There have ben 14 lambs born since yesterday morning. What fun! There will be photos and videos when I have time. I’m having a little contest over on the Meridian Jacobs Facebook page. Guess when Summer is going to have her lambs. Tell me day/hour on Facebook and you’ll be entered.
This is a photo of Summer taken today.
This is what Summer thinks of the contest.
I taught a drum carder class today. Here are some results.
Dona added neon green to white Jacob.
Ania blended blue and gray.
Paula went wild with color mixes.
These are some of Ania’s blends drafted into roving.
Lambing is starting out more slowly than I thought it would. According to my calendar there are over 20 ewes who will lamb in the next 4 days, but I think that some of these may have been marked, but not bred when I first put the rams out. They may be a couple of weeks later.
However I am not disappointed in the lambs. I experimented with breeding to Faulkner, the Blue Faced Leicester ram, to find out if I could produce larger market lambs without having deleterious effects on the ewes. Rusty wrote about the first set of BFL/Jacob lambs in his blog. (By the way, the lambs he wrote about were born to Athena, the ewe standing in the photo in my last post. I called her Summer by mistake, but Summer is the huge one in the photo below.) Another lamb was born last night.
This is a 12.2 pound lamb!
Sparkle doesn’t seem to care that her lamb is so big or that she is not spotted.
When doing chores this morning I saw these ewes that I assumed would lamb during the day.
Summer didn’t show much interest in breakfast.
Laura looked uncomfortable.
This is Summer again, looking even bigger. No lambs yet, but I’m going to the barn now for the last check before bed.
The rams are jealous of the ewes that got to go out in the pasture. That is Hudson, Clapton , and Clint.
I spent the day in Sacramento at the annual Open House. I took my new extra wide Ashford drum carder. Wow, is it a workhorse!
I washed two fleeces last night so that I’d have something to work on and I carded half of each.
I love this new carder and I can’t wait until I have time to spin this wool.
Summer is waiting, but that’s not the season. It’s Summer, the sheep.
This is Summer on January 5.
January 17.
This is today, February 5. I don’t have a breeding date for Summer but I don’t think she lost any time after I put Clint in with her group. About a week ago I started giving her a little grain at feeding time, along with Paulette, who I know is pregnant with triplets after an ultrasound.
They both have to share their grain with the chicken who now comes running when she sees me get the grain bowls out.
I took these photos a couple of weeks ago after our one and only January storm.
Dina
Lola
Hot Lips
Stephanie
Faulkner
Amaryllis
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