Shady Hill Farms, Ltd.

This is the Seventh Blog from the Sheep Farmer at Shady Hill Farms.

Shady Hill Farms does not sell meats and other products (sheep skins, heirloom quality 100% virgin wool blankets) to the public but its affiliate, GreatAmericanLambCompany.com, does.

Better Farming: Better Lamb! is more than a tag line or motto to us.

Truth is we do our level best for our sheep every day at Shady Hill Farms.

Our overall goal is to provide the ideal environment for our good sheep, for if we take care of them they will take care of us. 

Lush pastures.A clean barn.Fresh straw.Rich hay.Whole grains.Fresh air and plenty of room to move about and roam.In our experience these are all key ingredients to a healthy environment for our sheep.

We watch our sheep carefully, and if one has a health issue or problem we do our best to diagnose the issue or problem and to promptly treat it.Our veterinarian is on call to help us to do that using the best methods and the latest technologies.

But, overall, prevention is better than the cure and a healthy environment and a balanced ration will prevent 99 of 100 issues or problems.

That (and superior genetics)is what we mean by better farming: better lamb. lamb.

This is the sixth blog from the sheep farmer at Shady Hill Farms.

Our premium all natural family farm produced lamb product is available only through GreatAmericanLambCompany.com

Better Farming: Better Lamb!

This blog is about getting it right every time.

This is harvest time and we have lambs to harvest.

But do we fill the trailer, do we take a full load?????

There would be good reasons to do that, to empty the barn and the pastures quickly and to achieve some real economies of scale on hauling of lambs and of product by the full trailer.

But we do not operate that way.

We take only the lambs that are at 12 o clock to harvest, only those lambs that are at market weight and in market condition.And we do not take lambs that are sick or undergoing antibiotic or other treatment to harvest.

That means that this week maybe 8 lambs go, or 9 or 10.Not the 20 to 30 that most folks would want to take.

Like I said at the start of this blog it is all about getting it right all the time, quality control down on the farm even if it costs us.

And benefits our customers.  

At Shady Hill Farms we support transparency in farming.

GreatAmericanLambCompany: Better Farming: Better Lamb! 

This past weekend one of our Polled Dorset ewes aborted.

What did we do to respond, to address this issue which threatens our lamb crop?

Did we rush in syringe in hand and administer this and that? Did we shoot first and ask questions later as so many would do, and as so many do?

No, we proceeded in accordance with our own view of best practices.

We consulted with our attending veterinarian over the weekend.

We retrieved and preserved the aborted tissue, and sent it to a lab for extensive testing first thing today.

We'll invest our resources to determine and understand what caused the abortion, if possible.Only then will we administer vaccines or other medications to our ewes, if warranted.

Situtions like this remind us that we must always adhere to our own view of best practices, we need to invest our resources to determine what happened and how best to respond, for the long term benefit of our farm and our livestock.

That's our own view of best practices.

And we certainly will not administer medications unless we have determined that doing so is in the best interest of our farm, our livestock, and our customers.

More later.