Poster Girls.

This past winter we got the privileged to receive a "Proud to be an Alberta Lamb Producer" license plate.Since my dad is a director of the Alberta Lamb Producers, we got the chance to take a picture of our family farm with this license plate to advertise our love for farm and our farm itself. The above picture shows that advertisement. To the right is myself holding two of our bottle lambs, Barbie (black lamb) and Ken. On the left my mom, Lorna holding Burp with our late loyal sheep dog, Freckles. All of us are standing in front of our Volkswagen Beetle. Now this car may not seem like a true farm vehicle but it helps us even more with the commute and traveling to Alberta Lamb Producer meetings and events. This may just be a picture to some but it really does show that my family of Windpatch Farm, are truly Proud to be Alberta Lamb Producers.

Three Bags Full

Shearing is an annual ritual here at the farm. With sheep it would seem like a given. Sheep=Wool. So every year around the end of February we get all our sheep together, hire our Aussie shearer Dwayne, crank up the tunes and get ready for a long day of hard work but a lot lots of fun. Last year Dwayne taught me how to shear. To the perfect shearer it is a movement of 53 strokes that pulls the wool off in one big piece called a fleece. This fleece is then strategically thrown onto a special table and picked clean or at least close to clean. From there, the fleece is put into giant brown bags, kind of like big potato sacks. There are two ways of doing this. 1 is putting them into the bag by hand, or foot i suppose. Int he bottom picture on the left you can see my boyfriend Brendan stuffing a woolsack. Its a tough job but he makes it look gooood. lol. The other way is with a hydraulic press that is annually manned by my Grandpa. this pushes the fleeces into the bag at high pressure so we can get many many more fleeces into the bag. Now you would think that wool is kinda cool. We should be able to sell it at a great price but you would be wrong. Slowly the sell rate for wool is gaining because the consumer market is liking the idea of a natural and organic material instead of synthetic. But in the last few years, after we sell all our wool, we haven't had enough money to pay for the shearer!
Once the wool gets to the wool mill (Yes there is such a thing, there is a big one at Carstairs, where we sell our wool often) the wool is washed and cleaned fully then spun into yearn (then into mats or clothing) or carded into a filler (For douvets or bed pads). Then that's when you can buy it for your home!

How About a Good Laugh?

4h has done a lot for me. I've met new friends and gained so many new experiences. I'll post a blog about my 4h club a little bit later but first I would like to show you one of our new contests to our 4h club and its been a real hit!! I guess the loss of dignity in other people can be found humorous. I took part in this competition for the first time up at the Northlands sheep show a few summers ago. Once my 4h club saw the pictures they couldn't resist the idea of trying it out in our club.

Yes above is a picture of showing my sheep while I'm a fireman and my sheep is a Dalmatian. This costume contest really makes our achievement day less stressful and gives us a good laugh. We have had mattresses and Serta sheep, princesses and dragons, oilworkers, army men and many many more. It's been a lot of fun. Our club takes pride in being a more laid back kind of 4h. We really don't think that harsh competition is the best way to go so we try and have as much fun as possible in any way possible. 

Does your club have any cool show competitions or games?

Bottle Babies

My farm is in the middle of lambing. Yes this is when the ewes (girl sheep) have their lambs. My favourite part of lambing? I know its not the best thing for a farm but it still is my favourite. Bottle Lambs! It is usually rare that we have bottle lambs. Out of 450 that are born we usually have about 6 (that's really good). There is usually only a couple reasons why we keep bottle lambs; 1 the lamb is born too early and the only way we can keep them alive is to feed them by hand and warm them up inside the house, 2 the baby is born in the freezing cold and they need to be inside to warm up, 3 the mother doesn't have enough milk to feed her lambs and we don't get a chance to foster them. We try to do this the least amount possible because it is expensive and can be difficult to bring the lambs up to weight when they don't get milk whenever they want from their mother. We usually use three different types of milk to feed these special babies. The first one is milk replacer. This is a powder that you can buy at any Peavey Mart or UFA. It is kind of like powdered milk that us people use but it has special vitamins and nutrients that lamb, kids (like goat babies) and calves need. The second kind is cow milk. We use this for a simple reason, it is much cheaper!!! Milk replacer powder is VERY expensive and can go bad quite easily once it is mixed with water, whereas cow milk is readily available from our dairy farm neighbors (Thanks again Andrews!) and can be kept good for much longer. The third kind our farm uses in goats milk or colostrum. This is because it is very close to sheep's milk and again it can be less expensive. As you can see in the picture above lambs in the house do wear diapers! to be frank I really don't want to clean up after them that often. This is much easier. Do you have any other questions about lambs? Bottle lambs? Or anything else on the farm?

School and Home can go Hand-in-Hand

In grade ten I took on another activity to go along with all my others and school work. This one was different though. It was at this point that I decided to take the Green Certificate course. If you haven't heard of it before it is a program that brings together Alberta Education and Alberta Agriculture to create a program geared towards youth in agriculture or those who are going into agriculture. At the very beginning you are given what looks like a giant text book full of information(in my case on sheep). The information is broken into three parts and you are given three years to complete it with two testing times a year. You must take a test on each of these sections and pass in order to receive your certificate.

