Thursday, August 14, 2008

Horse Trailer, horns and hydrangeas

Our latest major farm purchase -- a used horse trailer. Can we afford it? No. But I thought it was a very good deal so we bit the bullet and bought it last night.
With Bluefaced Leicester sheep, the option of popping them in a dog crate and driving all over the country is not quite as easy as it was with Shetlands. That is a great thing about the Shetlands, they are very mobile. But my two year BFL ram Dougal, is getting pretty heavy, I would guess he's around ~150 lbs. The thought of lifting him up into a truck bed isn't very tempting. This is a small trailer, but I think I could fit about 6 adult BFLs in it, or 8-10 Shetlands. Of course the gas consumption will limit its use to the bare essentials, but we will use it for hauling hay home from our Ogilvie property too. And if we ever decide to get into beef cattle, we'll be all set. :-).

People were interested in the horn growth on the BFL crosses, so I thought I would snap photos of the heads of our Shetland Mule boys this morning (Please excuse all the hay on these guys, they are such pigs at the feeder). Above is an intact Shetland Mule ram lamb, he's 3 months old now. This guy hasn't grown as large as the other mule lambs, but I think his horn growth is very typical of what you can expect Shetland mule ram lambs to have.
He was sired by a white BFL. His twin sister is white, his dam is Bramble Jemma, a black iset Shetland. There are people who say the Natural colored BFL sires will produce more horn growth in their offspring than the white BFL sires. We wethered all our other Mule ram lambs, so I can't say for certain how their horns would have turned out. Below is Socks, a Shetland mule who was wethered at a couple weeks of age, no horns - very BFL influenced fleece. Too bad his sister didn't get that fleece!


And in the photo below you see our other intact 3/4 BFL ram lamb, T-Bone, and his very limited horn growth. The white 3/4 BFL ram lamb pictured in my last post has the most horn growth of any of our crosses (he was sired by a NC BFL ram and his dam was sired by the white BFL).
I am very impressed with T-Bone, he weighed 13 lbs at 1 day old and he's probably about 85 pounds now at four months (I wish I had a scale!). All of our 3/4 ram lambs were singles out of our yearling Shetland Mules. And they are all very nice sized. I am impressed with the mothering ability of the Shetland Mules.

While I was outside getting more horn shots from the Mules, and I took a few more shots of River Oaks McIntire. I registered him as shaela, but now I'm thinking he might be dark brown. I just love this guy, he reminds me a lot of his sire. Too bad I'm not keeping horned rams anymore. I've got to get him halter trained and picked clean of VM in time for Jefferson!

The other day I noticed the hydrangea blossoms were pretty big this year. You can see I'm not on top of things around here, this blossom is no longer white, but I thought it was worth taking a photo of. There are several like this as big a plates. I'm no expert on hydrangeas, maybe they are supposed to be that size? In the past our have more like softball size.



5 comments:

  1. I would love to have a horse trailer like that! I'm getting real nervous about loading up a bunch of sheep and driving my trailer to Jefferson all by myself....

    Can't wait to see you!!
    I'm thinking of getting active in MSSBA again ~ would you be interested in working with me???

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  2. I know how you feel about driving all that way with the trailer alone Nancy. At this point, I don't think I'll take the horse trailer to WSWF. I can't afford the gas to take the truck that far - and the truck may not even make it.
    I'll have to think about the MSSBA thing...I'm glad to hear that you are considering it.

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  3. Becky - I'm glad to see you got the trailer. I think you will find it useful for more than you realize.

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  4. That is a nice looking trailer. I have a used trailer. It is a real rust bucket. But there are times when it is really good to have a trailer. And hauling BFL's is definitely one of those times. Having a trailer made it possible for me to haul 8 Shetlands to MFF along with all of my camping gear so I could live cheap for the weekend.

    I am coming to WSWF, but without sheep. I want to explore this event without the worry of caring for livestock. I look forward to seeing you there. This will be my first time at WSWF but I have been wanting to come for several years.

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  5. That trailer looks to be in excellent condition, Becky. Congrats on snagging it!

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Getting ready for Christmas Markets!

  I'll be doing two Christmas markets this year. The first one is at Sapsucker Farms in Brook Park, MN Nov. 18-19th. And the second one ...