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Transmogrifier posted:I followed your thread last year, and it was one of the best things to read. I'll have it on again as soon as one of the ladies get their acts together and have some more babies! They are all following the doe code a little too closely. Have some more baby pictures while we wait on the other slackers. Someone had a lot to say today. I need to name him soon or he's going to end up with a fancy registration certificate with the name "Chunkers" on it.  Jazz's girl, now Bramble, showing off her goth panda side. She looks like a teen on deviantart drew her as an "original character".  The boy, now Bracken, has the extra spots too and a bitchin soul patch.  He tried to impress Primrose.  But was shot down.  Juniper is so funny looking but has such gorgeous babies. 
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Apr 18, 2013 21:25
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Name the lovely little brown boy Briar, it goes with Bracken and Bramble  Love this thread, love your animals.
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Apr 18, 2013 21:47
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Between this thread and chickam, I want a farm. I want a farm so bad.
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Apr 19, 2013 20:07
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Tendai posted:Between this thread and chickam, I want a farm. I want a farm so bad. I was browsing real estate listings in my area for shits and giggles, and came across a gorgeous 7-acre farm with a beautiful 18th-century farmhouse, just across the West Virginia state line. My stepsister and her husband are looking for a house, and it would only be a 20 minute drive to the town where they work. I definitely sent her the link. And if they buy it, I will lobby her to let me keep beasties there that I can't keep at my house in the suburbs...
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Apr 19, 2013 20:11
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Came home from running errands and went to check on the creatures. I thought that the chunky dunk was looking kind of tiny when I realized it was actually a brand new goat kid. With all the dog issues I've been dealing with I totally forgot it was day 150 for Tootsie. Despite being super giant Tootsie just had this one teeny 6.5 lb girl.  She's nursing and tottering around and making tiny goat noises like a pro.  She's the color of dark cinnamon sugar  Good job Tootsie! 
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Apr 19, 2013 21:07
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They are so adorable! Can you record their cute little voices and post it for us?
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Apr 19, 2013 21:22
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So happy to have found this thread! Sheep have been my favourite animal since I was a little kid. I even asked Santa every year for a pet lamb (never got a real one though, just stuffed toys). You are living my childhood dream of every day lamb cuddling!
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Apr 20, 2013 23:17
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Well she's very lovely. Well done Tootsie.
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Apr 20, 2013 23:26
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The chunk is nearly double his birthweight now. Way to succeed as a mammal little dude. He's growing a rad goatbeard too.  Like a normal goat, he loves climbing and bouncing.  Soon enough I'll be halter training him so he's not a total dick when he weighs 200 lbs.  The little girl is an adventurer and just takes off in random directions at top speed.  She has already gotten herself stuck in a wall somehow.  She snuck out of her pen and went to bother Al and Windsor before she was even 24 hours old.  I am seeing nonstop trouble in her future.  Its a good thing she's cute. 
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Apr 21, 2013 18:16
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Would little goat dude really be too much trouble to keep when he's grown up? His colouring is gorgeous. I want livestock though have no room for them :-( a neighbour has geese though which I hear everyday It makes me laugh having them in such a built up residential area
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Apr 21, 2013 18:37
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Zenithbliss posted:Would little goat dude really be too much trouble to keep when he's grown up? His colouring is gorgeous. Imagine the smell of badly produced stinky goat cheese. Now cover your entire farm in that smell, including yourself so that people maintain at least a 20' radius from you and you leave a lingering odor in every room you enter for a couple of hours. SO STINKY. The goatlings are super cute. I'm so happy for you that they're not as retarded as last year's. Bottle babies are such a pain in the rear end. I love some small ruminants, they're so entertaining - I can't wait to have some of my own. I love it when they go nuts and climb all over poo poo and sproing off in a new direction. So fun.
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Apr 21, 2013 20:07
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So do they pee all over themselves on purpose like vultures do? Or can you trim their wool on their stomachs to prevent it?
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Apr 22, 2013 01:04
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Tasty_Crayon posted:So do they pee all over themselves on purpose like vultures do? Yes. Yes they do. They do it during breeding season (or any time, apparently) because goat ladies apparently love the smell of a goatman saturated in his own urine.
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Apr 22, 2013 02:09
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It's not just their belly either. They get it all over their beards and face and then make puddle and roll around in it. It's vile. Here is a random male goat. All the yellow areas are soaked in disgusting buck urine.  They can also be pushy, obnoxious and destructive if not taught how to behave properly as youngsters. Even then a 200 lb urine covered buck in rut with massive horns can do a lot of damage without really thinking. My last one kept trying to gently caress the male sheep he was with and I was worried they would get squished. Love the baby goats, not really a fan of adult bucks.
