Shearing Day at Wild Rose Farm!

Wild Rose Farm "U" and Friends After Shearing

Saturday was shearing day for the bred ewes at Wild Rose Farm.  We had 33 ewes sheared and now we're ready for lambing to begin!   We brought the sheep into the barn on Thursday since the forecast was for heavy rain Thursday night and Friday morning.  Yes, it did rain and the temperatures also dropped.  Shearing day was about 10 degrees cooler that we like it, but it was dry and sunny. 

Wild Rose Farm Rambouillet #403 Gets Started!

We were very pleased with the fleeces this year.  It's great to have a nice group of young Rambouillet ewes and Dorset x Rambouillet ewes in their prime!  We will have some wonderful fleeces skirted to take to the Waynesburg Sheep & Fiber Festival. 


Wild Rose Farm Rambouillet #401 Shears A Show Fleece!

Can you see the "Rambouillet" in WRF #401?  Small horn scurs and our shearer plowing through a dense white fine wool fleece!   And she's got a nice open face.  She is out of the Colorado Andrew Schafer Rambouillet ram from several years ago.  She had triplets last year ........ we retained the ewe lamb and the horned ram lamb.
I'll have fleece pictures up on the blog in the next couple of weeks when I can get to them around the lambing season!

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!

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.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch .....

I got a call yesterday from the fellow who sold us our Rambouillet ram at the National Show in 2007. He was calling to check on the progress of the lambs. Andrew breeds horned Rambouillets and sends along his web-site for a quick peek at some of his stock.

http://www.freewebs.com/andrewschaferrambouillets/index.htm

Here's a long shot of our ram grazing out in front of the barn. He has a 21.5 micron fleece.