Two New Faces Joined The Farm Fam

Two new faces joined the farm this month- two ram lambs from Renninger Wool Co.

Raising sheep, especially for fine wool, is a well thought project and genetics are part of the organization.

We started our flock with our 4 original dames and a little ram named Horatio. Horatio grew up with us and while he was still a ram, he and David had a fun relationship. David would “play” with him, meaning catch his head when he would ram. To be honest, this is probably how rams actually do play and socialize because most of the time it seemed Horatio actually enjoyed their game. He was also very friendly in that anytime we would come up to him he would run over for pets.

Rams are working sheep though. Every fall is breeding season. The sheep actually look for each other across the field during this time. Mid November came last year and it was time for the courtship season to start. We introduced Horatio to his lady loves…and he blew it. We have never seem him come on so strong and aggressively. He actually flipped one of our sweet girls on her back! We thought she might have died, but she was ok. We got her back on her feet and decided that we would take off this season.

Just to give you some additional story telling so Horatio can redeem himself, in other seasons he was more gentlemanly and some of the ladies actually like him a lot. He will stick his neck out and show his big toothy smile to court them. And in previous seasons, they would all be relaxing happily next to each other.

In any case, we have had Horatio for a few years and we had been thinking it was time for new genetics since he is related to now two generations of lambs. So Horatio moved on to his next flock at our friend's farm and we introduced two ram lambs to the flock.

Enter Moonie and Milo, 5 month old merino rams born in the fall. We chose these two consciously for growing our array of natural colored wool. Moonie (known at his birth farm as Moonie, Moonie, George Clooney) is a silver boy with no horns and gorgeous coloring that we do not have in our flock. Milo is a chocolate brown horned ram with a face of a teddy bear. We still are debating on changing his name to Teddy.

Our friends at Neighbours Farmstead helped relocate them to their new home here at our farm. There was still quite a bit of snow and ice on the ground when they arrived so they could not be driven down to the pasture. Instead we initially hoped to walk them down, but David wound up carrying Moonie.

We tell you this because while Moonie seemed so skittish that first day, he has opened up to David so much. David worked with the rams daily to settle them in and develop trust. Moonie opened up first and now they are pals and he loves getting treats and pets. Milo is still warming up. Anne generally stays away from the rams. She will give them pets and occasionally will go into their net at this age for pets and pictures. She will also help with any care-giving like hoof trimming.

Rams can be very dangerous though. They get to be very large and ramming is just part of their nature- even more docile rams. 

We are still deciding whether to start a spring breeding group with one or two of the new rams or wait until fall. We are grateful they are here and excited for the next generation of natural colored merinos.