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Apr 22, 2013 02:18
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Blah! Male goats are nasty! When we first got goats on my Grandma's ranch, I was all excited, because, you know, baby animals. They were totally awesome. Until the buck reached maturity. I didn't know at the time. I was under the impression that all adult goats were nasty, horrible, urine soaked, filthy abominations. I flat out refused to go near them. I had my rotation of chores and responsibilities and they would never include the nasty goats thank-you-very-much. Then when my Grandma died and I took over the care and responsibility for her horse and his companion goat, I found out that wethers are perfectly fine. I also discovered that I do like goats very much and that they are one of the most awesome animals ever. So long as you don't have a buck. For the love of your sanity, never own a buck. Bucks are seriously disgusting.
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Apr 22, 2013 17:23
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Too many silly goat pictures, time for some spotty sheep. The non-spotty sheep are still holding out on me. Twinsies.  The soul patch really cracks me up.  One last picture of Bracken's crazy long tail before I lopped it off.  You've got something on your face there little man.  Quick note! If you are in the NE OH or NW PA area and want to cuddle sheep in person there will be a shearing day/spring open house at the farm on April 27th from 11 to 4. It's totally free and open to the public so don't feel weird about coming to some goon's house. If you can pull yourself away from baby snuggles there will also be demos on shearing, wool preparation, spinning, and maybe natural dyes. Details are up on our facebook page or you can PM me or email sarah (at) rovingacres (dot) com.
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Apr 23, 2013 15:09
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It's raining today so no new baby pictures but since I was ear tagging the baby sheep this week I thought I would explain ear tags and sheep identification. I find it really interesting so hopefully you all don't find it too boring. In the US all sheep and goats that leave your farm, or technically any livestock over 6 months old, need to be tagged with a farm specific ID number as well as an individual animal number. This is so that if you sell an animal that turns up with a contagious disease, like scrapie, they can track it back to your farm and not have to destroy every sheep in your county. You can see Prism's scrapie tag on her right ear here. She's originally from NY so her farm ID number starts with NY and she was the first sheep tagged at that farm so her individual number is 0001. Most farms put official ear tags on the right ear for ewes and left ears for rams.  Prism and Page are registered cormos so they were giving fancy official metal ear tags with their registration numbers on them. I don't like metal tags so I had plastic ones printed with the same information. They have the registration number on front and say American Cormo on the back. None of the other breed clubs have official ear tags so the cormos get to be special.  Flirt and Eleanor are both from PA so their scrapie tag farm numbers start with PA and are in their right ears because they are ewes. They also have big yellow tags that are special tags used to take tissue samples which were then used for genetic testing.  In addition my sheep breeds are color coded so when I end up with a bunch of white lambs of different breeds I'll be able to tell them apart at a glance. Jacobs are lime green because some of them came with green and I just kept it up.  The cormos will be spearmint and the romeldale/cvms will be fuchsia for no particular reason.  In addition to their scrapie number my sheep have a farm number that gives me more information about them at a glance. They start with the year the sheep was born, then a letter indicating who their sire was (if they were sired by a male I don't own they get an X), and then the number they were born that year. So for example Aster is 12D02 because she was born in 2012, her dad is Dennis and she was the second sheep born that year. Every farmer has different needs and so have different numbering and tagging systems. Some people use a different color for each year or for each different sire. Some people have multiple tags, one in each ear either with different numbers or the same number in case they lose one. Some people prefer to use notches or tattoos to differentiate sheep. I find it really interesting all the different ways people organize and and keep track of their sheep. Especially when some places have thousands of all white sheep and still manage to keep track of individual ewe productivity and make cull decisions every year.
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Apr 24, 2013 19:43
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Do the sheep not mind having huge tags in their ears? Isn't it annoying? Wouldn't they get gross or funky after a while, or are sheep ears self-cleaning somehow? Big wooly sheepies
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Apr 24, 2013 20:30
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Is there a reason red tags aren't an option? Are they reserved for OH GOD DEFINITELY SCRAPIE or something? Also, just out of curiosity, do they fade over time? I would worry about lime and spearmint being easily mixed up, although no information would be lost, it'd just be a minor hassle.
