Category Archives: Jacob sheep

A Foggy Morning

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It’s been foggy in the Sacramento Valley, but this last few days we have been just west of the fog. It was here this morning but is burning off.

The sheep greeted me as I went out this morning.

See the 3 sheep in the middle of this photo? Paulette is the farthest right of those three. We did preg checks on her and the other 2 sheep who are the ewes I breed in February to lamb at State Fair in July. When we brought her in I thought that she had quite a belly for an open ewe. She’s pregnant with triplets. No State Fair for her this year. Faulkner had got through the fence a couple of months ago and although I gave her an injectable form of the “morning-after” pill I guess it didn’t work. So those are three little BFL/Jacob lambs she’s carrying.

Why is Amaryllis standing here when everyone else is in the pasture? Those of you that know the flock will probably guess.

Because that’s where Stephanie is.

Here are the rams. In the foreground left to right: Ruby Peak Linden, Meridian Clapton (lambs)

Center: Meridian Fogerty (lamb)

Background front to back: Mud Ranch’s Hudson, Sweetgrass Clint, Puddleduck Sullivan (lamb).

This is Faulkner and his Jacob buddy, Jerry.

And, of course, Rusty is out here with me–staring at shadows.

Where will you be Feb. 21?

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I know where I will be. I just transferred the breeding notes from my clipboard to my 2012 calendar (while learning to use the calendar in my Mac) and look what I discovered. I knew that a lot of sheep were bred all at once, but it’s more striking when I see it in this format.

That’s 23 ewes due in a 5 day span. I usually aim for March 1 lambs, but I got antsy and thought I’d start breeding a week earlier. After all, my friends will all be lambing and I’ll want to have a few of my own before the rush starts in March.  I thought wrong. There are about 30 more in addition to those first 23. I guess I’ll be warmed up by the time they lamb.

I’ve been finishing up registration applications for this year’s lambs. It’s interesting to look at baby photos of sheep.

This is 11038, now known as Rosie. Notice how her pink nose develops pigment as she gets older.

Rosie was developing very nice horns and I had my eye on her from the start as one I wanted to keep. She got in the ram pen when she was a few months old and, in trying to get back with the ewes, she broke off both horns. They are still stubby, but stout.

Here is another. This is ram lamb 11094, the last ram of 2011, and sired by Sweetgrass Clint.

He is named Clapton and will be the sire of several lambs in 2012.

Clapton doesn’t look quite so nice after shearing…

…but his fleece is sure pretty.

Faulkner & Jerry

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I haven’t had time to sort many fleeces yet. In fact, other than those I’ve sold I have only skirted the ram  and wether fleeces.  But I’m very happy with those that I’ve seen.

This is the fleece of a wether, Jerry. He is mostly black, not a good Jacob trait, but he will get to live his life being Faulkner’s companion. Faulkner is the BFL ram and I am not going to subject him to living with a group of rams with huge horns.

Faulkner and Jerry

This is what Faulkner’s fleece looked like “on the hoof”. This photo was taken shortly after I got him so it had grown a lot since then.

This is a lock after shearing.

Less than a minute in hot soapy water.

Silky, white locks!

 

Lambtown

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Another post by Robin. I don’t have time to straighten out WP right now. I think Rusty needs his own e-mail address to fix this problem.

Lambtown was Saturday. What an incredibly busy day! There is no way that I could have made it through the day without the help of friends. The event was packed. Here is my booth before the doors opened.

I had the booth pretty well set up the night before when I was asked to move it 18″ to the north because the neighboring booth wasn’t given the allotted space. Can you imagine? I was not happy, but after dealing with it, I didn’t feel so guilty about spilling over into the empty space next to me. Next year I think I’ll get two booth spaces, but I’ll definitely need a full-time person to help. Friends, Aaron and Alison and Jackie helped with the booth and we even pulled in a few other friends who happened to be walking by.

I taught a rigid heddle class in the morning and had five students. We crammed as many new techniques into that class as we could in 2 hours. Everyone wove a sampler with Italian hemstitching, Danish medallions, and warp and weft pick-up.

There was also a sheep show. Tina helped in the show ring and Dona and Rick spend most of their day monitoring the timing of the show. I thought that we might be showing in the morning, but there were enough sheep entered that we didn’t show until later in the afternoon. This is the yearling ewe class. That is Meridian Vicki in second place. She was Reserve Champion ewe in the Primitive Breeds division.

Tina brought her service puppy in training to Lambtown. Isn’t Golly cute?

Thanks to Dona for the last 2 photos.

Sorting ewes

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This is getting confusing. This post is by me, Robin, even though it says it’s by Rusty. He has his own blog and did not write this post and this is not his blog. Rusty’s blog is here.

Today was breeding group sorting day. Many thanks to Dona, a Farm Club member, who helped me all afternoon (and brought cookies).All the lilac ewes or those with lilac parents went to Hudson’s paddock. He didn’t waste time. Three of seven are marked.

Clint whispering sweet nothings to Delilah.

Faulkner  wasn’t to be left behind.

The Puddleduck ram lamb (I still haven’t decided on a name) is on the left in the picture. He isn’t quite 6 months yet and was given a challenging group of girls to work with. He’s starting to get the hang of what he is supposed to do, but the ewes are giving him a hard time.

