Flock Management

Hoof-trimming, deworming, vaccinating, and administering drugs are all done on an as needed basis.

All sheep are vaccinated yearly. During lambing, all ewes are dewormed and trimmed when they leave the jugs.

Dewormers are alternated to avoid parasite resistance to drugs. Lambs are given selenium, tagged, docked, and digitally recorded when they leave the jugs.

Purebreds are tattooed once they have passed our culling criteria usually at around 6 months of age.

Record keeping is vital to selecting animals as breeding stock or replacement ewes.

Ewetopia Farms currently use a stock recorder for electronic gathering of sheep data and this is backed-up with written files.

Selection criteria is determined electronically initially to monitor rate of growth, ewe prolificacy, and ram performance. This is followed-up with a visual inspection of the animal to make sure it adheres to breed standards of conformation and has no visual defects or bad traits which may influence health, breeding, and future generations.

Breeding and lambing seasons occur once a year at Ewetopia Farms.

Rams are introduced to ewes in late summer for lambing in February through April.

Through the use of chutes and electronic scanning, sheep are sorted into breeding groups which pair the ewes with specific rams in order to facilitate production of superior lamb traits (namely long-loined, wide-rumped, medium-sized lambs with good top-lines, conformation, rate of growth, and prolificacy).

Once rams are removed, all sheep are pregnancy scanned. Open sheep are given another opportunity to breed and bred sheep are then moved to new pens where they receive special care until lambing.

They remain in each pasture for 5 days. Each group of sheep has 6 pastures to rotate through so after a month, they are back in the first pasture. This extends the grazing season for the sheep as pastures never get over-grazed.

This is also a non-invasive method of parasite control as the sheep are off each paddock long enough to break the worms' lifecycle.

Six weeks before lambing, ewes are vaccinated with Glanvac6 which will pass on to the lambs in the mother's milk and protect them from certain diseases until they receive their own shots at weaning.

Two weeks before lambing the sheep are shorn. This makes it easier for the lamb to nurse and helps prevent mother's from laying on their lambs. It also helps the farmer see the condition of the ewe's udder and check for uneven bags and mastitis

When lambs are born, each mother and lambs are placed in individual jugs where they are monitored closely for several days before being released into a small pen of several moms and babies.

These groups are monitored for another few weeks until they are moved to another barn with a larger group of ewes and lambs. This process continues until weaning.

The gradual transition into larger and larger groups has reduced coccidiosis in lambs to practically zero.

Lambs are sorted for market or breeding stock and ewes are put into a group to regain their condition after lactation.

And the process starts again!

Hands-on care is an important part of our operation. Having friendly, easy to manage sheep benefits the flock and the handler. Most of our hundreds of sheep are recognizable as individuals and there are always a few that have won us over with their personalities.

It is these interactions with the sheep that make the long hours, heartaches, and hard decisions worthwhile and satisfying. Seeing some of the sheep move on to other farms and receiving postive feedback from those customers is the "icing on the cake"!

This encourages Ewetopia Farms to keep striving for the best in animal and customer care.