How do you spend Father's Day on the mini farm......

You drive 3+ hours to Louisiana to bring home a 3 month old sheep in a pet carrier. ha ha

This is the beginning of our St. Croix sheep breeding program. He is a registered St. Croix sheep. His name is Ramsey and he is finally home. He is just another step in our overall plan to be as self sufficient as we can. We hope to breed for selling and whatever we can't sell, process for our freezer. We decided to go with St. Croix sheep for a number of reasons but mainly we were looking for a heritage breed. Heritage breed animals do not have a lot of their natural instincts for breeding and mothering bred out of them. The St. Croix is also on the threatened list. So we feel good about helping to conserve the breed. They are also extremely parasite resistant, which tends to be a big problem with sheep. We want to do things as naturally, as possible and would prefer not to use commercial wormers. They also thrive on pasture.We are really hoping these two become fast friends. That is until we get Ramsey a girlfriend or two or three. We did not realize at the time that St. Croix sheep are such a rare breed. There are no breeders in Ms. and the ones that we found in Louisiana had already sold out of all of their ewes. So it looks like it will be next Spring before we get our ewes. We are on the waiting list now for next Spring. However, after we get our ewes, we will be the only breeder of registered St. Croix sheep in Ms.

I couldn't leave you without a picture of Phoebe. We got her her own swimming pool and she spends a good bit of time wallowing in it. This is one spoiled pig!

Newest member of the Spencer Family Farm

Here is Ramsey. He is a 15 day old St. Croix ram and he is beautiful. He will be one of the stars of our breeding program and we are so excited to get him home. We will pick him up around the middle of June. There are many reasons why we decided to go with the St. Croix breed but the main reason is their ability to thrive on forage and their resistance to parasites. Here is some other info.: St. Croix sheep

Our intention was to breed 100% registered St. Croix sheep. Well, during the planning process, we did not take into consideration that it would be very difficult to acquire a St. Croix ewe. They are rare in our area. So we are #1 on the list for one next year but this year we may have to get a Katahdin and have a St. Croix Katahdin cross. It will work out fine. Once we get our St. Croix ewes we can always sell the Katahdin if we want to.

Oh, those eyes. They are just magnificent.

This is just another step towards us growing and raising all of our own food free of chemicals, antibiotics and growth hormones.