Our Story | gibraltarfarm

Gibraltar Farm

North Brookfield, NY

NSIP - National Sheep Improvement Program

GBR

Breeding For Parasite Resistance

Jul 28, 2019

Breeding For Parasite Resistance

Breeding for parasite resistance has been a very enjoyable part of breeding with Katahdins, they have such great potential as far as parasite resistance goes. Everybody has their own way of doing things, this is how we do things, it works for us in our management system (100% perennial pastures during spring,summer and fall and hay in winter, no creep feed and no grain for anyone ). Evaluating the lambs start with a fecal sample, but not just any sample. Taking fecal samples

2019 Lambing

Apr 24, 2019

2019 Lambing

We are as good as done with lambing, one ewe left to go ... A total of 287 lambs were born, 243 of the lambs came from adults and 44 lambs came from 1 year old ewes. For adults we had 217% lambing rate and for 1 year old ewes we had a 138% lambing rate. Overall we had a 199% lambing rate for 2019. Ewes Lambed At the end of the day we lambed 112 adult ewes and 32 yearling (12 months old at lambing) ewes. The breakdown of adult to yearling ewes and the birth types (1 - Single,

"Bottlejaw", the little ewe that can

2019 Lamb Crop Sires

Jan 19, 2019

2019 Lamb Crop Sires

It is that time of year, breeding is done, we completed ultrasound scanning the ewes, the first major snow storm is approaching and we got time to provide more detail about the sires of the 2019 lamb crop. We are lambing in March and April and will be collecting data on the lambs through the summer and expect the lambs that we are offering for sale to be finalized early in September. We select the ewe lambs we use for replacements as well as the ewe lambs we offer for sale fr

Goodbye, Mister

May 17, 2018

Goodbye, Mister

We first met you as rambunctious 6 month old ram lamb, being mister personality from day one. When you came down with meningeal worm after just one month with us, we thought it was all over. You survived, but we were sure that the residual back leg swagger meant that there will be no little Misters in the future for us. We purchased your half brother as a replacement (although you always were our favorite), and the two of you tried to see how much trouble you could get into.

Lamb Growth

Sep 24, 2017

Lamb Growth

This year we tried to better understand the change in weight gain of the lambs. Previous years we saw that growth slowed at a certain point, this raised many questions such as: Is it related to the age of the lambs? Does it vary by gender? Does rainfall influence growth? How does temperature impact growth? This year we were better prepared to look into how the weight gain of the lambs changed. Well, that was until we had a very wet spring and summer, not to mention the coccid

Fecal egg counts, you can't do just one

Jul 26, 2017

Fecal egg counts, you can't do just one

Fecal egg counts (FEC) is a great tool but you need to use it right. One single egg count on an individual animal is not very useful but when you have samples on all the animals in a group that are managed the same way on the same pasture it becomes an excellent tool to distinguish the good from the bad. FEC are measured in number of eggs per gram of fecal sample. The most common method mixes 2g of fecal matter with 28 grams of flotation solution, add a small amount of this s

Fecal Egg Count & The Pareto Principle

Jul 23, 2017

Fecal Egg Count & The Pareto Principle

The Pareto principle (also known as the 80/20 rule) states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. It is comforting to see sheep parasites try to also keep to this rule. We recently took fecal samples from all the lambs and sent it away to have fecal egg counts done. We are doing this for NSIP and our breeding program. With more lambs to work with this year we also have more data and with more data we can see a clearer picture. We all kn

Meningeal worm prevention

May 18, 2017

Meningeal worm prevention

We have a lot of deer on our property as well as a lot of snails so inevitably we see meningeal worm in the sheep. Since we started doing daily moves with our sheep for better growth in a forage only management system we have had the good side effect of being able to identify and treat animals affected by meningeal worm earlier. We can watch all the sheep move as they pass through to the next section of pasture and see who is showing any signs of incoordination or weakness. T

KHSI Photo Contest

May 15, 2017

KHSI Photo Contest

We received our Katahdin Hairald today and found some very good news inside. I want to congratulate my husband on doing so well in the KHSI (Katahdin Hair Sheep International) Photo contest. He won first place in the Action Category with his photo "Lammie Races" He also tied for second place in the Best promotion Ewes Category with his photo "Lambs, green grass and mothers milk" #Sheep

