Fleece At The Hookstown Fair!

Wild Rose Farm - 1st Place Dorset Fleece At The Hookstown Fair

It's fair season again and that means taking fleeces to the Hookstown Fair.  Here is a Dorset fleece from ewe lamb #118.  I can't wait to see what her 2 year old fleece will look like next spring.  Funny thing with the fleeces is that this is the only one we had to show.  The other Dorset fleeces were processed into wool quilt batts this summer by Zeilinger Wool.  This one eluded me, likely because it was the nicest Dorset fleece we had and it was in the "spinning fleeces for sale" group!

Wild Rose Farm Summer Routines

Wild Rose Farm - Snow White & Ewes Getting New Hay

It's the time of summer when things have settled into a routine ... "sort of".  Here the ewes are waiting for the new round bale of hay to be set out for them.  Snow White is really laid back as she waits!  The other exciting break for them is when we dump in a bucket of apple drops for them to munch.   After a long run of dry weather, we got a heavy T-storm that contributed to the apples falling in the yard.  They make perfect sheepy treats, but I stay with the sheep until they finish so no one chokes on a round slobbery apple piece.
In other news, our young Rambouillet ram managed to knock off both of his horn scurs in the last 2 weeks.  The first one wasn't bad, but the second one really had to be cleaned up.  How?  A drenching hydrogen peroxide rinse, drying off the stump as much as possible, a generous dump of "blood stop" powder, and finally a liberal coating of an aluminum based wound spray to cap it off and seal the area.  Then he got an antibiotic shot & also an iron shot for good measure.
Keep in mind that this is a 2 man job - it's not like they stand quietly for the process.  As they say, never a dull moment!  :~0

2015 PA Performance Tested Ram Sale Results

L to R - #2 Senior Dorset Ram, #2 Suffolk Ram, & #1 Senior Dorset Ram
Arrive In Beaver County, PA!

On Saturday August 1st, Wild Rose Farm headed up to the PDA Livestock Evaluation Center in Pennsylvania Furnace, PA for the 2015 Annual Ram Lamb & Meat Goat Buck Sale.  The facility is on "this side" of State College and we  took a fellow Beaver County sheep producer along with us.  Between the 2 farms, we ended up bringing 3 of the top performance tested rams in the sale home with us!
The #2 index Suffolk and the # 2 index Senior Dorset rams got off the truck at JAS Registered Stock Farm. The #1 Senior Dorset ram, in the front with the red halter, came home with us.

Hollystone Farm #14-78   TW RR 4.25 Adj LEA
Senior Dorset Ram At Wild Rose Farm

Our "best effort" highlights from the 2015 PA Performance Tested Ram Sale:
Suffolks - 6 rams sold, #1 index ram out of McCauley Suffolks sold for $1100 on a phone bid.  Range of sale prices were one at $350 and the rest between $575 & $975.
Dorper - The 1 Senior Dorper out of Pushback in MD sold for $575. Then the 7 additional Junior Dorpers sold. The #1 indexing Dorper @ $800 was out of Black Creek Dorpers.  The prices ranged from $375 to $700 for the remaining 6 Dorpers sold.  1 Dorper was scratched from the sale.
White Dorpers - Top indexing ram out of Scott Mountain sold for $425, & the 2 others (also Scott Mountain)  sold for $400 & $475.
Texel - 7 rams sold with the successful bid on the #1 indexing Texel ram out of Clay-Nob at $900.  The balance of the 6 rams brought between $400 & $475 each.
Dorset - 5 Senior Dorsets sold.  The #1 indexing ram out of Hollystone Farm sold for $475 (that's him above!) and the other 4 Senior Dorset rams saw successful bids ranging from $400 to $700.
The Junior Dorset walked.
Hampshire - The top indexing Hampshire walked and the 3 other RR rams sold in sale order at $600, $400, & $350 respectively.
Shropshire - The top indexing Shrop out of Clay-Nob sold for $350 and the 2nd Shrop walked.
Both the Natural Colored & Crossbred rams walked.
A disclaimer here since we could have missed an exact bid amount & we did miss one of the Senior Dorset rams in the flurry after our bids ... :~0  There was also some spirited bidding on the Dorper, White Dorper, Texel, & Dorset ewes offered after the main sale, but we had to clear out to load up the rams, so we missed half of that action.
We do have to say that the sale was well organized this year and the paperwork & help with loading was quick!