Morning Chores

Sunrise with cloudy sky over alfalfa field.

This morning’s view. I walked across the road to take this photo.

Jacob sheep in green pasture.

Back on our side of the road, this is the group of sheep with Hornblower, the 4-horn ram farthest back on the photo. They don’t need to be fed when they are on this pasture, still in great shape in late October. If you’re new to this blog and want to catch up on the pasture renovation start at the October 3, 2024 post and find 13 others titled Pasture and Irrigation Renovation and later 8 posts titled Grazing and Irrigation starting with this one in May, 2025.

Gray tabby cat and black cat eating out of bowls on a black mat.

On my way to the barn I stop and feed Tiger and Tippy. These are Dan’s garage cats, but I started feeding them in April after his knee replacement surgery. Now feeding cats is on my chore list, because they expect to be fed earlier in the day than Dan will come out. Each of these cats showed up here at different times (dumped or stray?) and now live here.

Breeding Season gets complicated because there are several groups of sheep. The next stop is the group of sheep with Clancy, the BFL. There are two significant points of this photo. One is the blue rear of the ewe in the back. She was the first marked September 27 but re-marked with blue at the next heat cycle. Also notice all that green behind the sheep. That is all new growth after that 2″ rain we had just 9 days ago.

At the barn there are multiple groups. These are non-breeding sheep. Jade, in the back near the post, is the oldest sheep here and will live out her live as a pet. There are six others in this group. Sparky and 5 other lambs (some Meridian and some KJ Royalty, Kirby’s flock name) are here because I want to may want to choose some non-nursing yearlings next year if we decide to go to any shows.

This is another breeding group that has access to the north pasture.

Elvis is the ram with this group.

These are two young rams that I did not use to breed this year. The two horn ram is Meridian Dynamo. The four-horn is bide a wee Peregrin. He came from Oregon in September, was still on the young and small side, and I was able to get Starthist Hornblower, the adult 4-horn ram with the group in the pasture. So these guys will be in the line-up for next year.

Hunter is the two horn ram in the middle. He has six ewes.

I had two adult rams here, but one has been sold. Meridian Blizzard is hopefully sold and there is a ram lamb here that is the last of this year to be harvested for a customer.

I am ready to be done with Breeding Season, but when I look at the calendar I see that it has only been 3-1/2 weeks. I look forward to being able to put all the ewes back together and having them on the pasture together. There are challenges in putting the rams together, but I’ll deal with that when the time comes. For now they are all in separate places.

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