New Ram

A friend has bought some young Ouessant sheep (this years lambs). She has two females, two males and a castrated male. As they are all related she is going to eat the males and we have sold her Col along with one of our female lambs. We were sorry to see him go as he is a gentle little ram (apart from when females are in season!) and nice looking with a bit different colouring (spots of white). However it is good for Kim to have an unrelated male and perhaps we can get back one of his sons one day when we need a new ram (you obviously tend to get inbreeding in a flock after a while and need a new unrelated ram)

Col and lamb happy in their new home

Initially we weren't going to replace Col as we only need one ram for the number of sheep we have and Tyson is a nice fellow too, but then we saw a Scottish Blackface ram lamb for sale and decided we would buy him. We will keep him with the bigger sheep - Mrs Jacob, Mrs Suffolk and two of Mrs Suffolks children (still to be named) and get bigger lambs from them for eating. So we have two flocks, a ouessant 'mowing flock' and a 'meat flock' for bigger lambs.
At the moment he is a similar size to Mrs Jacob and Mrs Suffolk, but he will grow bigger, I guess maybe half as big again. Old 'rustic' breeds like Scottish Blackface and Ouessant tend to grow slower than ones that have been bred to produce lamb meat as fast as possible so not sure when he will reach full size - sometime next year I guess. But he is ready to start mating now (or Oct/Nov when the sheep come in to season)
We have called him Harris - they use blackface wool when making Harris tweed.

Harris in his new home.