Ruby Peak Linden and Meridian Clapton are the other two ram lambs I’m using. Linden seemed more interested in food tonight but Clapton got right to business although he had to work hard to reach the adult ewes in his group.

It’s fun to see the colored rears and know to expect lambs in 5 months, but I hope we have some good rains before shearing day so the marks won’t be so obvious.

A plethora of rams

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It’s almost time to put the rams in with the ewes. I’ve been looking at my sheep list to match up ewes and rams. It makes the most sense for me to use only 2 or 3 rams. Keep the biggest group in the pasture and smaller groups where they will need to be fed hay. But I have an exciting stable of new rams to try. So I think that I’ll have more groups than is really smart.Faulkner is going to be used on some older ewes . This is an experiment to see how crossbred lambs will do for the meat market. My guess is that they will be ready for market sooner and at a higher weight. There may be some interesting pelts as well. Faulkner is a character. Dan says that he reminds him of the Grateful Dead. “truckin’, just keep truckin’ on”.”Hey, man, good grass.”

Mud Ranch’s Hudson is a lilac ram with spectacular horns. He will be bred to all my lilac ewes or those with lilac parents. It’s been several years since I’ve had lilac lambs and Hudson will give me plenty. (Most Jacobs are black and white. Lilac refers to a color other than black–usually a brownish-gray.)

This is the yearling, Sweetgrass Clint, ready for some ewes. He came from Michigan last year.

Clint’s son, Clapton, out of Meridian Jazz. He will be 6 months old the first week of October. I hope he’ll be ready to work soon. His horns and fleece look great. I would have shown him at State Fair but somehow he knocked out 3 teeth just prior to the show. You can’t take a sheep with a bloody mouth to the fair. Clapton is an “E” generation lamb and I’d like to breed my unrelated E ewes to him.

Here is one of the new ram lambs, #337 is from Ingrid Painter’s Puddleduck flock in Oregon. He needs a name.

 

Ruby Peak Linden is also from Oregon. These two rams lambs will be 6 months old in mid-October. I’m going to give them both some ewes and see what happens.

If I haven’t forgotten anyone that is already 6 rams, which is more than enough. So these ram lambs may have to wait until next year unless someone buys them this season. This is Meridian Siskiyou, sired by one of my favorite rams, Tioga.

 

This two horn ram has a great horn spread and I’ll probably keep him around to see how he turns out.

I like the horn spread on this ram also. I like his color, also, even though he is on the dark side and should not be used with ewes who are also very dark. His wool looks quilted in this photo but is is not when you see him in real life.

 

 

 

 

Boys will be boys

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You saw the photos of the new girls in the flock and how they ran out to greet the rest of the sheep. I brought home two ram lambs as well.

This is Puddleduck 337 (needs a name) and his fleece is below.

This is Ruby Peak Linden.

I put 337 and Linden in the pen with Faulkner and his little buddies (4-horn April ram lamb and 2-horn wether). I figured that there wouldn’t be any issues because the lambs are still on the young side.

Linden, however, thought that he could take on the big guy.

 

 Faulkner finally had enough of the pipsqueak and decided to put him in his place.

One more time for good measure.

That should do it. Now they can be friends.

Wonderful awards

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This is the “official” photo of me with Meridian Vicki and the judge, Martin Dally. (Thanks, Shannon.)

This is a close-up of the award.

Shannon Phifer created needle-felted awards for the Champion Ram and Champion Ewe of the show. I am so pleased to bring this home. Did Shannon have some prior insight? We think that the sheep on the award looks very much like Vicki.

But there is more! The winning sheep was also awarded a halter with a personalized tag!

More from AGM

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Yesterday was a busy day at AGM but I didn’t get many photos as I was involved in many of the events.

I did not have room to bring rams to AGM so took a few photos of the ram show. This is Shannon and Joan with their ram lambs. Shannon’s ram, who is going to live with Joan, won Champion Ram.

Rams are sometimes challenging to show.

I will have to wait until friends send me photos of the ewe classes. My yearling ewe won Champion ewe. I was also pleased that the ewe lamb I entered in the Best Fleece class almost won that class. The judge looked at my ewe lamb and Shannon’s ram lamb, went back and forth between the two, talked about them both, and then gave the award to Shannon (whose ram is truly beautiful). Even though in the real life of livestock production awards don’t mean anything (and some of the best producing sheep would never win a ribbon) it’s sure fun when you do win!

Workshops were scheduled after the sheep show. I taught a rainbow dye class to about a dozen women.

Shannon taught wet felting…

…and needle-felting.

We enjoyed excellent meals and company and meeting new people and a lot of sheep changed hands. I had a full load on the way back (in fact one more sheep came home with me than I took north) and didn’t dawdle on the drive. The temperature hit 100 by the time I was in Redding and didn’t go below 90 until I was about 45 minutes from home. (I have A/C, but the sheep do not.) I think this was the fastest trip I’ve ever made back from the Eugene area. It was about 7 1/2 hours (including my 9 minute nap at the Rogue River rest stop).

Back in California.

Faces on the Farm

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 A ram lamb with a nice horn spread.

Hudson surrounded by the young rams.

A ewe lamb.

Amaryllis

 

More amaryllis

Paulette and her lambs born at State Fair.

 Just another pretty face.

Stephanie.

The youngest ram lamb born in the spring and Clint’s only son. He would have gone to the State Fair except that he injured his mouth and lost three front teeth the week before.

 Faulkner.