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Apr 24, 2013 20:49
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i like nice words
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daggerdragon posted:Do the sheep not mind having huge tags in their ears? Isn't it annoying? Wouldn't they get gross or funky after a while, or are sheep ears self-cleaning somehow? It's like having your ears pierced, after they get over the feeling of having one ear weigh more than the other I don't think they even notice. The ones I have are pretty tiny too, only 1" x 1". It weighs down tiny baby ears but they grow into them pretty quick. I don't like big giant tags (the big yellow ones on the romeldales drive me nuts) and my sheep are all so friendly I don't have to try to read tags from a distance. The tags get a little greasy and dirty over the years but not that bad. It's not like sheep generally roll around in mud and things. If they are so grimy I can't read them I just wipe off the plastic during shearing but the only tag I've had to do that with is the one in my 11 year old ewe. Anne Whateley posted:Is there a reason red tags aren't an option? Are they reserved for OH GOD DEFINITELY SCRAPIE or something? That brand just doesn't have a red option, you can get red tags if you want. They aren't very popular because from a distance it looks like the ear is bleeding and the numbers don't contrast well. Tags for official USDA use are blue and I think scrapie can only be definitively diagnosed by removing the head so ear tags aren't going to really help there. Some plastic tags can fade or get brittle over time but mine are polyurethane which are supposed to hold up better. I haven't had any signs of fading, even in some that are 5+ years old. The writing is what fades out more than the color. Also the spearmint is more blue than green in person and I can probably tell the difference between an adult jacob and a cormo even if their tags fade to nothing.
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Apr 24, 2013 23:44
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Oh good point  I've been reading a lot of farm blogs lately ('tis the season) and I forgot who had what. Durf
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Apr 25, 2013 02:54
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My mom should no longer be allowed to look on craigslist but I think I'm getting some more goats. A pair of two month old white angora doelings. I'm going to go look at them probably next week and then they said if I want them they would hold them for me until next month when my sheep are done lambing and I have a spot open to quarantine them. Do I need more baby goats? No. Can I resist some fluffy white goat babies (that are listed way cheap)? Probably not.
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Apr 25, 2013 22:03
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My first non-spotty lamb ever!  Flirt had this big white romeldale boy before breakfast and tried to hide him from me. Hard to miss those giant ears though.  He's 10.8 lbs and has huge long legs. Instead of trying to figure out the whole walking deal he's just going to bounce everywhere.  Welcome to the world new guy! 
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Apr 26, 2013 15:51
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He has the sweetest face.
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Apr 26, 2013 16:06
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Instant Jellyfish posted:Welcome to the world new guy! How are you getting any work done? I wouldn't be able to, I'd just spend all day every day smooching that little nose.
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Apr 26, 2013 16:31
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Zomg lambs . The goat is amazing - were you anticipating that kind of chocolaty colour, and if not were you happy to get it? I had my first spring litter of rabbits yesterday! The doe kindled nine, of which seven survived, which I'm quite happy with. I was expecting all harlequins and magpies (orange with black patches, white with black patches), but I got a couple of sable agouti siamese too. I have another pregnant doe (well, hopefully!) who is due to kindle in the next couple of weeks - this is a strategic father/daughter mating to get a certain colour established in my lines, but I will do a complete outcross for the subsequent generation. The nice thing about breeding mutt meat rabbits is you have huge genetic diversity available to you, so a single 'close' breeding shouldn't do damage if you go on to do outcrosses for the next few gens. Instant Jellyfish; what is genetic diversity like in the breeds you're working with, and how do you feel about line breeding/inbreeding?
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Apr 26, 2013 17:38
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Oh man, you breed rabbits? For what purpose? (If Instant Jellyfish doesn't mind, you should share rabbit photos with the class.  )
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Apr 26, 2013 18:07
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 Go here and erase that post so you can quietly pretend that you knew about the rabbit-eating awesomeness the entire time.
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Apr 26, 2013 18:10
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Aha! Thanks. 
