New Sheep in the Pen

So we finally managed to bring home our new sheep. The day dawned bright and early and I whipped through morning chores in record time and was on the road. First stop was 100 Mile House to pick up the stock trailer I was using and the first 3 sheep from New Cal Rabbit Farm. These are older ewes and really friendly. Since they are more "experienced", we will probably keep them for at least two batches of babies and then reassess their condition. Since two batches will be about 1.5 years they are still going to be here for awhile. The other 3 sheep we picked up from a smaller sheep farm, Thackerville, in the Savona area. These are younger ewes, in absolutely great condition, just coming on a year in the spring. We won't be breeding them until the new year and these will be with us for a long time.

Okay, some pics of the new girls:

So this is the first old girl. Great colour and incredibly soft.
I believe that these three girls are a cross of katahdin and something.
It's the something I haven't figured out.
 But they are very similar to our Bayberry
and Bunchberry in hair, colour and markings.

We haven't named them yet, so this is girl #2. Her wool is this dark greyish colour with the black markings.She's a little more standoffish then the other two.

This is girl#3. I love her black and white markings.
Her cheeks are incredibly soft. These three are all a fairly
good size - easily over 150 lb each and tall. Since they
have been bred with our Dorper Ram (hopefully!! by now)
it will be exciting to see what kind of colours the babies have.

This is new young girl #1. We also haven't named these ones yet. She is the only one of this bunch to have the interesting patches on her face. Helps to tell her apart. These three are still quite shy with people but have integrated into the herd really well.

This is new young girl #2. What I really like about
these girls is how clean their head, neck and legs are.
 By clean, we mean that the wool/hair is very short
giving them a clean cut look. Particularly having clean legs
just makes them so much easier to care for. They are also
very square, put together quite well. I don't believe they have quite
 finished growing yet, so we will see what their final size
 turns out to be - give them another six months or
so to grow out. But so far they are really nice.

New Girl #2 - #3 looks just like her and was being camera shy, so #2 is standing in. We'll have to put necklaces on them to tell them apart! With their white colouring and the ram being a black-headed dorper, the lambs could be anything from pure white, pure black or a patchwork of colours - like a holstein cow, all black and white patches. I can hardly wait!

 In the meantime, we have one sheep (Big Bertha or BB for short) which we purchased from a 4H'er earlier this fall, who is pregnant, but probably not due in December like we were hoping  - or if she is it will be the end of December. I have been watching her but we are at least a month or two away.

And of course, not satisfied with the ewes in the pen with him, the ram jumped TWO fences to check out some ewes in a different pen. So I'm hoping that he was able to control himself until we got him back in his pen. (hahahaha!!!) At this rate I'm thinking deer fencing might be an option for him!