I have just spent an hour trying to upload photos to Flickr so that it would be easy to share a lot of photos. Every time I do it then I get a message that says I’m deleting the album. Grrrr. So I’ll post a few here now and maybe more later.

Shelby, Mary, and Dona helped on show day. Shelby helped clean up and show sheep, Mary held down the fort at the display/sheep area, and Dona took photos.

Dan is showing Meridian Granite and I have Sweetgrass Clint in the Yearling Ram Class.

Here is what the rest of the class was like. Shetlands, Jacobs, and St. Croix (hair sheep). The Shetland at the front of the line in this photo won the class and, ultimately, Champion Ram of the Primitive Breeds Show. Granite was second in this class and Clint was 5th.

My entries in the ram lamb class.

Vickie and Hot Lips in the Yearling Ewe class.

Leaving Shelby with three sheep while Dan and I got two more for the Flock class.

That’s Granite on the right, two yearling ewes, and two ewe lambs. We didn’t shine in these classes, mostly placing in the middle. That’s a little disappointing, but we always tell people new to showing that it doesn’t really matter what the judge says. Many judges aren’t that familiar with Jacob sheep and it seems pretty hard to judge this kind of class anyway. On the other hand, if you win, you certainly tell all!

This is a view of the sheep pens…

…and the display area.

Notice the ribbons here. This is what I work hard to get. I have been trying for 4 years to win the Open Sheep Marketing Award. I got 2nd this year again (although placed over last year’s winner), but was awarded Best Program, Best Educational Presentation (Sheep Herdsman), and 2nd in Best Educational Presentation over the whole 3 weeks of the fair (including all the species shown). So I’m pleased with this and there is always next year to get to #1. Farm Club, are you ready?

We left only 1/2 hour behind schedule this morning to get the sheep and the exhibit to the CA State Fair.  I figured that was not bad after about 4 1/2 hours of sleep!

I went to the fair with much more of a plan than I usually have so I thought that set up would be easy. No! My 8′ x 2.5 sign needed better support than I had planned. Space was a bit different so I had more to fill . I left out some of the elements that I had planned to use because it was starting to look cluttered.

Thank goodness I have such wonderful friends who will help. Too bad that I don’t have photos of them but we were too busy to stop for photos. Thanks to Jackie, Chris, Mary, Dona, and Rick!!! And thanks to Tina and Alison for the design help!

Here is a young fair-goer drawing in the spots and horns on a sheep drawing we provided.

Faulkner, my new Blue-Faced Leicester ram, had a large swelling (about the size of a grapefruit and with no visible injury) behind his rib cage. I noticed it on the weekend and my veterinarian looked at him on Monday. The vet thought that she could feel an opening in the muscle tissue and recommended that I take him to the UC Davis VMTH to surgically repair it. Sure enough, there was a 2″ opening that required a much larger opening by the time it was done.

So what could cause this hernia? My vet and I had a talk about what she calls “veterinary practice builders”, one of which could be this:

Hudson and Faulkner have not been fighting, but it is my vet’s opinion that just a quick toss of this head could cause damage to someone else.  Most of my other 4-horn rams have had curved top horns so I wonder if injuries are more common when a ram has a set of spears on his head.