When my mom used to teach birthing classes at Hardin Memorial, she would often talk about the concept of “family germs.” Her granddaughter (my niece) talked about how she learned family germs were ok to share with your family – that is why it was ok to eat and drink after each other but only within your family.
Our flock is a family. The sheep eat together in a large feeding trough. They drink after each other from the watering buckets. With the exception of the babies born with us, all of our sheep were purchased from the same farm. Our sheep have family germs – and we want to keep them happy and healthy as long as we can. So, for a while at least, we are finished with the sheep livestock purchasing, and will work on growing our flock internally.
When we found out Francis was available for purchase, we selected ewe lambs that were not related so that he could breed our entire flock. He will be a busy boy, come November/December! The intention is to breed him to the 2 older ewes we have (#1037 and #1077) first – there is a higher likelihood of multiple births when it isn’t the ewe’s first pregnancy. Then, he will breed all 6 (!!) of the ewe lambs in December.
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