Wow what a great shout out for me. Thank you. Yes our Dorpers are fed well, they don’t get very much grain as they will get over conditioned fast. One of my biggest heaviest conditioned ewe, has triplets every year for the last few years. By the time I wean her lambs she is half the ewe she was. I figure she needed that extra condition to raise those three lambs on her own. Your also right about shedding quality, I have some ewes that are completely shed out already, some that are half shed and some that shed later. I find my yearlings don’t always shed well their first year, so I tend to clip their backs myself to get them started. Over the years I’ve kept replacements on shedding quality, as well as conformation as that’s what is really important to my buyers. I’d also say over half the rams I sell for breeding go to commercial Katahdin flocks. It is probably one of the best crossbreeding for good market lambs. When I first started sending a few market lambs to our local butcher shop, the butcher asked to speak to me when I picked up my order. He said that my lambs looked different than the other lambs during cutting. Apparently Dorpers marble the meat a bit differently than other breeds and also have more meat in the hind. If they are proper Dorpers they have double muscling in the hind so it helps especially in crossbreeding with a finer breed. I have many katahdin friends that have my rams and are seeing incredible results. Also note, dorper rams breed in any weather and they also keep lambing windows really close as they don’t hardly eat until their job is done. Also in one of your other videos you talked about breeding ewe lambs, I find dorper ewe lambs don’t mature quit as fast as other breeds. I let my ewe lambs reach their full growth before I expose them to a ram. I prefer a first timer having a nice set of twins over a big single any day and if I leave my ewes a bit older them seem to have twins more often than singles. Again thanks for saying my Dorpers look like yours. I think we both like nice solid ewes😉
Zabrina do you have any social media that you share your journey with dorpers? I would love to follow along and learn more! I have just started with my beginning flock this spring ;)
We had a dorper who did the same and was skin and bones by weaning. I prefer my sheep to be a little over condition prior to lambing for that reason. You saw our sheep after shearing - skinny! Those are ewes who are producing the best lambs. You deserve the shout-out. Your Dorpers are just what they should be, in my opinion! Thanks for adding about the double muscling. They also breed out of season which I think we both forget to say😆
@@EwetopiaFarms yes skinny happens to the ewes that are doing the best jobs. I’m going to try to wean my lambs at three months old this year if everyone is holding their condition and no one is lagging. The lambs seem to start really digging into the hay and creep ration at the best time when the ewe needs to slow down. A skinny dorper after weaning their lambs, bounces back fast so I never worry about the skinny ones.
Very interesting Lynn!! Haired sheep are something I knew nothing about, so your topic today was very educational for me!!! Thanks for sharing and stay safe!!
I knew Lambert would do well and adjust. He just needed some reassurance from you and some time. Not every lamb matures at the same rate I suppose. Sort of like us people. Thank you for the update on Lambert. That was a lot of information about the different brands of sheep of which I did not know. Like my dad used to tell me,”Learn something new everyday and you will have a fuller life.” And, that’s exactly why I am here, eager to learn about sheep. I love being here everyday. Thank you Lynn and Arnie for opening your farm and sharing with us. This homebound lady appreciates your efforts. 🐑♥️
I am glad you learned something new. I agree that you should learn something new all the time. Lambert has totally adjusted to his new buddies now but still comes up for a hug each day 🙂
1. Hair sheep are heat- and drought- tolerant. What about cold-tolerant? 2. A whole sheep is compostable. What about wool or hair? 3. Why did you get out of hair sheep? I love your channel so much.
Nice, Educational scientific video, Lynn!!! I love both, Deer, Goats, And, Sheep, It's amazing how many breeds of, Sheep, There are on the, Earth... 😍💕🖤🐑🐐🌍
Yes, there are so many breeds of sheep although some of them are slowly dying out as markets are trending to certain types of more commercially viable breeds.
