

Christopher Columbus

throw lambs of many different colors.

And another!

This time it’s April, Honey’s ewe lamb from last year, who just had a single ram lamb! We were told she was due the end of April from the breeder we bought her from in March…a month and a week later Christmas Dinner was born…(kidding, sort of)

This makes 4 lambs this year – 2 rams, 2 ewes, all singles. None of these are keepers — all designated for slaughter –which is what we expected, but they will give us a great sampling of the various breeds we will hopefully be offering for sale next year. Churro and Friesian/Border Leicester crosses.

Also, a few weeks back now, our Cotswold ram, who’s been out with the whole flock for the past 6 weeks (and will probably stay there throughout the summer), was getting busy with one of our Churro ewes who ended up not being pregnant this year. That should be a really interesting cross — the courser, no-crimp wool and lean meat of the Churro, with the more marbled meat and fine wool ringlets of the Cotswold. It also means our entire flock right now is a-seasonal, maybe with the two Cotswold ewes being the exception — meaning we could have lambs year round if we wanted to stagger it that way.

Honey’s May Surprise!

And we thought for sure she wasn’t bred…