Thursday, April 10, 2014

Now we have sheep! But we don't want parasites!

Ok, so the solution for sheep is threefold.

1. Garlic acts as a natural dewormer
2. mix DE in with the minerals at a rate of 1/4 DE to the mineral mix.
3. Rotate them on pasture, and don't let them stay on the same pasture more than 21 days. 1 week is much better. then rest the paddock for at least 2 months for the worms to die off.

learned this from Skyline Farms

http://www.skylinesfarm.com/parasitecontrol.htm

Tuesday, April 8, 2014

SpotOn Farms is now alive!

A few weeks ago, Sharon sent an email to the owner of Organicare farm. She noted that we had wanted to become sustainable farmers and that we needed a mentor.

Gerald Cole graciously replied that we should talk, and a couple days later I was on his farm near Taylor and we are looking at his back pasture and he says to me, "I'll give you carte blanche on that pasture. I can't use it right now."

So, I pinched myself and got busy trying to figure out what I was going to do with it. Was I going to raise Pig, or Chickens or Cattle or Sheep or goats, or watermelons?

Choices!!!!

In the end (which took about three days) I decided that our best bet was to use Dorper sheep.
Dorper Sheep are very common here in texas as a hair sheep (raised for meat) and they were bred to work in a low rain environment down to 8 inches of rain a year.

Well we don't live in a desert but we do have moments where it sure feels like it.
At the moment, this pasture has some lovely grass. It is about a foot tall and growing like a weed!

Well, I tried sending an email to a few Dorper breeders that are listed on http://dorper.og
but I was getting a really low success rate at finding a breeder that has something for sale, and wants to part with them for a reasonable price.

So, I took the whole list of Texas breeders of which there are 185 or so. I don't know 90% of the towns listed, so I had to come up with a program that sorted this list by distance from me.

I spammed the breeders within 80 miles of Austin. Yes I did.
For a week, I was getting emails and phone calls and I found a few folks that I liked.

But we are talking the first batch now.

So Donnie Witt had some ewes with lambs he was willing to sell.
Now Donnie is a great guy, but he is a pretty conventional producer, in that he feeds medicated feed, worms and vaccinates his sheep. Much of the time, they are running around on bare ground, but they also get free range on pasture as well, though he seems to overgraze them and not move them too much.

But, you got to start somewhere.

I bought five ewes and each ewe brought twins with them.

Currently, that makes 15 sheep!

Here are the obligatory photos!