Off To New Pastures!

Wild Rose Farm Ewe Lamb #0641 Ready To Travel

Who Opened That Gate?

Three nice ewe lambs left the farm yesterday for a new home. Their new owner is a fiber artist. We picked over the ewe lambs, looking closely at their fleeces to select the type she preferred to add to her flock. Twins out of our #142 ewe were selected and a twin from our 20 micron #98 ewe rounded out the little group. All were sired by a Rambouillet ram, so they are all at least 75% fine wool Rambouillet.
The lambs were delighted to find some nice second cut hay waiting for them in the trailer.  Much tastier than the 1st cutting they've been eating!

Two Wild Rose Farm Ewe Lambs Loaded Up  

Fleece & Farm

WRF X-bred #39

After sorting through 4 more fleeces, we came up with this one to add to our group going to the Waynesburg Sheep & Fiber Festival.  Not every fleece has the quality to be a show or handspinning fleece.  What knocks them out of the running is that they have excessive "vegetable matter", stains, or even that some don't have enough staple length.  Fleeces from the yearling lamb's 1st shearing usually don't hold together well enough to be used as a competition show fleece. 
Which brings us to another point of contention ..... have you ever had a "lambs wool" sweater that was harsh & itchy?  Remember that EVERY SHEEP WAS A LAMB at one point, so lambs wool is not necessarily going to be "soft".  If it comes from a coarser wooled breed, it will have a higher micron count (thickness) and once you get to 30 microns, the "itch factor" comes into play.  Wild Rose Farm Rambouillets have 19 - 23 micron fine wool fleeces & the Dorsets will have 28 - 36 micron medium wool fleeces.  Different wools for different purposes!   

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!

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.

Fleeces & Ribbons

Friday arrived and the 5 fleeces have been judged at the fair .....
Here is a picture of our Reserve Grand Champion fleece from our Dorset x Rambouillet x-bred ewe #29.

The results are:

Rambouillet - 1st place in class.

Dorset - 1st & 2nd places in class.

Commercial - 1st & 2nd places in class and Reserve Grand Champion fleece at the fair!

The Reserve Grand Champion fleece has been judged to be the "second best fleece" in the entire show of approximately 30 fleeces. Yea! I really liked this fleece when I tied it up last Sunday. I guess the judge liked it too.

A couple of things about fleece judging ...... the fleeces of each breed are judged against the breeds' wool standard and against each other. Judges are looking for breed character, staple length, crimp, total fleece weight, freedom from "wool breaks", handle, etc. The judge may actually untie or open the fleece to check it for uniformity and to ensure that a heavy weight fleece is not full of dung tags or scrap wool in the middle. Sad but true ---- "if there's money or a prize involved, someone will cheat"! For the record, 1st place premiums are $8, 2nd place premiums are $7, and the Reserve Grand Champion prize is the Rosette. Heck, it buys a little hay for the flock.

Getting fleeces ready to show!

Today I got 5 fleeces ready to show at the Hookstown Fair. The selection and preparation of show fleeces actually begins on shearing day. As the sheep are sheared, we take notes on the condition of the fleeces and note which fleeces are suitable to show. Each fleece is stored in a separate bag and tagged with each ewe's ear tag number. Potential show fleeces are set aside and are then heavily "skirted" right before they are taken to the fair. In the bottom picture, we see the fleece from our Dorset ewe #103 as it was dumped put of the bag. The fleece is opened up on the sorting table and areas of heavy vegetable matter, dung tags, and short belly wool are sorted off or "skirted" from the fleece. Note the pile of dirty "scrap" wool in front of the skirted fleece in the picture second from the bottom. The fleece is then rolled up and tied with paper twine for the show. In a well skirted fleece, quite a bit of wool can be skirted off to provide the cleanest possible wool for hand spinning or washing. Finally, we see the same fleece tied inside out for judging in the wool show.

This year Wild Rose Farm is showing 5 fleeces ---- 1 Rambouillet, 2 Dorsets, and 2 Commercial or crossbred fleeces. They were dropped off today at the fairgrounds, but they won't be judged until Friday August 22nd.

August already?

So, what's happened since the winter?!? Lots of pictures have been taken, but I just haven't found the time to get in here and get them up with a story line. To catch up, we had 58 lambs born in late April/early May. In fact, we weaned the lambs off of the ewes about 3 weeks ago. There are Dorset ram & ewe lambs for sale, Dorset/Rambouillet crossbred ewe lambs for sale, and Rambouillet ram lambs for sale. Here's a look at some of the lambs.