Our very dear neighbour behind us has allowed us to put our ram with his rams until he is needed again so that a) he has company and b) doesn’t do any damage to fences, etc. to get the other sheep. Gestation period for sheep is 6 months.

We had a surprise yesterday, one of our ewes gave birth to twins, 3 months too early…a randy ram somewhere had gotten through the fence, we see that there are about 6 ewes who look ready to pop…

Here is a pic of the first lambs of 21012

First lambs of 2012 at Journeys Rest, Napier

Ryan asked Whitey, our contact at the abattoir, to please keep one aside for us  – it was finally time to fill my new deep freeze, which has been waiting for months for one of our own sheep; yummy! So a week later Ryan asked me to please go and pick up our sheep at the abattoir, which I happily did. When I arrived there, expecting to collect it all chopped up into neat edible pieces, I was surprised to see this thing hanging there, whole and headless, waiting for me. Foolishly I asked the guy,  “how do you cut one of these things up?”, not having done this before, and he answered that I should take it to the butchery. Lets say that this sheep’s name was B-a-a-a-rr y.

I have a Corsa bakkie with a canopy, but for various reasons my canopy was off and it was quite a warm day so I couldn’t put him in the back, so Barry had to go on the front seat with me!! It was a bit of a search to find some plastic to cover him, but thankfully we did, and so Barry was put on the passenger seat next to me, with his seat belt on noggal. Quite a funny site to see! I was chuckling all the way to the butchery, couldn’t quite get over this. Pity I couldn’t get a pick of this to show you.

Anyway, 15 mins later in the butchery, Barry is all cut up and bagged, ready to go and yes, he is very tasty Ryan wont eat him though, his loss, more for me Wot a softy.

Interestingly, the abattoir only charges R15 to slaughter the sheep, I think the payment they get is in keeping the innards and head, which they can gladly keep.

Also, it only cost me R50 to have Barry sliced up at the butchery, was quite impressed with all of this.

As Napier is a small town, the butchery have told me that the next time, when the abattoir delivers the quota of sheep, they can also drop off my one so I needn’t take on any more skinned passengers

So eventually the department of agriculture sends back a registered marking/symbols which one takes to the local agri who then make up the actual symbols. The marking is then done with a tattoo gun, quite a primitive looking torture device with lots of needles making up the symbol. What a nightmare to do on full grown sheep, vier tand (four teeth) as they are referred to. Picture this, pinning down a 60kg sheep tying to tattoo its ear, which I imagine is bloody painful, not easy, hence the reason why you do this when they are young and you can hold them still. I actually found this quite traumatic – toughen up, ne!

Once you’ve pieced their ears, you rub a type of shoe polish over the holes which become a permanent tattoo. And so they are ready to be sold….

We started off with 10 inseminated ewes, which we bought from a neighbour who has prize winning sheep. All gave birth and some even had twins. Somehow, by pure luck, we saw our first lambing season through with great success, even bottle feeding a couple who grew up to be happy and healthy sheep. We bought another 10 ewes from another neighbour, so after the lambing season our numbers were up to 30 sheep (28 ewes and 2 rams).

As things go here in the Overberg, a neighbour lent us 2 of his rams for the next breeding season, and wow were they busy, 44 lambs were born, 2 sets of triplets, and the rest twins. Unfortunately we lost 9 lambs that year and have been told by neighbours that it is an acceptable number. Next year we’ll keep this number down but so we now have 60 odd sheep. And then it was time to sell some …