Sheep Chat Thread

[kuntrygirl]

[COLOR=000033]Brother and Sister napping together inside the barn.[/COLOR] [COLOR=000033]It was hot outside.[/COLOR]

Too Cute !!!

 

[chooks4life]

My Damara orphan lamb is about 6 months now. Still a spoilt pet. I'd hoped to have her out with a flock by now but haven't got the situation yet... Here's Lucy with her pellets and her partially grown winter wool.

Didn't know where else to put this, hope it's the appropriate thread.

 

[chooks4life]

And another one of her wooly attempt at a winter fleece...



She's still working on losing her hair in favour of wool.

 

[WallabyOfChaos]

She's really growing. Are there a lot of Damaras in Australia?

 

[chooks4life]

Not sure if you're in Texas, Australia, or the other one... Your name does sound Australian though. Here's a link to an Aussie website. I'm fairly sure Lucy got some of her ancestry from this place.

http://www.halldamara.com.au/

I don't know how many damaras there are in Australia but I see them in the papers and online pretty frequently, like on sites such as Gumtree and Trading Post/ Traders. I don't think they're rare anymore, just not well known.

Damaras came to Australia in the 1990's in six embryos, so as you can imagine, there's a difficulty in sourcing unrelated genetics. Breeders have been working on it for years now but it's still early days. If you google search for damaras you'll come across all sorts of random information. The variation in the rams from flock to flock is particularly startling; Lucy's father was a specimen compared to a lot of the advertized rams. Many of them don't even have beards like a true damara ram is supposed to. The general variation between flocks is quite high.

There are other websites showing their stud damara stock out there, and a breeder's registry. The main issues the breed faces is rampant crossing without good line record keeping and the mixed results being sold as purebreds; also they were introduced as a fad animal as far as I know, which has its own pitfalls regardless of the merit of the species or breed. Their value is poorly understood by large sectors of the industry but there's growing awareness.

 

[kuntrygirl]

After (2) 9 ounce bottles of milk and a foamy mouth, his belly his full.

 

[chooks4life]

They're very cute, kuntrygirl. Silly question... Are you washing his mouth after bottles?

 

[kuntrygirl]

They're very cute, kuntrygirl. Silly question... Are you washing his mouth after bottles?

Thanks.

Not a silly question. Yes, I am washing his mouth after bottles. All of the foam and no telling what other crap he is picking up under the chin and on his nose, reminds me to wash him up really good.

 

[AlienChick]

The pictures are adorable!!!

 

[kuntrygirl]

Question................I posted this on Backyard Hers as well but wanted to post here as well.

For the last few days, I have noticed that one of my Kathadin Ewe's is acting "spaced out". She is wandering around as if she is lost. I will sometimes find her in the back of the pen staring at the post. She is not keeping up with the rest of the group when they go out to graze. She is left behind and I have to walk her out of the pen. The others will come back to get her to take her out and bring her to where they are and she will sometimes follow them. She is still eating and drinking but does not graze like the others. She will walk a little and then she will stop. Yesterday she sat down on the ground after walking a few steps. I allowed her to rest a bit before trying to get her up. She got up and walked a bit then sat back down. I finally got her back in the pen but it took about 45 minutes. She is NOT herself. It almost seems like she is going blind but she is not really running into anything. She is cautious in how and where she steps. I looked up her "symptoms" online and the closest thing that I could find was that she has worms. I have the FAMACHA chart and compared eye color but it doesn't appear that she has worms based on the color. I went ahead and started her on Levasole Sheep Wormer Boluses last night, just in case. I will try to separate her to collect poop to look at it under the microscope. I really need to get fresh poop, so I'm not sure if this will even be do-able.

Has anyone ever experienced this before? What do you all think this should be?