As I was watching your video....and got to wondering what belly wool is used for. I looked it up. Because I've always wondered. They make pellets out of them to be used in gardens because they retain moisture, slow release fertilizer, and they repel snails and slugs. And....they are very expensive!!! Haha, what you consider trash, is in reality being sold probably for more than the clean wool. That's crazy! Neat info, since I am a gardener as well. Never had heard of wool pellets. Learned something new today. :)
Thanks for that information. I have heard about wool pellets but have never actually seen any. And you are right, they are probably making more off our scrap wool than the good stuff!😆
Good morning Arnie and Lynn. School day today. Love it. Very I interesting to hear about hair sheep. I guess I thought sheep all had wool that needed shearing. And having a sheep shed really is different. They have bonuses to them when it comes to feeding and shearing. But I totally agree with you on still being conscious of how they are cared for so they to can develop to their fullest potential. The pictures you showed of your Dorpers were beautiful. And I can see how they won. I believe that if you treat your animals well their whole attitude is different and we become the winner of the beauty they were intended to have. I am still drawn to the wool sheep. They have such an amazing look and even when they grow up they have lamb qualities. Finishing up the video with Lambert was perfect. What a sweetheart of a ram. Thank you for all that information. Wonderful as always. Have a good day. Big hugs to you both. 🥰🥰🥰
One of the reasons I chose the Jacob sheep is that they are more primitive, and it sounds like they share some of the characteristics of Dorpers, in that they do browse on everything. They go to town on the bushes, trees, and weeds. That was the way I got my dad to agree to my having sheep (I sound like a teenager instead of someone closer to retirement than college!). And in the first year they did a really fine job of eliminating about half of the underbrush in a five acre mixed-forest-and-meadow plot of land. They girdled a lot of the Mountain Mahogany trees. They love to graze as well, but their first job was to clear out the underbrush on five acres of unimproved land that had seen a forest fire about 40 years previously. My niece when she moved in was appalled at what the sheep had done because she has an associates degree in botany or something, and so she felt like I was allowing my sheep to destroy the entire ecosystem and that they were to blame for a lot of the ecological succession that had been taking place as the area went through the reforestation following a burn-off event. The foundations of our property is just jumbled pyroclastic rocks (lava) with thousands of years of build up of sediment and etc., but my niece sees that as erosion, when I see it as the opposite of erosion. But she must be the expert (despite the fact that my husband has a BS in Biology and an MS in Botany). Since I got the sheep we've cut down 100 water-wasting cedar trees, and they've frankly killed about a similar number of Mountain Mahogany trees. (We probably had one acre of solid Mtn. Mahogany trees). My niece also moved in during the peak year of an extreme drought, so nothing much grew last year, and what did grow was thrown off by my ignorance in pasture management. So she was blaming my sheep on foliage die off that was happening all over the mountain. I ended up putting my foot down when she told me she was going to try to turn my coniferous forest/meadow area into a deciduous forest complete with ponds. (We live on the side of a butte, no ponds other than seasonal are even possible). She wanted to tell me when I could turn my sheep out into the different pastures because of how it would affect her little projects she was starting on the property without bothering to ask anyone (me) if those projects were okay. Yesterday my dad taught my niece how to use the tractor. So I had to mention that my only reservation was that she should know that just because she CAN use the tractor doesn't mean she GETS to use it to do whatever she wants on my land. Oh, and my father has come around to the perspective that he should sign the house over to me entirely. So you were right, Lynn, the kerfuffle from earlier this year has (so far) passed. Sorry.... did it again. Oh, and no babies yet. But Moo's udder is getting markedly bigger each day. Yesterday it also started to feel a little fuller, but not yet taut.
Lol! You DID do it again!😆 Always nice to hear other people's stories. Sounds like you have a beautiful property no matter how it is managed. Now you know how I feel with our stragglers! Waiting and waiting 😁😁
@@EwetopiaFarms Yes, I remember last year how grateful I was to have the lambing over with.... the waiting is the issue.... the hardest part. And I'm not even sure they're all pregnant. BUT... it's okay. I'm actually glad that the girls are waiting because the later they have them, the more of my summer vacation I get to enjoy lambs at the younger age. I'm excited for the three girls I'm nearly 100% they're pregnant. This weekend I might lure each girl into a lambing pen and take a moment to really get a look at their udders. I have some blade shears, but I tried to use those on Moo yesterday and they're not nearly as easy as they look. I might try to get a cheap shearing set to do some clean up of the back end, but I am thinking it's just as well to wait until the shearer can come here.
