November 1, 2010

Wow, sorry about last month, folks. I've been busy at work, busy with church matters, and we took another week of vacation. We're entering our slow season so I should be better about keeping up.

The lambs went to the butcher on October 1st and the bull went on October 12th.

Here is the bull carcass, after halving, before being quartered and loaded into the truck. The carcass weighed 750# so I estimate the live weight at around 1200# (give or take 50#). The meat is ready so we'll be cleaning out our freezers and bringing it home this week.  I haven't seen the finished product yet, but the exposed ribeye face was showing some nice marbling even before cooling.  He was 16 months old and our butcher thinks we hit the sweet spot where the testosterone allowed for rapid growth and muscling but will not have an adverse effect on meat flavor due to his young age. The drawback to an intact bull may turn out to be less fat but the carcass looked encouraging in that regard. I'm sure it won't be prime, but choice would be nice.

The ewes and rams have collectively decided that it's time for breeding. They were separated by a single strand of electric fence and while the ewes have been going back and forth all summer, the rams just ducked under the fence for the first time on Sunday morning. The ewes were up on the hill with them on the boys' side of the fence on Saturday and when they came back to the barn, the boys followed. We may end up with lambs in late March. That's a little earlier than I'd like but the lambs were a bit on the small side this year. I probably should de-worm the lambs once or twice during the summer. Some farmers have had good luck with garlic juice but the lambs have to be dosed with it regularly. I'm sure we would have bigger weaned lambs if I kept the intestinal parasite load down.

The pullets (and 1 rooster) have been moved into the barn with the older hens. We haven't decided if we're going to keep the older ones. Our pen is rather small for 28 birds so we'll probably get rid of the older ones this winter when they start spending more time inside. We've finally got a surplus of eggs.

We're finally going to separate the calf from Sugar this weekend. She was in heat on October 20th so I expect her to come back in next week unless the calf managed to breed her. He turned 6 months old on 10/21 so it's possible but not likely. If she's not bred, as I expect, I think we'll put the bull calf back in with her in February to shoot for a November 2011 calf. That's a goofy time of year for a ruminant to give birth in Ohio but I guess we'll just have to go with the flow.