Our New Icelandic Sheep

Our little farm away from the city is growing. We have added two Icelandic ram lambs to our herd. They are strictly for meat in the fall since we still don't have confirmed winter housing for everything.



They are twins which I think has helped them with the transition. We still have them separated from the other animals for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it's always good to keep new animals separate and watch for any signs of illness before you put them with other animals. Secondly, I wanted the chance to get them use to me before putting them out into the larger pen.



Icelandics are a triple purpose breed; meat, milk and fleece. They are suppose to do well on pasture only, without any extra input of grains. With this in mind I have decided to give them a daily treat of sunflower seeds as a way to get closer to them. We picked them up a couple of days ago and already they are coming fairly close to me as I sit near the treat dish. They were not handled on the farm where we purchased them as they were not going to be breeding stock and they have a good sized herd. We will be keeping an eye on them to see how they do in our management system.



In other farm news, I thought it was a good idea to put the feed bin for the turkeys ontop of one of the animal shelters. However, our little buck would have none of it and managed to jump up, scare the turkeys away and proceed to eat all their grain.



But I did figure out the best way to get a goat of a shed roof, just spray him with the hose. Worked great!

By the way, there are new videos of the critters up on youtube HERE.