Still trying for that perfect lamb photo. There are either too many lambs in the background/foreground, there is not enough light (lambs love to run around at dusk), there is a lot of clutter in the shot, or I am still not in the right place at the right time.
“Fight, fight!”It’s never too young to start.
Meet the Sheep is our annual open house when we invite the public to meet our sheep, learn about fiber and hopefully become fiber enthusiasts. I couldn’t do this without the Farm Club. FC members spent the day here on Friday helping clean up and set up. After everyone left on Friday Dan did the final clean-up of moving the piles of things that accumulate on a farm (pallets, disc, un-burned burn pile) and the place looked great.
These photos were all taken by Dona on Saturday morning.
We parked in the back but there was a line before I got the sheep locked out of that area.
“Put it there.”
“It’s this one.” We selected sheep for petting and display. FC has already made a “naughty list” of ewes who were NOT to be used for petting.Signs went up. Amaryllis went into her own pen…
…with her own sign.
Faulkner is in a pen next to Amaryllis so he got his own sign.
We gathered up some ewes and lambs to put outside where people could get close to them.
Others were in a pen in the barn and FC members lifted up lambs for people to pet.
Jackie set up her Sheep to Shop booth…
…and Colleen was here with Fiber Confections.
Julie Kuroki brought her French Angora bunnies and Angora kids along with a lot of display material. (Photos in the next post.)
We’re ready for the day!
I started the last post with a photo of my “lambing board” with two entries. It’s full now…
…and there is overflow onto another board. I have 72 lambs with 3 more ewes to lamb. Celeste lambed this morning.
These lambs are #71 and 72.
Most of the others are in the field.
That’s no lamb. That’s Puddleduck Petra coming to the barn. You can meet these lambs at our spring open house, Meet the Sheep, Saturday, April 4.
I went to the barn a little after 6 a.m. this morning and found what looked like a dead lamb along with two lambs who were up and nursing. The lamb that was flat out on the ground had membranes over his face and was cold and still. I pulled the membranes off of the nose and surprise! That lamb wasn’t quite dead yet. It made a little sound and started to breath raspilly. (Spellcheck says that’s not a word, but it works for me.)
First, get lamb warm. The heat lamp wasn’t fast enough…
…so I brought it to the house.
After it started to revive I substituted a heating pad for the hot water.
Tube feeding with colostrum was next. Fortunately I had a couple of ounces in the freezer. 
I switched the heating pad from under the lamb to over the lamb while Rusty made sure he didn’t go anywhere.
I carried the whole bundle back to the barn so I could get on with chores. That’s when I set up the heat lamp. I also milked some colostrum out of the mom and tube fed the lamb another few ounces.
It got up before long and now sports the most glamorous in lamb-wear. If a ewe lambs with a single lamb in the next few days I will try to graft this one on. That will be another post.
These are the other two sets of triplets and their moms.
I wrote a post about Shearing right afterwards but now I have Farm Club member, Dona’s photos to round it out a bit more or just to give a different perspective. All of these photos are hers.
Farm Club members getting organized on a chilly morning.
Sheep getting organized.
There was a lot of Farm Club help and lots of visitors.
A wonderful thing about Jacob sheep is the variety of fleeces from mostly black…
…to mostly white…
…to some of each.
Gynna was one of our sheep wranglers, feeding sheep to the pen where Stephany had them ready for the shearer.
Alison was at the skirting table all morning teaching FC members and other visitors about evaluating and skirting fleeces.
An important part of any fiber gathering is the food. We wouldn’t want to starve in the three hours it took to shear the sheep. This is the pot of vegetable chili I made and everyone else brought wonderful side dishes.
After shearing we could enjoy lunch. That’s our fabulous shearer, John, on the right. And everyone else are FC members. We missed getting Kathleen and Jackie in the photo. It’s hard to corral this group. (And somehow we missed Rusty. I think he was lying in the sun after a long morning of watching sheep crouched on the concrete floor.)
Amaryllis was grateful to NOT be part of the action.
After shearing there was still time for FC members to do additional fleece shopping…
…and other shopping. 
Lisa was one of many FC members who helped in the shop so that I could spend time in the barn.
. “Is it over?”