Lambing 2017

May 5, 2017

Lambing 2017

We are done with lambing for this year and thought this might be a good time to summarize the results of lambing season (for ourselves or anybody else that might be interested), we had a total of 136 lambs. This was our first year breeding ewe lambs and were surprised that all but one of our ewe lambs got pregnant, we did not expect such a high success rate. The ewe lambs were 1 year old at lambing an made up 19% of the ewes that lambed this year. Below are the percentages of

Building Feeders for Lambing Jugs

Mar 23, 2017

Building Feeders for Lambing Jugs

Lambing is starting in less than a week and this year we are not going to throw the hay in a corner of the jug. Having a feeder in the jug can help prevent a lot of waste and building your own is a lot cheaper than purchasing a pre-built feeder. All the wood working tools are stored away (to make more room for the sheep) so we had to use what was available, that meant using bolt cutters, handy panels (welded wire panel 8 ft by 50 inch) and wire ties. I know, it sounds like a

Ewe and ewe lamb pregnancy testing

Feb 11, 2017

Ewe and ewe lamb pregnancy testing

You can use ultrasound or the BioPRYN blood test to for pregnancy testing in sheep. The benefit of ultrasound is that you can see how many lambs you have in addition to knowing if they are pregnant or not, unfortunately it is more expensive too. The BioPRYN test only tells you pregnant or not, but also is a less expensive option. For this year we decided to go with the BioPRYN test. We ordered them through DHI Cooperative for $2.40 per test, blood collection supplies included

Parasite Resistance vs Resilience

Jan 10, 2017

Parasite Resistance vs Resilience

Distinguishing between parasite resistance and resilience is very import for a sheep operation that wants to produce quality breeding stock. Probably one of the most eye opening events from 2016 was when I realized and understood the difference between parasite resistance and resilience, We are breeding registered Katahdins that are 100% grass fed, so having parasite resistant sheep is key to our farm. Resilience A resilient sheep can tolerate a large parasite load without sh

Our 2017 lamb crop sires

Jan 5, 2017

Our 2017 lamb crop sires

We are patiently waiting for lambing to start the end of March but wanted to introduce our herd sires and how they earned their place in our breeding line up. WHK 1352 "Midnight" Good parasite resistance earned him his place in the line-up. We bought ewe lambs in 2015 and when we started doing fecal egg counts (FEC) on them we noticed that the lambs with the lowest FEC were all sired by Midnight. We were lucky enough to be able to buy him in 2016. We have done two FEC on him

The difference a year makes

Dec 24, 2016

The difference a year makes

This is our second year trying to graze through the winter. We are learning a lot and respecting the cold a lot more. Our first year was an easy one by all accounts and this year everybody is expecting it to be a lot colder. December 24th 2015 In 2015 there was no snow on the ground and life seemed good. Christmas Eve 2015 we were grazing our newly planted Chicory / Orchard grass / Birdsfoot Trefoil pasture. Even thought we grazed a bit and visited the turnip field we realize

Lambs Eating Chicory

Sep 9, 2016

Lambs Eating Chicory

There is something about sheep enjoying forage that just makes you feel relaxed. This year we are finishing our 100% grass fed lambs in one of our pastures that contain a lot of forage chicory. It is hard to believe that this pasture is only about 1 year old. Almost a year ago it was a cornfield that we plowed over and then broadcast seeded with a spreader just so that we do not have to look at the bare ground. We did not have the right equipment and we did not do it the idea

Knee Deep In Lambs

Apr 17, 2016

Knee Deep In Lambs

We started the day a bit earlier than usual because we needed to get some other work done but the sheep had other plans for us. Before noon we had six more lambs in our flock which is a big thing considering we started our farm less than 10 months ago with 37 sheep. We are raising grass fed sheep so activities like flushing before breeding is not as simple as when you feed your sheep grain. Right now for the whole lambing season we had 1.8 lambs for every ewe we exposed to th

Lambing Started On Schedule

It's a boy! Our first lamb.