Today in the Barn

Posted on March 14, 2017 by Robin

It’s been kind of crazy here over the last 16 days. That’s when lambing started. Maybe I’ll find time to go backwards to share photos. But here are some from today.

Isadora and triplets.

14014 Janis

Janis displaying signs that she was going to lamb today.

Catalyst-Joker

Catalyst and Joker, some of the sires of this year’s lambs.

Today’s lambing began with Noel’s triplets about 1 a.m. When I went to the barn in the morning Vanessa had twins. Lambing began in earnest about 2:00.

Isabelle and lamb

This is Isabelle with a single lamb.

Janis and lamb

Janis cleaning the first of her twins.

Ava and lambs-2

Ava, who I had my eye on since first thing in the morning, lambed with twins.

Ava and lambs-3

Lambing is not always pretty.

Sheena and lamb

Sheena with a large single lamb.

Lambing-2

This photo shows all four ewes that were lambing this afternoon. That’s Isabelle in the pen on the right with her lamb. Ava is in the pen in the corner. She and Janis (foreground) were delivering lambs at the same time–Ava had the first lamb, then Janis had her first. Ava had her second followed by Janis. Notice the lamb just behind Janis at the fence. Sheena who was in labor this whole time really wants this lamb. No wonder lambs and moms get mixed up if more than one ewe is lambing at the same time.

17025

Outside the lambing barn we have plenty of other lambs already.

lambing board

Here is today’s record. This is how I keep track of lambs and we leave it up all year to refer to in the barn. The letters under the ewes’ names refer to the rams: Dragon, Joker, Catalyst, and Buster. The lamb numbers are color coded and I record weights. That’s 80 lambs since February 26.

Onyx is on the list for tomorrow…

1030 Jazz

…and Jazz is only another day or so off. I’m going out to check now.

Lambing in Plain Sight

Posted on March 4, 2017 by Robin

Yesterday morning I saw these two. marilla-and-marilyn

That is Marilla, born 2/25/16 (and named in a Spinzilla contest) and her dam, Marilyn. I didn’t know it at the time but shortly after taking this photo I realized Marilla was in labor.

16015-marilla

She was moved to her private maternity quarters…

marilla-17016

…and produced a good-size BFL-x lamb. I bred her for crossbred lambs because she is very freckled and I don’t want to perpetuate that in the flock. Marilla has a beautiful fleece however.

12018-sonata

At about that same time in the morning I noticed Sonata standing back with the tell-tale sunken sides between the ribs and the hips. Before I went to the house I put her in the barn.

Spinners were here for the day and we kept trooping out to the barn to watch for lambs.

Sonata lambed with the first one with no spectators but there were plenty for the second one.

My flock is used to people being around and Sonata didn’t care about the observers.

sonatas-lamb

The second lamb born.

sonata-and-lambs

sonata-and-lambs-2

17018

View from Above

Posted on March 4, 2017 by Robin

Photos taken in the barn last night with my phone.

These are the pregnant ewes and a couple of wethers (including that very freckled one in the middle).

Photos over the lambing pens:

mae-and-lambs

Mae’s lambs born yesterday.

marilla

Marilla and her BFL-x lamb born yesterday…in motion…in the dark.

skye-17019-20

Skye and her twins also from yesterday.

sonata-17017-18

Sonata’s lambs, born yesterday.

Windy Acres Bronagh and lambs, born during the night, which is one reason I was taking photos…waiting for lambs.

hallie-and-lambs

Bide a wee Hallie and her lambs, a few days old.

This is the list so far except for Bronagh.

The Hole That Ate the Chicken

Posted on March 1, 2017 by Robin

Subtitle: Or why I don’t get much done during lambing season.

I am so behind on blogging. I really do like my blogs to be in order. I have lots of photos and blog ideas that I want to post but at this point they will be all out of order. There are more cute grandkid photos, photos of my weekend trip to Ft. Bragg, photos of sheep, but the last two weeks was hectic. I wanted to spend as much time as I could with my daughter and grandkids but I also needed to work on my new website and get it mostly underway before lambing began.