In the last post I mentioned the new sheep that I got from Puddleduck Farm in Oregon. But there were only two in those photos. There were actually nine sheep in the trailer. I had intended to get a ram and two yearling ewes. It’s a long story but I ended up with 6 more ewes of various ages. 
Puddleduck Amber
Puddleduck Cassandra
Puddleduck Celilo
Puddleduck Cherry
Puddleduck Page
Here is the ram, Puddleduck Ringo.
Sheep know their sheep friends. They are in the pasture with Ringo and about a dozen of my ewes, but these six stick together.
While I’m introducing sheep this is Kenleigh’s Isadora and her lamb, Isabelle, who was born at the fair and will be staying here.
New sheep have joined the flock. Ingrid and Alan from Puddleduck Farm in Oregon delivered ewes and a ram. The two yearling ewes went in with my yearling ram, Alex. 
The flock came to investigate. 
The two new girls are at the top in this photo. I’m not sure of their names. Ingrid is sending in registration papers and their names will be listed. After everyone else went about their own business Alex continued to follow them around.
They weren’t too happy with Alex.
“Maybe this guy is better.” 
“No, I guess not.”
“I guess we’re stuck with this guy. At least he’s in the grass.”
Monday was Sorting Day (but not like at Hogwarts, although I know that some of you could probably come up with some Harry Potter analogies). It was also the first day of the Spinzilla competition. Spinners from Team Meridian Jacobs were going to gather here in the afternoon but some of the team members are also Farm Club members. Several of them came early to help with sorting ewes and rams into breeding groups.
Faulkner, the BFL ram, was first to get his girls and they happy to meet him. I knew that Athena was ready because she had been hanging out next to the fence. But so were Delight, Delilah, and Shelby. Four of the seven ewes with Faulkner were bred yesterday. (The red on the ewes’ rumps is the mark from the crayon in the ram harness.)
Next up was Crosby, a lilac ram lamb. I wasn’t going to use him this year because it’s hard to split the flock into too many groups. But transport for the ram that I am buying is now delayed so I thought I’d give Crosby a shot.
He just got back from Lambtown where he won Champion ram of the Primitive Breeds division. It was a small show, but a win is a win, right? The judge loved his fleece and so do I.
The girls, however, were not as impressed. It seems that ribbons aren’t everything.To Crosby’s credit he tried hard…
…he didn’t give up…
…but to no avail. None of the four ewes wanted much to do with him. I don’t have a photo but I did see him finally lying down by the fence looking exhausted and dejected.
Alex was ready for his ewes. He is a yearling ram whose fleece is beautiful. I didn’t try to use him as a lamb last year because he had bluetongue in the fall. Even if he could have bred, he likely would have been sterile from the high fever. 
Out of his group of 14 ewes, Alex found only one ewe who was interested.
Poor Celeste. With no one else interested in him, Celeste got all Alex’s attention. Good thing that I moved Shearing Day to January. Hopefully rain will wash out some of this color.
The rest of the flock is waiting for a ram to show up in a few weeks. Lambing season will be a bit longer this year.
Fanny was one of my favorite sheep, not because of personality because she wasn’t very friendly. But look at those horns. Striking horns for a ewe.
Here is another photo of Fanny.
This is Fanny’s daughter, Fran. She is 6 years old now.Here is Fandango, Fran’s daughter, now 2 years old. I hope her horns continue to grow as well as her mom’s and grandmother’s horns. This is Fandango’s daughter, born in March.
(Note: I don’t know why the photos imported smaller and the spaces between text and photos are so large. I don’t think I did anything different than usual. Sometimes this computer stuff drives me crazy.)
I have plenty to do but when I take my camera with me life slows down.
View behind the barn in the morning.
Cattle egrets roosting at the edge of the pasture.
White-tailed kites in the tree at the other edge of the pasture. I’ve been hearing a lot of squawking out of them the last few days. The one on the left with the brown feathers is a juvenile….”Dad, pulleeze let me have the keys.”
Views from the pasture.
This is the ewe lamb born last at the State Fair.
BFL cross ewes.
Hay truck whizzing by. Won’t you stop here?
One of my favorite flowers because it is so good in the pasture. Birds foot trefoil.
Mockingbird behind the barn.
Phyllis is the oldest sheep here.
Meridian Jacobs' Blog 