As I wrap my hands around another cup of coffee and the feeling slowly returns to my fingers, things continue to take shape around us. We've secured our milking flock, or the beginnings of it from the most reputable of locations -Vermont Shepherd. As their web page proudly announces - "Vermont Shepherd Cheese is the country's most famous and oldest sheep milk cheese."
So, to acquire both lambs and yearlings from such a well established farm is a huge bonus for us. No our plans as I outlined in an earlier post haven't changed, just the source of our sheep has changed, and we want the best we can get, so with these sheep coming with full milking records of mothers and probably grandmothers, we will have solid records from which to begin our operation. That means selecting 25 of our own flock to keep for at least a year so we will keep a mix of older ewes to provide lambs for us to sell next year, and lambs born this season that have the greatest proportion of Dorset in them for future breeding.
It all seems very complicated at first, but this aspect of it, the genetics and the flock management is one aspect of this life that I really enjoy getting my head around. I think once we have our 25 Vermont Shepherd sheep and got rid of all but 25 of our current sheep I will feel much more like we are on the path to proper flock management.
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