So there is nothing very exciting about this morning but I was in the barn from about 6:30 until 11 when I could get in for breakfast and there was one incident, very minor as things go, that gave me the idea for this blog post.

At 6:30 I saw that Hallie had lambed with twins and they were clean and fed. I had put her in the night before thinking she might be ready. The other ewe I had guessed might lamb had not and was supremely annoyed. I let her out.

I caught these two sheep. First I brought in the older ewe, Sophia, who I had been watching in the back. She didn’t go in with the others when I fed but got up as I approached. She has shown some lameness on a back foot and I haven’t had time to look at it. That could account for her not getting up but she just didn’t look right.

The younger ewe, Alice, needed her eye treated. I had been putting ointment in it but stopped before I should have (or there is another problem I don’t know about–I never did find anything in it).

jean-lambing-2

As I looked in the back again I saw Jean (the sheep not at the feeder). This is an excellent photo of the sunken sides of a ewe ready to lamb. She appears gaunt after the lambs have moved into position. So I brought her into the lambing area.

jean-lambs-3

I took video of Jean during lambing which I will edit and post eventually. Here are the two healthy lambs.

I continued to watch Sophia because she didn’t look right. I spend a lot of time just watching sheep during lambing. To make that effective you have to spend time watching sheep that are not lambing as well. You need to know the difference to know when one of your sheep isn’t quite right. I left her in the lambing area while I worked on other things…like when the phone battery died just as I was doing more video. I went to the house for the cord and then spent some time rerouting the extension cord that is going to the scale so that I don’t trip over it. Why not spend time fixing the plug that doesn’t work which is why an extension cord is necessary? I can do extension cords. I can’t do electricity.

17003

Before I move lambs and ewes out of the lambing pens I tag each one, give BOSE (selenium and Vitamin E supplement), and place a tail band. I started with #1 and then realized that I made my first mistake. The real #1 died (triplets born while I was in Ft. Bragg but that’s another story) and this should have been #2 or #3. So I already messed up. But I messed up prior to this by buying tags a size larger than I usually buy for the lambs. I haven’t quite decided if I want to keep using these or get the right ones. They seem awfully big for little Jacob ears.

My routine is to move 3 ewes with their lambs into a group pen for a few days. I can keep a better eye on them and the lambs learn to stick with their mamas and not annoy the other ewes, who are quite convincing to any lamb that gets near. In this case, Clover is with her two, Rosie is behind the bale with her single and Jillian is out of the photo behind a feeder with her twins. I have been trying to get all the ewes’ feet trimmed BEFORE they lamb because it’s much harder to do when they are worried about where their lambs are. Mistake #2 today. I forgot to trim Rosie’s feet. I’ll have to remember before she goes out.

I was still watching Sophia. She is a week from her due date but she is big and round…and fat. She stands like she is uncomfortable and her leg is bothering her. My feeling is that it is the hip, not the foot, that is the problem. We used to have cows that would be gimpy in late pregnancy because of the calf positioned on a nerve. She ate a little grain, but not a lot. As I watched I felt like she was a little quivery. That can be a sign of pregnancy toxemia or hypocalcemia. I got out the jug of propylene glycol that I hardly ever use. That meant a trip to the house to look up the dosage. It won’t hurt is she does not need it, but it will be interesting to know if it makes a difference.

Back to work. I was cleaning pens as I went, moving water buckets, etc. Mistake #3 and what inspired the title of this post. This is looking down on a half wall that separates the lambing area from the main part of the barn. There is plywood on both sides of the 2×4’s. A chicken fell in there once and it required rescue. This is the story as Maggie told it. The end of those two 2×4’s on the right makes a convenient place to put things like hoof trimmer or gloves…one of which fell into the hole. That’s when I thought about all the little things that add up that are the reason you spend the whole day in the barn and you don’t really accomplish much.

This is the view that I use when I make a first check on the sheep. I can look out this window and they don’t all get up like they do if I go into where they are. Now that the weather has changed and the pasture has started to dry out I want to get them out but there is a break in the electric fence and I need to fix it before I can let anyone in the pasture.

This is a closer shot of another ewe that looks suspiciously ready to lamb, but really a lot of them do.

