Q: How much milk does an East Frisian cross give?

A: They won't give you much on their first freshening, in my experience they usually give you 0.5-1 qt per ewe with a lamb share (I’ll explain what a lamb share is later on in this Q&A), milking once a day. From their 2nd freshening their milk production will raise up to 2-3 qt(or even more) per ewe with a lamb share, milking once a day. Please note that these estimations are based on their peak production period, which could be the first 4 months of the whole lactation period. The production rate will decrease once the lambs start to consume hay or start to graze. They'll reduce the need of their mother's milk, which significantly reduces the stimulations to the ewe's milk production unless you can start to milk twice a day to replace the lambs' stimulations.

Q: How long is their lactation period?

A: Usually 5-6 months, sometimes up to 7 months if you try very hard to keep stimulating the ewe.

Q: How many times should I milk my ewe?

A: I only milk once in the morning because I'm lazy, and I found that there won't be much milk left after the lambs spent a whole day with their mom. Also I don't want to abuse my ewes because producing milk will extract lots of energy and nutrition from their body.

Q: What is a lamb share?

A: A lamb share is a way you can start to get milk early without affecting the lamb's growth rate. I usually start to milk my ewe in a very early stage after lambing, usually starting at week 2 or week 3 after lambing (depends on the lamb's condition). I separate the lambs from the mom during the night, and milk the mom first thing in the morning, then release the lambs back to the mom to spend the rest of the day nursing.

Q: What can I do to increase my ewe's milk production?

A: Nutrition, hydration, and stimulations are the most important components that you should improve to increase your ewe's milk production. A ewe's gene is not what you can change, so we’re not going to discuss gene here. If you have experiences in breast-feeding, you must know you need to consume high-energy and high-nutrition food, drink lots of water, and nurse the baby as frequent as you can during your nursing period, because that's how your body would produce enough milk for the baby.

Q: Should I hand milk or use a milking machine?

A: I have a simple pulse milking machine but I still choose to hand milk with my daughter. I like to nudge the ewe's udder frequently to stimulate her body to produce more milk, and if you've ever seen lambs nudging their mom's udder before drinking milk, you'll know what I'm talking about. So hand milking is just because I want to get the most milk out of my ewes, and hand milking is kind of rewarding (frustrating at first), but is an optional and personal choice.

Q: How long can the milk stay fresh until it starts to taste off?

A: In my experience, sheep milk cultures very easily. My kids are very sensitive to the taste of the milk, and they tend to feel that the milk tastes a bit off from day 3-4. But cultured milk can be made into cultured butter, yogurt, or cheese. Kefir might not work because the native cultures in the milk would dominate so the kefir culture would be suppressed. But freezing your sheep milk is a very good way to preserve the freshness of the milk, especially when you're trying to collect enough milk to make cheese, which might take a while.

Q: What do I do with lambs that have been rejected by their moms?

A: I'm too lazy to bottle feed lambs, and if a first time mom doesn't know how to be a good mom, I would spend a couple days, even weeks, to train the mom to naturally nurse her lamb(s). The way I do it is to leave the mom with her lamb(s) in a "nursing room"(I personally use Poly-domes), and I'll come out every couple hours to halter the mom and let the lamb(s) nurse on her, training the mom to get used to "nursing" and her own lamb(s) at the same time. It’s sometimes frustrating, but it’ll be done eventually. And I'm also helping my ewes to become better mothers. I don't do this in the middle of the night. I only do it before I go to bed, then first thing in the morning. And you don’t need to worry about hungry lambs in the middle of the night. Lambs sleeping overnight will help them grow faster.

Q: What do I feed my ewe during a milking session?

A: I used to make a "milking grain mix" using alfalfa pellets, black oil sunflower seeds, oats, and a bit of corn. A little while after using it, I found that my ewes got mastitis frequently. Then one day I had an idea. What if I took all the grains from their diet, only fed organic alfalfa pellets, and let them graze freely on our pasture? And once I did that, I found that they won’t have the chance to get mastitis without grain in their diet. By doing so it also avoid all kinds of potential toxins entering my sheep's body and their milk. e.g: black oil sunflower seeds can contain a high level of heavy metals since sunflowers absorb everything inside the soil they’re growing in. And other grains can contain a heavy level of glyphosate.

Q: Does sheep milk separate from cream naturally like cow's milk?

A: Sheep milk is naturally homogenized. It’s hard to separate the cream in one day, but it’ll float to the top in a couple days. The fastest way to extract sheep cream(and to avoid the off-flavor) is using a cream separator.

Walk into just about any grocery store today, and you’ll definitely find lots of meat products labeled with fancy words like “Grass-Fed”, “Grass-Fed & Finished”, and “Pasture-Raised.” Yet have you ever thought about if the product behind those labels really lives up to its claims?

