Our Sheep

2007: Well we have learned a great deal from our first attempt at sheep. We relized that we got the wrong kind of sheep for what we are wanting to do with them. We need calm,easy going sheep, that act more like pets...the last group we got were not that way...actually they were alot like deer...all over the place. lol.

We picked up some new young Dorper cross Ewes..this is a hair sheep and will shed its "wool" so we dont' have to sheer them...great news for us. Less work. Also this is concidered a Meat sheep and they grow fast and get large.. We picked up 6 ewes that are 3 months...and 2 2wk old rams soon to be weathers (this means they have been cut..or fixed) 1 2wk old ewe, and 1 2 month ram, and 1 Full blooded Dorper Ram. So 11 total with this group..we do have 2 Ewes from our last group and they will be bred to our Dorper Ram and we will get crosses that will be perfect for our type of herding. All the boys will be weathered except the Full blooded Dorper Ram...who I have started calling 'Buster'. Taylor is going to be doing some 4H stuff with him and he will be our breeding male for all the girls. Right now we are bottle feeding 3 of the babies, and have the 2 2 month old males seperated from the girls. We are having bad weather and they need to be kept warm..so we have the 3 bottle babies in the house in big dog crates, and I get up to feed them about every 4 hours. We have about a month to go with doing this and then they will be weaned to driking out of a bucket..which will be nice. I will get to sleep all night. lol. I will post some new pictures of the new babies soon...

If you want to learn more about Dorper sheep here is a link to the Registry

Dorper Sheep

Herding with the GSD

First attempt at sheep!!

Late November a couple days after Thanksgiving we brought our sheep home. This in itself is a very funny story. Which I have writen in my sheep journal and will be posting stories on this page concerning things with the sheep. We bought 5 large black and white and black ones. All girls, they are called Ewes. We bought our sheep because we are training Tending with our German Shepherds....and befor you say, "GSDs don't herd", this is what the breed was bred for in the beginning stages. As a Shepherd, hense the name. Anyway we have met some great people and have had such a great time that we decided to bring some home and work daily on this...not to mention the dogs just love the work. I will be breeding my Ewes in the next month or so, we will be buying a Ram, and will be having babies in about 5 months. We are hoping to put a herd of at least 30 together as this is what is used in AKC herding trials. I will post funny stories and great picturs of our sheep and friends sheep on this page. We are also getting Babydollsheep, they are minature, and just for fun the dogs are not going to tend them, they also come with a couple of big Gardian dogs that will keep out all the stray dogs, and anything else that might try and harm the sheep.

SUMMER LAMBS: are Romaov and southdown(babydolls) crosses..

Update... 9/05/05: new summer lambs...sheep#36(romanov) has had twins...one black and one spotted...they are both rams and just so cute. She had them early in the morning so we woke up to them.

Update... 8/28/05: new summer lambs....sheep#51(romanov) has had three lambs..two live births..one ram,and one ewe...very cute....

Babies at a week old...

Well some of our sheep have started having thier babies. We have Romanov and Sufolk sheep, and they are know for have "litters" of babies, and are great mothers. The first sheep to have her babies is sheep#9 and she had 2 girls and 1 boys.

The second sheep to have her babies is sheep#9 and she had 3 girls.

Taylor Made Border Collies of Texas

Click on the link above to see more

Taylor has had his prize Border Collie bred and she has a very nice litter of 7. He will be keeping one little female, and has named her Star.