I’ll be at the Maryland Sheep and Wool festival this weekend and that show would not exist without wool sheep. Super fun day if anyone is in the area. Do you all have a fiber festival up near you in Canada?
The price for wool or lack thereof caused many to try hair sheep but the shedding whilst sounding great needed addressing in larger flocks. They have proven themselves as meat sheep. Hard to catch out in the paddock though. No wool to grab hold of. Farmers need to be careful when loading large numbers as there is no thick coat to cushion the animal and avoid bruising.
Great description about hair sheep. We are getting our Kiko goats in 2 weeks and will get our White Dorpers the end of June or first of July. We also want a few wool sheep as well so we will be getting Ile de France ewes late August and they will fall lamb this October. So glad to see Lambert has adjusted so well, he's a sweet boy and has very good conformation as well!! Have a great weekend.
@Ewetopia Farms thanks, we are getting starter flock of 10 ewes and 1 unrelated ram. They are purported to be excellent mothers as well as a very meaty breed. I'm interested to see how they also will cross with Suffolk and Dorset/Texel rams. We are also getting 2 Jacob yearlings for the novelty 🙂
@Ewetopia Farms LOL! We are both Leo's so we go all in. Still working on the run-in shed, have most all the framing completed and starting roofing and siding tomorrow. Lots to do but enjoying every minute of it!
*Important to note! If you mix a hair sheep with a wool sheep or even a mix with a wool sheep your "wool" becomes totally unmarketable. Fiber buyers will not touch it!
Thank you for your knowledge ! The people we know with full dorpers & dorper cross (in tx) have horrible parasite problems with loss and lots of chemical intervention. We get 40-60 " of rain fall so parasites are a big problem here.I have st croix & katahdin. Im really new to sheep and rotating pasture every 3 days (& not returning to that pasture for 28 days) in hopes of avoiding many parasite issues. I do wish I had wool sheep though because I prefer the look and personality. And I'm a spinner so having my own wool would be nice.
Parasites and parasite resistance is a worldwide problem now I believe. Pasture rotation helps a lot but is also a lot more work. We like the sheep to go outside but each year we discuss keeping them in just because of the parasites. It is beautiful to see them out at pasture but there is nothing beautiful about seeing them die of worms.
Everything in the southeast US is lousy with parasites, some more than others. The combination of warmth and humidity is great for parasite larvae survival.
Hair sheep is more true to how wild sheep used to be, before we domesticated them and selected for sheep that had more of the wooly under fibers, and to stop shedding those wooly fibers.
Wool is softer and longer and can be spun into yarn. Hair is shorter usually, very coarse, and does not spin - looks like hair you would find on a short haired dog
Wow what a great shout out for me. Thank you. Yes our Dorpers are fed well, they don’t get very much grain as they will get over conditioned fast. One of my biggest heaviest conditioned ewe, has triplets every year for the last few years. By the time I wean her lambs she is half the ewe she was. I figure she needed that extra condition to raise those three lambs on her own. Your also right about shedding quality, I have some ewes that are completely shed out already, some that are half shed and some that shed later. I find my yearlings don’t always shed well their first year, so I tend to clip their backs myself to get them started. Over the years I’ve kept replacements on shedding quality, as well as conformation as that’s what is really important to my buyers. I’d also say over half the rams I sell for breeding go to commercial Katahdin flocks. It is probably one of the best crossbreeding for good market lambs. When I first started sending a few market lambs to our local butcher shop, the butcher asked to speak to me when I picked up my order. He said that my lambs looked different than the other lambs during cutting. Apparently Dorpers marble the meat a bit differently than other breeds and also have more meat in the hind. If they are proper Dorpers they have double muscling in the hind so it helps especially in crossbreeding with a finer breed. I have many katahdin friends that have my rams and are seeing incredible results. Also note, dorper rams breed in any weather and they also keep lambing windows really close as they don’t hardly eat until their job is done. Also in one of your other videos you talked about breeding ewe lambs, I find dorper ewe lambs don’t mature quit as fast as other breeds. I let my ewe lambs reach their full growth before I expose them to a ram. I prefer a first timer having a nice set of twins over a big single any day and if I leave my ewes a bit older them seem to have twins more often than singles. Again thanks for saying my Dorpers look like yours. I think we both like nice solid ewes😉
Zabrina do you have any social media that you share your journey with dorpers? I would love to follow along and learn more! I have just started with my beginning flock this spring ;)
We had a dorper who did the same and was skin and bones by weaning. I prefer my sheep to be a little over condition prior to lambing for that reason. You saw our sheep after shearing - skinny! Those are ewes who are producing the best lambs. You deserve the shout-out. Your Dorpers are just what they should be, in my opinion! Thanks for adding about the double muscling. They also breed out of season which I think we both forget to say😆
@@EwetopiaFarms yes skinny happens to the ewes that are doing the best jobs. I’m going to try to wean my lambs at three months old this year if everyone is holding their condition and no one is lagging. The lambs seem to start really digging into the hay and creep ration at the best time when the ewe needs to slow down. A skinny dorper after weaning their lambs, bounces back fast so I never worry about the skinny ones.
