By the end of the week, we'll be spread as thin as I ever care to be. We'll have sheep in the Whitney Oaks community of Rocklin, sheep at Sierra College in Rocklin, sheep at the Chinese cemetery in Auburn, rams and goats in Auburn, and this year's lambs at the Elster Ranch between Auburn and Grass Valley. Whew - I get tired just thinking about it (and thinking about my fuel bill).
Hopefully, this will only last a few weeks. We hope to be done at Whitney Oaks by the end of the month. The ewes at the cemetery will join the ewes at Sierra College in a week to 10 days. Once these projects are done, we'll move on to projects in Grass Valley. By the middle of August, we'll have all of our breeding flock at the Five Mile Ranch here in Auburn (where we'll flush them in preparation for breeding).
Since we only lamb once a year (in the springtime), we try other strategies for bringing money into the business when we don't have lamb to sell at the farmers' market. One of the primary strategies is contract grazing - companies, agencies and landowners pay us to use our sheep to achieve their vegetation management goals. While the cashflow is nice, the running around is hectic.
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Mo keeping track of our newest bummer lamb If you raise sheep, at some point, you'll have a lamb whose mother won't - or can&#... -
Here's the next installment from my Sheep Management Basics talk: Overview – Why Not Lamb in a Barn? Conventional wisdom indicate... -
Cross-posted and adapted from my Ranching in the Sierra Foothills blog... As anyone who has read this blog at all in the last 12 months k...
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