Mystery pic

You'll just have to wait on this ....... The Wild Rose Farm fleeces were dropped off at the Hookstown Fair on Sunday. They will be judged on Friday. If you'd like to see wool from different breeds, go to the fair and you can get a good close look at all of the fleeces. The entry tag tells you the breed of the sheep. Two of our best fleeces - they would have been entered in the wool show - were sold already. One sold at the Waynesburg Sheep & Fiber Festival, and one sold here at the PASA Summer Local Farm Tour. Next, we will be sorting off the Rambouillet fleeces that weren't entered in the show to have them made into yarn later this year. It's a lot of work, but the yarn is beautiful ...........

Routine Maintenance .....

Our local farrier visited Wild Rose Farm yesterday to trim the guardian donkey's hooves. She doesn't get shoes, just a trimming. It takes a couple of experiences with this for horses, mules, and donkeys to stand quietly for the procedure. It's really just like having your nails trimmed. We are careful to wipe her down with fly spray just before we start, so there's nothing buzzing around those lightning quick feet! She is also distracted with a handful of treats while Scott does the trimming and filing.

Show Girls .....

Wild Rose Farm went on a little road trip last night to the Lawrence County Fair. It's fair season now, of course, and we haven't been to this fair in years. This is one of the local fairs that has tons of livestock exhibits since Lawrence County still has quite a few farms. We were looking for 3 of our 2008 Rambouillet ewe lambs. Ashley bought them last fall with plans of showing them this season. Well, we found them being exhibited if full fleece! That's usually how wool breeds have been shown and evaluated over the years so that the judges can get a good look at the fleece quality. There are several points that go in to judging, scoring, and ranking wool sheep. These ewes lambs were also sired by our Andrew Schafer Rambouillet ram. They are half sisters to our WRF home yearling ewes that just got the 18.6 & 20.2 micron test results. Wish there was more room to get wider shots, but you just can't back up enough!

Just Passing By .......

Passed this sign yesterday at an intersection "near Wild Rose Farm". The exact location will remain undisclosed to protect the general public ..... ;~)

Maybe this is what people mean when they visit the farm and think we're "really out in the country"!

Tests Are In!

Just in from the testing lab - micron tests on Wild Rose Farm #328 & #329, our yearling registered Rambouillet ewe lambs pictured on the July 26th post! Ewe #328 has an 18.6 micron test and #329 has a 20.2 micron test. These are the first micron test (or average fiber diameter tests) results that we've gotten from lambs sired by our Andrew Schafer "Colorado" ram. We'll send more details regarding standard deviation, coefficient of variation & %>30 microns to Andrew via email. Can't wait to see their staple length at next shearing.
By the way, yearling ewe #328 is a full sister to the polled Rambouillet ram lamb pictured on our July 28th post with his 11 year old dam, Wild Rose Farm #802. He is for sale and will be weaned soon.

Ram Reflections

Hot and humid today, in the 90's. This may have been the first day that we hit 90F this summer. Here's one of the Wild Rose Farm horned Rambouillet ram lambs at the water tank. Neat reflection, huh ?

New Ram Pics!

We got a chance tonight to get some pictures of the new Wild Rose Farm Rambouillet ram. First, the close-up "personality" shot. The sheared stripe on his right side is where the ultrasound test is taken for LEA or loin-eye area. All of the other rams were sheared after the test, but since he is a wool breed, his fleece was left on. The second picture is the "business end" for all of our sheep friends. This ram has "scurs", not horns like our older Rambouillet ram. You can see the dark spot on his head - that's the small bit of horn. Horned rams seem to sell better in the western range area and polled rams seem to sell better in the eastern states.

Successful Bidder

Well, we weren't really on a summer vacation, just a little trip up to State College for the PA Performance Tested Ram Sale at the PDA Livestock Evaluation Center on Saturday. We ended up placing the successful bid on a new Rambouillet ram for Wild Rose Farm. No pictures of him just yet because it's been raining since we got home. There was quite a selection of breeds on test this year .... something for everyone. The rams are run out into the ring for bidding and in the case of this group of Texel rams, the buyer gets to pick their choice of the rams in the group or take all three at "3 times the money" of his successful bid. Most rams were brought out individually to be sold. In this case, all 3 rams were under one ownership, so they elected to have them all in the sale ring at the same time. Imagine the meaty lambs that these guys will sire.

After the sale was over, the rams were going home to their new farms in every kind of set-up imaginable. Everything from regular stock trailers, to the new aluminum haulers, to wooden racks built in the pick-up beds, to MY FAVORITE set-up, this recycled fence pen complete with decorative gate. This rack gets the "green" award for the day for best use of recycled materials .... sturdy, light weight, collapsable, "attractive"!