At Hollow Hills Ranch, this is the system we use for weaning and sales of our Hair Sheep.
Weaning & Castration Times
We typically breed for lambs to start on a New or Full moon in late December/January. Additionally, we wean on a full moon in April/May. Lambs are roughly 100-115 days at the oldest when we wean.
Castration of ram lambs, that don’t make the cut the first round, happens usually a month before weaning on a full moon. In fact, we castrate at this time so we don’t stress the lambs and moms out so much in one day.
When you castrate and wean on a full moon, the blood and milk flow is reduced during the subsequent waning moon. As a result you have less issues with mastitis or infection.
Post Weaning (Ewes)
After weaning, the mama ewes are locked in a low grass barnyard area with low quality hay to dry up. We watch closely for signs of mastitis and bring them in once every few days to feel udders for heat or other signs of problems. Usually after a couple weeks of this, the ewes are ready to go back out to pasture.
They move from the barnyard out to the open ewe pastures. Here they get back into condition and are reunited with the yearling ewes kept from the year before. The ewes will stay out there until breeding season comes around again.
Post Weaning & Sales (Lambs)
Lambs weaned from their dams will be kept in the barn for a few days to get over their “trauma”. They are sorted into the following groups after a couple days:
- keeper ewe lambs
- breeding stock ewe lambs for sale
- breeding stock ram lambs for sale
- market wether and ewe lambs for sale.
Anything for sale, we contact people on the waiting list to get them sold as soon as possible. Left over ewe and wether lambs go out with our keeper ewe lambs in pasture. Left over ram lambs end up out with our breeding rams in their pasture.
We do a final evaluation in late summer. Any lambs not making the cut to keep around, will be sold at auction. We try to do this in late summer/early fall after breeding season has finished.
There you have our process for weaning & sales at Hollow Hills Ranch!
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