For almost four weeks I’ve had sheep in five different breeding groups plus a non-breeding group. It doesn’t take long before I’m tired of dealing with that. By last Friday all the ewes were marked and very few were being re-marked so it was time to pull out a few rams.
Dragon, this 4-horn ram, went back to his farm up the rad from here. Buster went with him to finish up the job there. Joker went back to the ram pen with Marv (after spending a couple of days in the “buddy-up” pen, or “jail” as I also think of it.
Faulkner was a lucky ram who got to stay out with his ewes for another month or so. However, he knew that something was going on in the barn and thought that maybe he should really have a few more ewes on his side of the gate.
All the rest of the ewes were consolidated into one group and spent some time meeting and greeting.
“How are you Fran? Did you hear what happened to…?”
“What is that scent you’re wearing?…Who have you been hanging around?”
Catalyst is the Jacob ram who stayed out with the ewes. He spent some time introducing himself to the ewes who had been in the other groups but they all ignored him.
Here is he after another couple of ewes were turned into the field.
Happy boy even though he’s not seeing any action.
Starthist Dragon is on loan from a friend. When I evaluated his lamb fleece a couple of years ago I was impressed and Trish remembered that so offered him for the season.
Bide a wee Buster came here from Oregon last June. He was so small I had my doubts about him being up for the task this month, but I should have had faith.
Faulker is ram #5. He is a Bluefaced Leicester (BFL) and sires the black (brown) lambs. He is the big guy in the center of the photos. His lambs are larger than the 100% Jacob lambs and are mostly sold for meat although they have very pretty fleeces and also wind up in some spinners’ flocks.
Faulkner enjoying some time with the ladies.
Isabelle, marked by Joker.
Skye is in Catalyst’s group.
Jillian is with Faulkner.
Joker looks a little disheveled after a few days.
Buster has his work cut out for him to reach those big ewes…
…and needed a nap after the first morning out.
One lamb.
Two lambs.
Three lambs. All were up and nursing quickly. Good job, Ears!
…I knew that, however unlikely, a lamb could get stuck between it and the wall. 
Sure enough, that happened while I was still sitting there.
How about this foal that was just 12 hours old?
He was born down the road at my friend’s house. We have to wait 5 months for lambs to be born. This foal was due on January 29 (11 months) and was just born today on February 22! That is almost a year of gestation for the mare.
Mae from the front.
Mae from the rear.
Shelby from the side.
Shelby from the rear.
Esmerelda, front.
Esmerelda, rear.
Athena from the front.
Athena from the rear.
Marilyn is due 2/26. 
Here she is from the rear. She was shorn in November. I sure like the recently shorn views better for this.
Noel is due 2/27.
Fran is due 2/28.
Fran from the rear.
Spring isn’t due until March 5 but she always looks so big I thought I’d just give you a view.
Who is this? Trick question. That is Delight who is nursing twins.
And here is Dazzle with her single. You can sure see the difference in body condition of ewes that are nursing month old lambs.
Last week as it was drying out I put the flock on the pasture and then turned the new lambs out with them.
One thing I watch for when putting lambs in the pasture for the first time is that they don’t get tangled up in the electric fence. 
I’m glad to see when they touch the fence because I know that they will have learned to avoid it.
This looks worse than it was. The whole incident was very brief and then…
…the nearby lamb was off and running.
Bertha, one of the yearlings thought this looked like a good game…
…so she kept up the chase.
Eventually this lamb found his mom who hadn’t been particularly concerned about him.
In the meantime the other two lambs stuck near their mom. I’m going to use colored tags again this year to give me more information about the lambs at a glance, mostly about sires. However, these first three have an unknown sire and the ram lambs (gorgeous as they are) have been banded. That’s what the red tags mean–wether.
He put in extra posts that we happened to have around and welded rebar between the posts on the two sets of fences to help make things sturdier. We hoped that it would make the whole thing more secure.
Fence posts look good. 
The wire, not so much. He was completely stuck in the welded wire and the high tensile wire. This is Alex, by the way, whose horn I just trimmed in the last post.
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