NEW ANIMALS ON THE HOMESTEAD - WHO GUESSED SHEEP?

Now these are some very cool sheep!

As many of you may already know, we had an offer that we couldn't refuse. Some new friends offered up a couple sheep from their flock to bless us with. They knew that we were looking for useful animals to have on our homestead, and they had a surplus. But... it was a limited time offer.

We had to act quickly, because they were going to be taking them to an auction soon if no one picked them up. So once we got back home from visiting them last weekend, I had to get building a fence so we could pick some up.

Since we were not exactly sure what they had in mind for giving us of these flock, we had no idea what we would actually get. How many would there be? Would there be at least one male and one female? Because they were a gift, we didn't feel like asking too much ahead of time.

Sure enough, when we got there, they chose to gift us one intact male and one female. They might even breed this fall and lamb in the spring! Just to bless them back, we chose to purchase another ewe from them, so we ended up with a 3 for the price of 1 deal; one ram and two ewes!

You may be wondering what kind of sheep they are. You will notice that these are hairy little ones. The wife of the couple who gave them to us spins yarn, so she keeps some sheep with good hair and also an alpaca on their homestead.

The ones that we have are a mixed breed, as they are crossed between Shetland and Finn. Both of these breeds belong to the Northern European Short-tailed sheep family, since the Finn sheep are from Finland and the Shetland from the Shetland Islands.

Both breeds are "dual-purpose" breeds which are used for both wool and meat. We were mostly looking for edible lawnmowers, but the wool is a great bonus. Our girls are excited about potentially learning how to spin, and the lady we got them from even invited them to join her in the spring to learn more about it once the wool is sheared off the sheep at her homestead.

Once of the coolest things about these sheep is that they are a docile medium breed that breeds aggressively. Because of the Finn sheep heritage in their blood, they can actually give birth to litters of lambs, rather than just a lamb or twins. Some can even give birth to more than four lambs at a time.

When you combine that potential with the fact that they mature quickly and can breed at six months of age, you may notice a trend. Even more interesting is that some will breed twice per year. Yeah, they are basically over-sized, woolly rabbits!

The ewes that we got may even get bred this fall, if they are not pregnant already. If that is the case, this flock may begin to grow in the spring.

When we brought them home to their new pasture, they took off running! Just check out these blurs!

For added fun I took a sequence of photos to make a gif.

I'll work on getting some better photos during the day of these guys and maybe even making a video for you to enjoy. Life sure can be an adventure. Just a few years ago I would have never thought that one day we would actually have sheep like this!