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Apr 26, 2013 18:22
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notsowelp posted:Zomg lambs I'm thrilled with the little goat man's color. I was expecting him to be red like Tootsie's doeling but I don't have baby pictures of either of his parents and they change so much over time that it's really hard to guess what colors they are genetically as adults. I have to ask the Colored Angora Goat hivemind on facebook what color to register him as. I guess he would be a chocolate but it's not a warm brown really, its sort of a cool brown/charcoal with a lighter undercoat. It will be really interesting to see what color he is after I shear him for the first time at 6 months. I feel like he's going to fade into a redder brown but who knows. People in the breeds I'm involved with seem to be very aware of inbreeding because they are mostly small, heritage breeds bred by people with an interest in conservation and genetics. The romeldales I got have a fairly small COI because the people who bred them keep a ton of different rams and really want to keep the breed as diverse as possible. The breed club also allows you to "breed up" to purebred by introducing other breeds and as long as you get the scrapie codon tested you can register the mixed breed lambs as romeldales. The cormos and jacobs all go back to the few individuals that were imported to the US there's a bit of an issue of the founder effect. The breed clubs try to mitigate that as much as possible though. The Jacob Sheep Breeders Association has an open studbook so its really easy to introduce new blood from other countries as long as it looks pretty much like a Jacob. The Cormo Sheep Association maintains a collection of frozen semen from a handful of rams from the original flock in Australia so if the gene pool gets a little too shallow in your area you can buy some sperm and do a total outcross. The goats seem to have the most inbreeding (shocking, I know) which I wouldn't mind if it was done thoughtfully and they were better about culling instead of selling everything as breeding stock. To get colored goats with fleece as fine as the white angoras they do a lot of half sibling breeding then outcrossing to an unrelated white goat. That's all well and good but they don't select for anything but color and fleece fineness without taking into account other important characters like the ability to nurse and thrive on their own. I don't do a lot of inbreeding closer than distant cousins on my farm but I don't have a problem with it. It can be a really useful tool in really cementing traits in your lines. As much as people joke you aren't going to end up with flipper babies with one generation of parent/sibling breeding unless it's a known problem in that line anyway. Post pictures of your awesome sounding bunnies! I've been following your project for ages and find it fascinating. I'm really excited I have animals that come in more colors than one so I can do more color genetics things. Working beagle puppies should count as barnyard babies too.
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Apr 26, 2013 20:27
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Thanks for this thread, I wish I had found out about it earlier (and last year's as well). These are some great photos, what kind of camera do you have?
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Apr 26, 2013 23:16
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Globo-Corp posted:Thanks for this thread, I wish I had found out about it earlier (and last year's as well). These are some great photos, what kind of camera do you have? Thanks! I have a canon rebel xti with a variety of lenses, usually my 50 mm 1.8 for dark barn shots and my 55-250 for out in the pasture. I really want to upgrade to a camera that does video too but I have no money and my old one is still going strong after 5 years, a trip through the jungle, and a wide variety of creatures trying to eat it so no sense replacing it.
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Apr 26, 2013 23:34
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Eleanor, the other romeldale, decided she didn't want to be left out and had her lamb this morning.  She heard we're a fan of spots around here.  He is a massive 14.5 lb ram. I'm pretty sure he's a grey badgerface CVM with spots and brown on his face and legs and a big white blaze. There is probably some fancy name for the coloration that I don't know. If he was a shetland he would be a katmoget I think.  Legs that long are really challenging to figure out.  Got it! I love his little black pants.  I was hoping for at least one ewe lamb but this way I have a ram for each of my romeldale ewes in the fall and neither of them has to be bred to their son or to Al the cormo.
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Apr 27, 2013 14:39
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Instant Jellyfish posted:Got it! I love his little black pants. Eeeee he looks like he's wearing hooker boots, I LOVE IT 
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Apr 27, 2013 20:09
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Women's Rights? posted:Eeeee he looks like he's wearing hooker boots, I LOVE IT Well, there you go, dude has a name. Instant Jellyfish's Hooker Boots.
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Apr 28, 2013 00:25
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Man, I lose track of this thread for a few days and another two lambs pop out? Congrats on your fuzzy new arrivals! 
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Apr 28, 2013 14:17
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Women's Rights? posted:Eeeee he looks like he's wearing hooker boots, I LOVE IT The other one has big fuzzy gogo boots.  He's like a tiny warhorse.  Giant long legs are hard to scratch an itch with though.  Those ears are out of control.  Out of control!  Too bad he can't join the spotty sheep only nap club though. 
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Apr 28, 2013 16:56
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This thread is my favorite thread. I think my husband seriously wonders if I'm insane with all the squealing I've done at the pictures. Please don't ever stop posting pictures of the babies.
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Apr 29, 2013 05:26
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Bellakitty posted:Please don't ever stop posting pictures of the babies. I'll do what I can. Little chunk, named Heath now, was trying to chew on my pants through the fence and got his tiny horns and mouth stuck somehow. He screamed just like a person while I got him unstuck. It was unsettling for both of us.  "Fence bit me  " Sheeps were having a sleepy morning.  *yawn*  Being alive is exhausting. 
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Apr 29, 2013 18:14
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Endless on these farmlands. If I had to learn how to walk within hours of being born, I'd want a nap too!
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Apr 29, 2013 18:21
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