Still Heron Farm

Still Heron Farm We are a small farm located near Rich Valley AB, raising registered Painted Desert sheep, and Nubian milking goats.

After tearing up the waterer in -30 this winter, spring thaw brought some inevitable shifting and settling of the concre...
05/19/2026

After tearing up the waterer in -30 this winter, spring thaw brought some inevitable shifting and settling of the concrete pad. A large crater developed around the riser pipe and the whole pad began to tilt heavily to one side.

This long weekend we tore down the fence, lifted off the waterer and the pad, filled the crater and built up the ground around the pad, and built a section of fence on hinges over top of the waterer to allow for easy access during maintenance.

Fresh wood always looks so sharp and fancy! Still have a few finishing touches to add though.

Always thankful and grateful for family willing to help implement my visions! Even when they aren't fully thought out yet! πŸ˜…

With the exception of one maiden ewe, lambing for 2026 has come to an end! It was an off year for us. It was a bit of a ...
05/04/2026

With the exception of one maiden ewe, lambing for 2026 has come to an end! It was an off year for us.

It was a bit of a long winter, with waterer troubles during a cold snap, loosing a couple ewes to unlucky occurances like age related heart failure, an abortion after a vet trip to patch up an eye injury, and a small number of lambing issues including our first (and likely only) Hydrops lamb- we broke our record number of singles by over double.... Leaving us with a lambing rate of 1.4. Pretty darn low πŸ˜…

Ultimately, we are thinking the stress of the waterer going down in December, resulting in all of the construction, change of water sources, and pen shuffling, we really stressed these gals out, and it took its toll. Most of the singles were out of ewes in their prime!

This year we had a lot of firsts! We sent our first liver off to check mineral status which came back with great results. πŸŽ‰
We lost a handful of ewes and did 2 post mortems, both good for learning, and building a relationship with a new vet, to confirm we were not dealing with any herd wide issues.
We have dialled in our nutrition program more than ever, and have felt most of our grow outs were coming along nicer than previous years. This of course only added to the confusion as to why we were having so many random struggles!

Definitely felt frustrating!

With all that said, these gals have been nearly problem free for 6 years, so we will take one rougher one πŸ˜‰
We are very thankful that all our ewes are doing well and lambs are off and thriving!

A big Thank-you to everyone that has reached out with the interest of purchasing lambs or breeding stock this year! We are excited to see the interest for breeding stock increase.
Unfortunately our numbers are lower than expected, and because we are also wanting to grow and improve our own herd, we have a very limited number of ewes and lambs available.
Over the coming weeks will reach out to those who inquired with what is available.

Thank you for reading to the end!
Here's to healthy animals, always learning, and the promise of next season! 🍻

04/28/2026
04/22/2026

Thinking ahead is key 😜

This big ol beast has been here a year now! Shars and Sheep Spyder. Still in the process of growing into his guardian du...
04/22/2026

This big ol beast has been here a year now!
Shars and Sheep Spyder. Still in the process of growing into his guardian duties, but the head on this boy is just great, he deserves a shout out! It is rare when the puppy in him makes us want to pull our hair out πŸ˜‰ We have kept his socialization down with visitors, just to keep him a bit more serious than koda when it comes to security, time will tell if that is successful, but he is often behind the scenes around here. As the goat herd grows we will begin leaning on this boy pretty heavily.

Lambing has officially begun! One of our matriarch ewes started us off a few days early with a set of triples. This gal ...
04/11/2026

Lambing has officially begun!
One of our matriarch ewes started us off a few days early with a set of triples.
This gal has always lambed unassisted and has given us 15 lambs in 5 years.
These are the first lambs on the ground out of our new Katahdin Ram, so we are looking forward to seeing growth rates this summer!

The farm kicked our ass this week. After our truck went down, machine issues, some sheep struggles, and a handful of oth...
12/24/2025

The farm kicked our ass this week.
After our truck went down, machine issues, some sheep struggles, and a handful of other headaches, we found an underground water leak Monday morning at our auto waterer.

An absolutely massive thank you goes out to Travis Drilling for ripping our waterer up and fixing the leak, not once, but twice (since this old farm is full of surprises and question marks).

My wonderful dad who helped us through every broken thing, rigged us up water for the house, and spent multiple evenings in the depth of the cold and dark.

Our brother in law Logan, who spent a very long cold day outside helping re-assemble our waterer the second time.

My mom (Laurie), for keeping our heads screwed on straight, and hot meals on the table.

and LJB Auto who somehow managed to have our truck back to the farm 25 hours after we towed it off on a Sunday afternoon, so we could haul water for animals all week.

It was a long week, but we made it! Not without a few very cranky moments, but..
🍻 here's to a huge crew of phenomenal people out in the cold giving us a hand, to the old farms giving us real experiences, and good beer. 🍻
πŸŽ„Merry Christmas everyone! πŸŽ„

They have arrived! πŸ˜„ If you pre-ordered a calendar they will be shipped out shortly and you will be updated with a track...
12/14/2025

They have arrived! πŸ˜„

If you pre-ordered a calendar they will be shipped out shortly and you will be updated with a tracking number πŸ“¬

The website is still open for orders if you don't mind receiving after Xmas!

https://www.stillheronfarm.com/product-page/calendar

Address

Onoway, AB

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