@@Shadowridgeacres I agree. Same with Suffolks.
@@EwetopiaFarms Thank you for this video
Wow! Very interesting Lynn. Nice Lambert still wants some cuddles.
Very interesting Lynn!! Haired sheep are something I knew nothing about, so your topic today was very educational for me!!!
Thanks for sharing and stay safe!!
I am glad you learned something new! I always assume that everyone knows this stuff so it is nice to be able to present something novel.
I knew Lambert would do well and adjust. He just needed some reassurance from you and some time. Not every lamb matures at the same rate I suppose. Sort of like us people. Thank you for the update on Lambert.
That was a lot of information about the different brands of sheep of which I did not know. Like my dad used to tell me,”Learn something new everyday and you will have a fuller life.” And, that’s exactly why I am here, eager to learn about sheep. I love being here everyday.
Thank you Lynn and Arnie for opening your farm and sharing with us. This homebound lady appreciates your efforts. 🐑♥️
I am glad you learned something new. I agree that you should learn something new all the time. Lambert has totally adjusted to his new buddies now but still comes up for a hug each day 🙂
1. Hair sheep are heat- and drought- tolerant. What about cold-tolerant?
2. A whole sheep is compostable. What about wool or hair?
3. Why did you get out of hair sheep?
I love your channel so much.
1. Cold tolerant too surprisingly
2. Both compostable
3. Divorce!
🥰🥰🥰
Wool is ecofriendly, weird that consumers are not using wool. I love wool. Thank you for sharing. Say hi to Arnie for me.
It is an expensive product to produce and process. People want things cheap these days 😔
Great video I run a flock of hair sheep and love them
I was always happy with mine too 🙂
I love my Dorset fleece I got from you. I’m working on it and will have results soon. Your sheep are very healthy you can tell by the fleece.❤❤❤
Great! Send us photos!
Nice, Educational scientific video, Lynn!!! I love both, Deer, Goats, And, Sheep, It's amazing how many breeds of, Sheep, There are on the, Earth... 😍💕🖤🐑🐐🌍
Yes, there are so many breeds of sheep although some of them are slowly dying out as markets are trending to certain types of more commercially viable breeds.
As I was watching your video....and got to wondering what belly wool is used for. I looked it up. Because I've always wondered. They make pellets out of them to be used in gardens because they retain moisture, slow release fertilizer, and they repel snails and slugs. And....they are very expensive!!! Haha, what you consider trash, is in reality being sold probably for more than the clean wool. That's crazy! Neat info, since I am a gardener as well. Never had heard of wool pellets. Learned something new today. :)
Thanks for that information. I have heard about wool pellets but have never actually seen any. And you are right, they are probably making more off our scrap wool than the good stuff!😆
Clever sheep
Good morning Arnie and Lynn. School day today. Love it. Very I interesting to hear about hair sheep. I guess I thought sheep all had wool that needed shearing. And having a sheep shed really is different. They have bonuses to them when it comes to feeding and shearing. But I totally agree with you on still being conscious of how they are cared for so they to can develop to their fullest potential. The pictures you showed of your Dorpers were beautiful. And I can see how they won. I believe that if you treat your animals well their whole attitude is different and we become the winner of the beauty they were intended to have. I am still drawn to the wool sheep. They have such an amazing look and even when they grow up they have lamb qualities. Finishing up the video with Lambert was perfect. What a sweetheart of a ram. Thank you for all that information. Wonderful as always. Have a good day. Big hugs to you both. 🥰🥰🥰
Yes, there are so many different breeds of sheep. It is fun to talk about some of the ones I know at the University of Ewetopia 🥰🥰🥰
@@EwetopiaFarms Lynn. I have very much enjoyed all my lessons at the University of Ewetopia. I try to always be a good student. 🥰🥰🥰
@@patriciaruppert201 A+ for sure!