Here is where we are so far.

onyx-2

Onyx isn’t even on the list for two weeks.

14027-esmerelda

According to the list Esmerelda still has a week to go.

The glove is still in the wall.

Shearing the Rams

Posted on February 10, 2017 by Robin

Shearing was a few days ago and it’s an event worthy of a few posts. I started talking about it in here but have been distracted by a major project which will take over my brain for a couple of weeks. I need a break from that so here are photos of shearing the rams. Thanks to Dona and Carole for contributing some of these photos.

This isn’t a ram but while I was catching them John started with Mary’s seven sheep.

faulkner

Then it was Faulkner’s turn. Faulkner is a Bluefaced Leicester (BFL).

catalyst

Catalyst is a lilac colored Jacob ram. Lilac refers to the gray-brown color of his wool and the facial markings.

What a gorgeous fleece!

Bide a wee Buster is almost a year old.

It’s been on my list to trim Buster’s horn, but John did it before shearing.

That’s another beautiful fleece coming off.

A shearer has to be careful in maneuvering those big horns.

Here is a close-up of Buster’s fleece. Notice the difference in color of the outside of the fleece and the inside in the photo before this.

joker

Joker was the last ram to be shorn.

joker-catalyst

This photo clearly shows the difference in the black & white and lilac color pattern in the Jacob sheep.

joker-catalyst-2

img_6686-2

Next up–shearing the ewes.

The Morning After

Posted on February 6, 2017 by Robin

We sheared yesterday (more about that in future blog posts). Here are some photos from this morning and some before-and-after shots.

You can fit more sheep at the feeder after shearing and it’s sure easier to keep an eye on udder development and predict lambing.

The aftermath where the skirting table was yesterday. We were so lucky with the weather yesterday–no rain after continual storms. This water is from last night’s rain (almost an inch).

Meridian Zoey. Zoey has freckled skin but not freckled fleece–that’s two different things.

Meridian Fandongo. Notice how the sheep look like they have brown spots in most of the “before” photos. The wool has sunbleached tips. Underneath it is black, or gray if the sheep are fading, or gray-brown if they are “lilac”.

Puddleduck Petra. A good example of a black fleece that looks brown when on the sheep.

Meridian Alice, a two year old ewe.

Meridian Bertha, another two year old. It will be only another day before the sheep look dirty again and you don’t see that bright white against the black.

Shadow Mountain Shelby. Shelby is lilac. Her facial markings are gray, not black. Her spots are a light gray. I used my iPhone for this morning’s photos so some of the sheep look like they have abnormally big heads. Maybe that’s only partly camera perspective but partly that they no longer have huge fleeces around those heads.

Bide a wee Hallie.

Meridian Cindy, one of last year’s lambs. Oops! It turns out that she is freckled. Those smaller spots are in the wool. You can’t tell about freckling when the lambs are born. After a couple of months it will appear. I think it shows up in the secondary follicles instead of the primary ones and that’s why you don’t see it at birth. (I’d like to hear someone who knows explain if that theory is correct.) I also noticed it in her twin brother, although you can’t really see it in the photo below.

Meridian Joker, Meridian Catalyst, and bide a wee Buster.

And here is what I saw when I first checked on the rams this morning:

That wall behind Joker is supposed to be attached to the 2 x 4. I found the drill and some screws and put it all back up and it was only then that I looked at the other corner:

Oh, that’s a bigger problem. This wasn’t originally a ram barn. It started out two calf hutches that I made. Eventually they were put on this slab facing each other with a space in between and another roof overhead and the kids show pigs lived there for a few months a year. Then it was Faulkner’s pen and he was pretty easy on it. Now that the Jacob rams live there it needs reinforcement. Dan got the jack out to jack it up back on the cement and then reinforced everything inside with heavier 2 x 10’s at about head-bashing level. It could still use interior solid plywood walls but hopefully this will get us by for a few more months.

Stupid rams. You should be grateful that you have a shelter to get into after shearing and you’re not expected to stay out in the wind and rain.