There are so many options on what you can take your green certificate on. Mine was obviously sheep but there is also swine, dairy, cow/calf, beekeeping, equine, crop just to name a few. Again each book is broken down into three sections X, Y and Z tests. For mine the first section I did was on lambing and marketability, another was on culling and breeding and the final was on feeder rations and general farming upkeep. The first two sections are my passions. Working with the animals and lambing are my definite favourite so I needed a lot of dad's help when it came to "watching the grass grow" and endlessly amazing topic in my dad's eyes. In the end I was able to pass the tests. Yes I've said tests a few times but they aren't like any exam I've ever written. You meet with another member of your industry and simply talk. I found myself comparing breeds and getting invites to work on farms for the summer more than being graded or critiqued. Not only did I learn about other farms but I got to meet the farmers behind them and know that there is always someone out there that will help you or knows exactly what you are going through. I must say this is my favourite part of farming in general. It is rare to find a selfish farmer. We are the ones who live off the land, watch the grass grow and help bring young animals to maturity with our own hands. Its a passion, one we want to share. I am surrounded my dairy farmers, cattlemen and other shepherds and there is never a day that goes by that I feel alone in agriculture. This, more than anything, is what Green Certificate helped me learn. Oh and by the way I earned 16 high school credits while doing it! I hope that all of you that live on a farm take a little bit of time and try the Green Certificate program. Its worth every minute.

Just A Little Poke

Sorry to those who are following this blog. On Thursday blogger informed me that it was in read-only format so I was unable to set up a post and yesterday I was taking part in the 30 hour famine at my school. This went all of last night and I found myself far away from any computers.Now its finally the weekend again! I hope everyone has big smiles and is hoping that this wind will die down just a tad so we can really feel those 20 degree temperatures.

What do I have planned for this B-E-A-utiful weekend you may ask? This afternoon I will be doing one of the hardest but most worth it jobs on the farm. This is vaccinating. Now I can almost hear all the organic fans cringe at the thought of the word but let me just explain our reasons for vaccinating our sheep.

We vaccinate with 8-way, and as the name may imply this is to prevent 8 different diseases that can  inflict sheep. One of the most important diseases this is fighting is blackleg. All my cattlemen and women out there should know what I'm talking about and the follow shepherds are probably cringing with them. Not only is this disease fatal but it is highly contagious. The bacteria Clostridium chauvoei is responsible for this farm horror. It usually starts in the hooves of ruminants then quickly moves into the muscle and eventually the bloodstream. Since the sheep are walking around with this on their hooves until they bigin to limp, they pass it onto the soil with in turn relays it back to another sheep. (aka. really big mess). Another disease that 8-way fights off is tetnus. I'm sure you've heard of this one before. Its the same thing that you hear you mother yelling about when you step on a nail... or get even close to one. Just like people, sheep need tetnus boosters too. 8-way also prevents bacillary hemoglobinuria, black disease, lamb dysentery, hemorrhagic enterotoxemia, pulpy kidney and malignant edema. Which I'm sure just seems like a lot of big medical words. I could go on and on about the different disease and if you would like to know more post a comment and i would love to tell you about all of the disease that we fight with on the farm and that 8 way can help protect sheep from.

It is today that we get to give our ewes a booster shot of this drug. Just like people need to get booster shots against disease sheep need it as well. Plus these ewes will begin to lamb in the next few weeks so it is best to vaccinate them now so that the immunity to disease can be passed onto their lambs through the amniotic fluid and the colostrum (Hearty milk full of antibodies that the ewe produces in the first 24 hours after her lambs have been born).

It may be a difficult process to walk all the ewes down to the shoots then one-by-one hand vaccinate them, making a full days work but to see healthy lambs and happy ewes is always worth it. I have seen only a couple sheep in my lifetime succumb to an illness that could have been prevented by the use of vaccines and it has changed my whole outlook. I refuse to stand by and see another animal have a painful death when I, their farmer, could have prevented it. Again if you would like mroe information please send me a message or a post and I would love to answer any questions you may have on this touchy subject to the best of my abilities and my experiences.

Does your farm use vaccines? Why or why not? As a town kid do you feel unsafe knowing that farms use these drugs?

Its a Team Effort

Something that is amazing about being a shepherd is that not only can you work with your sheep but you have the companionship of man's best friend always at your side. Border Collies, Australian Shepherds, Blue Healers, just to name a few of the herding dogs that farms use. As a rule of thumb these dogs are usually darker in colour, have great stamina and boundless energy. On the complete opposite end of the spectrum are the guardian dogs. Akbash, Pyrenees and Maremma are usually the dogs of choice. They are the big white dogs that seem to blend right into the flock. This is one of their special qualities that make them great for guarding the sheep. These big white dogs are usually docile until confronted with a coyote, where they spring into action to get the lambs in a safe place or get the coyotes far away from the flock. We have watched our dogs and we have noticed a system.
We have 5 guard dogs in total. Usually three are in one pen at a time while the other two are at the barns. There is one dog, Jill, who always stays with the sheep, no matter what she will always be with them. The other two in the field will circulate the perimeter of the fence on a half hour cycle (yes actually a half hour on the dot.). As soon as there is a threat all the dogs come together on the top of the tallest hill and seem to have a meeting (this is no joke). Jill will stay with the sheep forming them into a circle all together, while Jack (the top dog Jill's brother) runs to chase the coyote down, as Luke (Jack's right hand man) runs around the perimeter again to ensure everyone is safe. It's an amazing system! I don't know how they do it!
Every since they are puppies these dogs live with the sheep. They move with them, sleep with them and eat with them. This is our new puppy Dexter who is sleeping out in the barn with the sheep. Right now he is in the cute phase but he still doesn't stop working. Jack and Jill are now eleven years old. That's old for any dog let alone one that works 24/7, that's why we bought little Dexter to hopefully ease the load for the older dogs.
Its just amazing how animals can help humans and I know that our farm would not be near as efficient without them.
Does your farm have dogs helping you? Maybe llamas or donkeys instead?