One of the reasons I chose the Jacob sheep is that they are more primitive, and it sounds like they share some of the characteristics of Dorpers, in that they do browse on everything. They go to town on the bushes, trees, and weeds. That was the way I got my dad to agree to my having sheep (I sound like a teenager instead of someone closer to retirement than college!). And in the first year they did a really fine job of eliminating about half of the underbrush in a five acre mixed-forest-and-meadow plot of land. They girdled a lot of the Mountain Mahogany trees. They love to graze as well, but their first job was to clear out the underbrush on five acres of unimproved land that had seen a forest fire about 40 years previously.
My niece when she moved in was appalled at what the sheep had done because she has an associates degree in botany or something, and so she felt like I was allowing my sheep to destroy the entire ecosystem and that they were to blame for a lot of the ecological succession that had been taking place as the area went through the reforestation following a burn-off event. The foundations of our property is just jumbled pyroclastic rocks (lava) with thousands of years of build up of sediment and etc., but my niece sees that as erosion, when I see it as the opposite of erosion. But she must be the expert (despite the fact that my husband has a BS in Biology and an MS in Botany). Since I got the sheep we've cut down 100 water-wasting cedar trees, and they've frankly killed about a similar number of Mountain Mahogany trees. (We probably had one acre of solid Mtn. Mahogany trees). My niece also moved in during the peak year of an extreme drought, so nothing much grew last year, and what did grow was thrown off by my ignorance in pasture management. So she was blaming my sheep on foliage die off that was happening all over the mountain. I ended up putting my foot down when she told me she was going to try to turn my coniferous forest/meadow area into a deciduous forest complete with ponds. (We live on the side of a butte, no ponds other than seasonal are even possible). She wanted to tell me when I could turn my sheep out into the different pastures because of how it would affect her little projects she was starting on the property without bothering to ask anyone (me) if those projects were okay.
Yesterday my dad taught my niece how to use the tractor. So I had to mention that my only reservation was that she should know that just because she CAN use the tractor doesn't mean she GETS to use it to do whatever she wants on my land. Oh, and my father has come around to the perspective that he should sign the house over to me entirely. So you were right, Lynn, the kerfuffle from earlier this year has (so far) passed.
Sorry.... did it again. Oh, and no babies yet. But Moo's udder is getting markedly bigger each day. Yesterday it also started to feel a little fuller, but not yet taut.
Lol! You DID do it again!😆 Always nice to hear other people's stories. Sounds like you have a beautiful property no matter how it is managed. Now you know how I feel with our stragglers! Waiting and waiting 😁😁
Have your neice read Holistic Management by Allan Savory. Set her straight.😊
@@EwetopiaFarms Yes, I remember last year how grateful I was to have the lambing over with.... the waiting is the issue.... the hardest part. And I'm not even sure they're all pregnant. BUT... it's okay. I'm actually glad that the girls are waiting because the later they have them, the more of my summer vacation I get to enjoy lambs at the younger age. I'm excited for the three girls I'm nearly 100% they're pregnant. This weekend I might lure each girl into a lambing pen and take a moment to really get a look at their udders. I have some blade shears, but I tried to use those on Moo yesterday and they're not nearly as easy as they look. I might try to get a cheap shearing set to do some clean up of the back end, but I am thinking it's just as well to wait until the shearer can come here.
@Sasheena I had a hard time with the hand shears too. I found large scissors were much easier to use!😁
Love lambert
I’ll be at the Maryland Sheep and Wool festival this weekend and that show would not exist without wool sheep. Super fun day if anyone is in the area. Do you all have a fiber festival up near you in Canada?