First Farm Day of 2017

Posted on January 29, 2017 by Robin

We have a lot of new members in the Farm Club. This was the first official Farm Day of the year. The goal was to get the barn ready for Shearing Day next weekend and to get the sheep ready too. I never seem to get time to take photos during Farm Days so my iPhone got handed around and other people took most of these photos.

Right now cleaning the barn involves the trek around or through the mud and muck to get to the manure pile. We spent about an hour and a half cleaning and organizing the barn.

Then it was time to look at the sheep.

We caught each sheep.

We cleaned off ear tags so that the crew will be able to read them next week and won’t have to find me to identify a sheep.

This is Onyx and Esmerelda, two of the BFL-Jacob crossbreds.

We brought all the ewe lambs (born last March) in to replace their lamb ear tags with bigger, more legible ones.

Two ewes had horns that needed trimming to prevent them growing into their faces. It takes one person to hold and one person to use the wire saw.

Last we went to the ram pen. I was standing with the rams and looked up to see everyone looking in.

The ram in front, Buster, had something on his mouth to look at more closely.

I’ll call my vet about this on Monday because I don’t know what it is.

A few people left before I rounded everyone up for a photo. This is the biggest group that we’ve had here. This is a great way to make the chores go quickly. Thanks, Farm Club.

Fleece From Start to Finish-Lauren

Posted on January 14, 2017 by Robin

This is Lauren.

15013-lauren

Before …

15013 Lauren.jpg

…and after shearing last February.

I came across her washed and partially carded fleece yesterday and decided to finish it before this next shearing. The funny thing is that I have looked several times for this sheep as I was taking photos of all the sheep for my annual Flock List for Farm Club. I couldn’t ever get a photo of her but I could have sworn that she was on my breeding list. Looking back through my blog posts to see if I had written about keeping her fleece I found this post in which I said that I hadn’t planned to but I traded her for a sheep when I was at BSG in Oregon. No wonder I couldn’t find her! I also see that I never wrote the story of Fleece from Start to Finish about Honey’s fleece. That will be another post.

img_8680-fleece-top-1

This is Lauren’s fleece spread out on the skirting table.

img_8689-fleece-skin-side

This is what the underneath side looks like. It looks browner in the first photo because the tips are sunbleached.

dsc_5586-staples-1

Here is what the staples look like.

DSC_5588-after sorting.jpg

Here it is after sorting into colors before…

lauren-fleece-washed-1

…and after washing.

That was all done in the spring and I had started to card it. Today I finished the carding job (I thought). I had a lot of black wool and a few batts of white and gray.

I spread out the white and gray batts as evenly as I could so that some of each would go with each the black batt.

Then I carded a third time keeping the white somewhat separate from the black.

The pile on the right is 3 of the finished batts stacked up. I kept all the other batts rolled up in the sleeves that come with the Clemes & Clemes batt lifter. That’s 11 batts next to a pile of three! It totals about 1 pound 5 ounces.

I felt very productive now that I was ready to spin all that wool. But look at what I found shortly after:

I thought that the proportion of black to white wasn’t right. This is the rest of Lauren’s fleece that I hadn’t picked yet.

There will be another report later, hopefully when I finish spinning this BEFORE the next shearing day on February 5.

The Flock

Posted on January 3, 2017 by Robin

Every year I put together a Flock List for the Farm Club members. This includes photos and a little information about each sheep (and dog and other characters) on the farm. I like to get current photos of each sheep and I’ll share a few here. Shearing Day is in just a month so they are in almost full fleece. I’ll have to get before and after shots of them as well. 11047-zoey-3

Zoey.

11086-alexandria-2

Alexandria.

12018-sonata

Sonata.

13044-ears

Ears.

13068-cascade

Cascade.

14013-jean-2

Jean.

15031-15053

Two almost 2-year-olds, Honey and Zinnia.

16015-marilla-13007

Marilla, a 2016 lamb, and her mother, Marilyn.

sheenashelby

This photo was taking during the summer of two of the sheep I bought from flocks in Oregon. That is Kenleigh’s Sheena on the left and Shadow Mountain Shelby on the right. I found this photo while I was looking for another. It is a good example showing a lilac ewe (right) and a black and white ewe.