When seeing those words, we often picture animals leisurely grazing on beautiful, open pastures.

Yet as it turns out, “Grass-Fed” does not necessarily mean that the animal is always free-grazing; feeding grass pellets in a feedlot before processing can still be called “Grass-Finished”; “Pasture-Raised” can mean only a portion of the animals spending just a little bit time per day on a tiny open area, and has nothing to do with what the animals actual eats.

In our humble opinions, the best way to ensure you’re getting the best meat possible with all those “buzz-words” actually mean something healthy for you and our planet, is to support local farms and ranches and learn from the farm owners directly regarding their agricultural practices.

I encourage you to read more on how we, The Dancing Yak Ranch, raise our animals from this link on our website. So that when you decide to buy our yak meat share this spring, you will gain peace-of-mind that our animals are:

• No grains

• No vaccinations

• No antibiotics

• No dewormers

• No hormones

Instead, they free-graze, drink clean water, build deep connections with humans, and have great lives with low stress.

In 2026, we only plan to sell yak meat shares from two yaks reaching three years old out of the total ten yaks we currently have on the ranch, and both of them are also the “meaner” ones of the herd, too! 😅

The order link is now live on our website. Please support Colorado local micro ranch like ours and support US-raised meat!

Thank you!

In the video of this episode, our 10-yr-old daughter, Millie, went out and feed our yaks alone and captured one of these “yak dance”!

Take a look!

If interested buying yak calves from us, please reach out to us via email or reach out on our Facebook Page! Thanks for your support!

Back to the video, we are showcasing how our kids (10 and 12 yr-old) can comfortably interact with yaks that are properly trained and showing a bit how we work with yak calves to get them familiar with being lead by ropes.

This video is also on our YouTube channel, with many more content there about yaks!

Enjoy!

Leon Lux, our yak training mentor, has over 12 years of experiences training yaks. In this interview, he answered 15 questions we wish we could have learned before we got yaks on our ranch.

• How do you distinguish a tame yak from one that has bad attitudes?

• How to train yaks to get familiar with your stock trailer and hop onto it?

• What’s the impact of one mean yak in your herd?

A MUST WATCH video for people that want to have yaks on their land!

Be sure to visit our YouTube channel and watch this video with chapter sections by questions, as well as many more videos to watch!

Thank you!

You’d also witness the huge differences in terms of the calves responses between first and second horn tying — they were much calmer with the rope and were just chilling after being tied! This allows us to easily work with them on the ranch.

The whole process is meant to be repeated several times as shown between video EP. 2 and 3. Each time they finish a training session, yaks will become more tamed and trust human more… as long as we don’t spook them during the training.

Hope you enjoy this episode, and please don’t forget to checkout our YouTube channel for more videos and short that will be uploaded soon!

When we’re not helping Leon train his yaks, we are busy working on our own small hobby ranch located not far away from his. In this three-part article, we are sharing about what livestock we have and how they enrich our day-to-day lives — in the field and on the table.

Any small dairy animal on this ranch must be suitable for our rotational grazing plan in order to survive while being productive. We tried goats, but they quickly proved too hard to manage, as we couldn’t use electric fences and had many problems keeping them inside the grazing area.

In 2023, we stumbled upon a great book written by Rachel Hester and decided to give dairy sheep a try. As it turns out, it’s a perfect animal for us in many ways: cold-hardy, multi-purpose (milk, fiber, and meat), and so tame that even kids can milk them with their bare hands!

Last year, we actually were able to collect enough milk for our family of four and produce butter / cream, yogurt, and even leave the whey from yogurt to ferment grains for our chickens with just three sheep in milk!

According to Rachel’s book, sheep milk actually is way more nutritious than cow’s milk. Beyond that, our daughter also built strong bond with the sheep by performing the daily routine of milking them by hand.

By witnessing and participating the process of turning grass into milk, it deepens our appreciation for the land, mother nature, and of course our cute sheep!

Once they feel comfortable in the tub, we also started training them to get used to have their horns tied against the fence, which allows us to work on their hooves or brush them in the future. In this episode we started the tie horn practices with the two new young bulls.

This video will also be available on our YouTube Channel.

Thanks for watching!

One key thing we did to make all these happen is learning and practicing the yak training practices from our mentor — Leon Lux, who developed the yak training strategies by himself with his 12+ years of yak ranching. Through his teaching, we make deeper connections with our yaks, and their calm tempers enable them to become great guardian animals for the ranch.

This harnessing of “yak power” has become the main theme of our ranch which leads us to the dream life of free-grazing our livestocks with peace of mind. Please visit our website and check out the “tame yaks sale” section to not only learn more about our training practices and get to know each yak we have, but also get a chance to bring them home with you!

Tame Yak Sale