Not that I know of! When I had Shetlands, we went to Fiberfest in Michigan
The price for wool or lack thereof caused many to try hair sheep but the shedding whilst sounding great needed addressing in larger flocks. They have proven themselves as meat sheep. Hard to catch out in the paddock though. No wool to grab hold of. Farmers need to be careful when loading large numbers as there is no thick coat to cushion the animal and avoid bruising.
Yes, they are definitely harder to catch. I always remember trying to grab at some wool to catch them and all I ended up with was a fistful of wool!🤣🤣
Great description about hair sheep. We are getting our Kiko goats in 2 weeks and will get our White Dorpers the end of June or first of July. We also want a few wool sheep as well so we will be getting Ile de France ewes late August and they will fall lamb this October. So glad to see Lambert has adjusted so well, he's a sweet boy and has very good conformation as well!! Have a great weekend.
Ile de France are wild ones compared to some sheep. I will be interested in seeing them!🙂
@Ewetopia Farms thanks, we are getting starter flock of 10 ewes and 1 unrelated ram. They are purported to be excellent mothers as well as a very meaty breed. I'm interested to see how they also will cross with Suffolk and Dorset/Texel rams. We are also getting 2 Jacob yearlings for the novelty 🙂
@@norwalfarm yes, they have good muscling. Wow, when you guys jump in, you go right in the deep end ! Awesome!🙂
@Ewetopia Farms LOL! We are both Leo's so we go all in. Still working on the run-in shed, have most all the framing completed and starting roofing and siding tomorrow. Lots to do but enjoying every minute of it!
@@norwalfarm So exciting!!🥰
❤
Thanks, very useful information!
Thanks :)
*Important to note! If you mix a hair sheep with a wool sheep or even a mix with a wool sheep your "wool" becomes totally unmarketable. Fiber buyers will not touch it!
Yes, that was what I was trying to explain in the video. Better to keep them all hair.
@Ewetopia Farms I almost made this mistake myself! Getting ready to shear my sheep for the first time next week! 🙏 Cheers!
@@nunofyourbizness5975 good luck!!
😂 the prizewinning dorper is so pretty!!!🤩🤩😍😍 maybe the rubbish wool can be composted to enrich the soil on the farm? thank you for sharing!
Thanks. That was Nikki. She was gorgeous! :) Yes, the wool tags do get composted and put on the fields with the manure.
Thank you for your knowledge ! The people we know with full dorpers & dorper cross (in tx) have horrible parasite problems with loss and lots of chemical intervention. We get 40-60 " of rain fall so parasites are a big problem here.I have st croix & katahdin. Im really new to sheep and rotating pasture every 3 days (& not returning to that pasture for 28 days) in hopes of avoiding many parasite issues.
I do wish I had wool sheep though because I prefer the look and personality. And I'm a spinner so having my own wool would be nice.
Parasites and parasite resistance is a worldwide problem now I believe. Pasture rotation helps a lot but is also a lot more work. We like the sheep to go outside but each year we discuss keeping them in just because of the parasites. It is beautiful to see them out at pasture but there is nothing beautiful about seeing them die of worms.
Everything in the southeast US is lousy with parasites, some more than others. The combination of warmth and humidity is great for parasite larvae survival.
@@Oak_Hollow I think parasites are a huge problem everywhere these days 😔
Hi, just wondering why the hay they are eating looks the same with the one they are stepping on?
Hay all looks alike basically. The difference is the age of the hay. After a year, the hay may still look good but it's nutritional value is gone
🌹🌹❤🌹🌹
As one of the unwashed without much knowledge of sheep, what is the difference between wool and hair?
Hair sheep is more true to how wild sheep used to be, before we domesticated them and selected for sheep that had more of the wooly under fibers, and to stop shedding those wooly fibers.
Wool is softer and longer and can be spun into yarn. Hair is shorter usually, very coarse, and does not spin - looks like hair you would find on a short haired dog
Is that Betty your cuddling
Yes
What good girls the 🐑🐑🐑🐑🐑🐑🐑🐑🐑🐑🐑🐑🐑🐑🐑are
🩵🩵🩵