Fall is Ram Lamb Selling and Buying Time

I find that lambs tend to sell best in the spring.  People either want them for Easter, or other religious festivals, or they want them for pasture control.  Breeding in order to have spring lambs means lambing in the winter which is hard work but profitable.

Normally I breed my sheep for spring lambs and have them sold quite early in the summer, however this summer was crazy and I only started advertising them a few weeks ago.  I had one fellow call and say he wanted all the ram lambs.  He was busy and asked if I could hold them for him for another week. I agreed, but after 10 days passed I got a hold of him and I guess something came up and he could not make it.

Normally I get tons of calls for lambs, but normally I advertise them a lot earlier than I did this year.  I am in Canada and find that kijiji.ca is a good place to advertise livestock for sale, however they list sheep in with horses and get a lot of horses, so my sheep ad was soon bumped to page 7 and appears to be lost...

Another site I use to advertise sheep for sale is Ropin' The Web which is strictly for buying and selling livestock in Alberta.  I use to get a lot of inquires from this site, however it seems to be less popular now than a few years ago.

Above is one of my more interesting looking ram lambs.  The angle of the photo is awful, please forgive me for that as it does make him look a bit distorted, but his coloring and markings are cool... too bad I have a shadow on him too, I really must get better pictures!  He is a Jacob x Katahdin. 

I am hoping to get some inquires soon as fall is typically the time of year when people buy rams for breeding.  Sheep are pregnant for 5 months and most ewes come into season only in the fall (from early August to December) so now is the time for breeding.  Next year I will not put off advertising them for sale so late!  At least the pasture is good this year as we have had loads of rain, so their is plenty for all to eat. 

As my regular readers know I have mostly hair sheep as I find them a better sheep for the hobby farmer but they are also becoming increasingly popular for meat too.   Hair sheep tend to have a better resistance to parasites and they do not need shearing which can be a lot of work and a major expense which is not justified in areas where wool is not valuable.