Meet the Sheep is our spring event when we invite the public to see sheep and watch fiber activities. I haven’t kept track of how long we have been doing this but I have pictures from 2009 and I think we’ve been at it longer than that. Meet the Sheep comes off smoothly now with Farm Club members handling all of the outside activities. I spend most of the time in the shop but I get out occasionally to take some photos.
Farm Cub members are invited to be vendors. This is Jackie with Sheep to Shop.
These are some of her handspun, handknit pillows.
Colleen has Fiber Confections.
She usually sells at the Davis Farmers’ Market.
Gynna makes socks.
Here are some of her socks knit from my Anderson Ranch yarn and Timm/Jacob yarn.
Joy sells dye plants…
…ready to use for dyeing and ready to grow. Her butterfly is made from a Zoom Loom square.
Farm Club members also demonstrated fiber activities. Alison and Doris were processing fiber, Laura was weaving on the inkle loom, and Lisa wove a tapestry on the Lilli loom.
Of course, it’s all about the animals, especially the lambs.
Betsy, Mary, Sue, and Marina helped children pet lambs.
My little goats were an added attraction this year since Julie, who usually brings goats and bunnies, couldn’t be here. 
This fence helped keep the kids in one place. Moms could relax temporarily.
I saved the small field behind the shop so that the sheep would be enticed to come to fresh pasture for the weekend.
An new activity was Running Through Puddles. This activity is not offered every year, but the children enjoyed it this time.
Now I find out that she likes watching videos with friends.
“Don’t you like watching videos with friends?”
“Yes Jade, you have nice white teeth.”
“You too, Lisa”
Zorra had plenty of cuddling while she was still in the lambing area with her mom. Lisa is a lamb cuddling Pro.
This is pet sheep Jade’s lamb (and me).
This is her again being held by Peggy. We’d really like her to be friendly too.
This is Zorra again with Sumi.
As the lambs get a little older we have other Farm Days. This was Betsy’s first day on the farm and she jumpred right in holding lambs as we ear tagged and castrated. 
I don’t castrate many because it’s hard to know how they will grow out and which might be a great flock sire for someone. Some are easy though–too much or too little color to fit within the 15-85% breed standard. This one’s horns are already touching at the base under that hair. As the horns grow they will fuse and not grow well separately.
Marina and Maggie (no photo) helped catch lambs too and Mary handled the clipboard. The lambs were all tagged with their white ID tags right after they were born but we put added a colored tag on Farm Day. I like to use a second tag for back-up ID if the first one falls out and also to color code the sire. It’s interesting to keep track of that and it also helps to find a lamb when you’re looking for one among 75. You can narrow it down some if you have a color to look for.
This year Cayenne’s lambs got orange tags. Pink tags go in all the lambs that have been castrated.
Green means these are Buster’s lambs.
Blue was for Catalyst.
Peyton’s lambs are obvious so don’t need an extra tag.
After we tagged all the lambs Marina and Betsy stayed to help me set up the pasture for the sheep. I had put the sheep out for a few days but hadn’t cleaned and moved the water trough.
We walked around the pasture and took stock of things. I always point out the issue that I have with the dallisgrass that is out of control. That’s what all that dry grass is. I’d much rather see green grass growing. The whole pasture was looking somewhat dismal from a growth standpoint. At this point we had just had March rain after two very dry and cold months. I wasn’t seeing much growth–at least not enough to feed 55 ewes and 75 lambs. 
We spotted this grass that I don’t recognize.
I took photos to send to a friend of Marina’s who she think might recognize it.
During the discussion about other aspects of raising sheep we kept an eye on Zinnia, the ewe who was lambing. When she got more serious we watched.
One thing of note was the presence of two bags, each a different color. A lot of time I just see membranes that have broken so I wouldn’t know if it were one or two, but it seemed unusual to see two distinct bags. I saw a bit of a small foot emerging but the whole thing seemed to be taking awhile so I thought I’d check. There was one foot and a head. Not very far back was another head. Both lambs were coming at the same time, and it was obvious from the two sacs that one had meconium staining, a sign of fetal distress. I pushed the second lamb back and was able to pull the first lamb with just the head and one foot. I could tell that it was very small. Usually it takes a little while for the second to come, but it was right there too. Weighing these later, they were 4.8 and 4.2 pounds.
You can’t rush a lamb to be ready to nurse. I didn’t know if something was wrong with this one, but I knew that, even if it was normal, it needed a little more time. We went outside and looked at the fences and the pasture. When we came back in the first lamb was doing fine. The second still wasn’t able to stand but I could hold it up and get it to nurse.
We kept checking back and eventually the second lamb was on it’s feet. This photo was taken later in the day.
Later that afternoon a friend of mine came with another friend to take photos of the lambs. That’s Raquel with triplet ram lambs.
Here is the tiny lamb from the morning.
This was getting close to the end of lambing.
Here are those two tiny lambs 12 days later and here is their 
The last time there were goats here they were Chris’ Toggenburgs that he raised for his FFA project. Stephany was the last goat from that era.
Before that I had owned one goat. This is an Angora goat named Chenille in a photo from 1997. Katie was 9 then.
These are two of a set of quads. One was the smallest of the batch and the other was having some trouble drinking from the LambBar bucket with all the others.
I am not planning to show goats and I am bottle-feeding so those points didn’t matter…
…and I brought these babies home.
Oops. A third goat came along–mainly because my friend didn’t plan to raise him and I figured that I could find a home for him eventually.
Te goats are popular with 
That’s Ellie on the left and Amelia on the right.
Their temporary buddy, Kevin, is in the middle. He’s going to a new home tomorrow. Thank goodness. 
It’s sure easier to feed two than three.
I have been keeping the kids in the barn but the weather has turned nice and I wanted to introduce them to Amaryllis. She was definitely interested.
I hope that they will become her new BFFs. Here is 
Jade is the biggest pet sheep here. 
She had a ewe and a ram lamb.
At that point I had overflow pens set up in the alley of the barn.
I think I slept some here and then was woken up.
It looks as though Sunny is getting sleepy here. But I’m awake.
My son works as an EMT and he is often gone at night. The “puppies”, who live next door, get invited in our house if they are barking too much. They have no qualms about cuddling on the couch, something our dogs don’t get to do.
Back to Jade. Here she is with one of her lambs at 2-1/2 weeks old.
Here she is the previous day, looking rather uncomfortable.
Here is how the barn list looked at the end of the day.
Meanwhile , in the pasture the lambs were playing.
This photo was taken two days prior to the day she lambed.
I now have a different BFL ram here so Ears was bred to Peyton, making her lambs 75% BFL.
The first lamb was born about 1 in the afternoon.
He was on his feet within 15 minutes.
Even after as many lambs as I’ve watched just after birth I am always amazed by how quickly they stand and try to nurse.
Ears was working on the next lamb but it was an hour after the first had been born and I saw significant meconium staining. That indicates some level of fetal distress, so I pulled this lamb. No wonder it was slow in coming–it was 12.4 pounds!
I checked for another lamb and this one was born in about another five minutes. 
This is 31 pounds of lambs!
All were up and trying to nurse in half an hour. 
This is Ears and her triplets the next day.
So very cute!!!
That is Foxy lying down in the back.
I brought her into the barn about an hour after I first noticed her.
She lambed about an hour later.
This is Foxy’s lamb at 6 days old.
Meridian Jacobs' Blog 