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.

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Before …

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…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.

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

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

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Here is what the staples look like.

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Here it is after sorting into colors before…

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…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.

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Alexandria.

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Sonata.

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Ears.

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Cascade.

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Jean.

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

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

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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.

Most sheep eyes.

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Some of the lilac sheep have striking blue eyes

Sheep

Posted on December 17, 2016 by Robin

Every year at this time I create a Cast of Characters for the Farm Club members. So I took sheep photos today. Here are some of them:

I started before chore time in the morning and had to chase all the sheep out of the barn. They weren’t too happy about missing breakfast.

And they don’t like the deep mud so they all stayed on the cement that Dan poured behind the barn this summer.

This is Janis.

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Mud Ranch’s Foxglove. She is a lilac ewe.

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Alice.

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One of the 2016 lambs, Virginia.

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Another lamb, Cindy.

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This is Windy Acres Bronagh, another lilac ewe.

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Bide a wee Buster, and March ram lamb.

Ears.

While I was taking photos, my DIL was throwing the ball for the puppies, Sawyer and Finn..

Ginny ended up with their ball.

The Right Decision

Posted on November 13, 2016 by Robin

We all have to make difficult decisions at times. I was in that position last month about a ram I had bought only a couple of months previously. Today I had confirmation that I made the right call. WARNING: There are some yucky photos part way through this post.

I wrote this blog post about the trip to pick up a new ram in early August. I have looked through my photos and can’t find a “before” photo of the left side of Legolas. This is the one that was posted on Facebook by the seller:

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In early September I noticed that his horn looked like this on the left:

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That left horn is touching his face. I knew that the horn wasn’t like that when I bought the ram and I was amazed that it could grow so fast that in a month. There was no obvious sign of damage. I had noticed flies around his horns, but again, no sign of blood or a wound. With the horn that close to his face it would be a problem if it continued to grow that direction, putting pressure on the jaw. Even if it didn’t grow more there would be continued skin irritation at the point of contact.

A few days later I caught Legolas to figure out what to do about that horn. I couldn’t even get my finger between the horn and the jaw. Here is what surprised me. When I held the horn not only did it move, but I could see movement in part of the skull where the horn was attached. Yikes!

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Behind the horns I found a small opening, which got a little bigger as I scrubbed with hydrogen peroxide. This had been covered with hair and really wasn’t visible until I started cleaning up around it. I could squeeze out a little bit of pus but not very much. There was minimal blood or drainage and the edges of that wound looked already healed over, just not healed together to close up the pocket.

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I could move the horn (and skull) so that there was a little space between the horn and the jaw, so I tried to anchor the horn in place with duct tape and wire attached to the other horn. (This was the most mild-mannered ram I’ve ever worked with.)

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This is all the progress that was made by that–not much but better than touching the jaw.

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That pink stuff is Swat to keep flies away. As I was working on this I was thinking that I didn’t remember these rams fighting, but that would be the only way to account for this injury. At the time I think I just had Catalyst and Marv in the ram pen. When I first brought this ram home I used the “buddy-up” pen, a ~~very~~ VERY small pen where the rams can tussle with each other but not move backwards and run at each other. They usually fight in this small pen where they can barely turn around and when they move to the big pen after a couple of days they mostly behave themselves. They may still posture and fight but hopefully they quickly figure out the hierarchy and the hitting isn’t as violent.

I looked back through my videos and found one of Catalyst (another two-horn ram) and Legolas making some pretty hard hits. Then I remembered that a few days after I moved them all out to the ram pen I was worried about Legolas. He seemed “off”, shaking his head and not eating much. Nasal bots will make sheep very uncomfortable.

Legolas also had bloody lips and gums. I remembered talking to my vet to find out if that was a another symptom of bluetongue because bluetongue causes edema, ulceration, and soreness of the mouth, in addition to listlessness and not eating (because of the sore mouth). At that time I treated him for nasal bots and with antibiotics to prevent secondary infection due to bluetongue. Eventually he got better.

But now, a month later, I realized that he had probably been injured the month prior but the damage to his skull was not obvious.

The wire and duct tape didn’t work. I didn’t take long for Legolas to start scratching and rubbing on the tree and fence and put the horn right back where it had been. I thought about using rebar or something stouter but I knew that I wouldn’t be able to rig up something stable enough to keep the horn in place and besides I wasn’t able to move it enough to be a long term fix. This was not a sustainable situation.

I made the decision to put the ram in the freezer. I am in the sheep business, not the sheep rehab and geriatrics business. Butchering the ram would provide meat and I would have his hide and skull to sell.

Before I can sell the skull it needs to be cleaned. I take the easy way out and put it out in the back and let nature take its course. Today some Farm Club members were here and some of them wanted to see the skull. I was amazed that we could clearly see the damage done to the skull by the fighting. This photo shows the skull fracture clearly:

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I have had two other rams die from fighting. Once, early on in my Jacob-raising days, one ram killed another (a 6-month old ram lamb owned by my friend but here for breeding) through the electric fence. The ram lamb was standing when I went into the barn and lying dead at the fence when I came out. (I tried butchering that one myself but that wasn’t so easy. Now that I’m thinking of that I remember that my daughter and I finally dug a hole to bury him, thinking that eventually we’d be able to dig up a skeleton–she was taking a taxidermy class at the time.) Now I do all I can to separate breeding groups without fence-line contact. Another time I was watching when two rams (that had been buddies just a moment ago) started fighting and one staggered away and finally dropped. I took a wheelbarrow in to the pen to get him out and found that he was still breathing. I guess he was in a coma because it’s not normal to be able to load a living adult ram into a wheelbarrow, but I did. I was able to have that one butchered to salvage meat and hide.

The other memorable fighting ram story is about Ranger, a ram that had a beautiful fleece and personality. He wasn’t killed fighting but suffered a skull fracture. With that one I discovered how serious it was when I saw his eye bulging from it’s socket. The swelling in his head was so bad that it pushed the eye forward and the lid couldn’t close over it. I don’t remember if the vet came out or we just talked on the phone, but remember treating and covering the eye and I kept the ram in a small pen until the swelling went down and there was no movement of the horn and skull.

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At the time I asked the vet how to tell if there was brain damage. I still remember her answer: “It’s not like he has to drive heavy machinery.”

Consolidating Breeding Groups

Posted on November 2, 2016 by Robin

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.

Hug a Sheep Day

Posted on October 29, 2016 by Robin

Hug a Sheep Day originated a few years ago at Punkin’s Patch and we think its a great idea! We were a little concerned with the forecast (rain from midnight through noon, then clearing). We went ahead with plans and didn’t see rain all day. In fact the sun came out and the welcome rain from the previous week had cleared the sky, washed away the dust, and started the grass growing. Beautiful!

Farm Club friends came early and helped set up pens and find the huggable sheep. Jade will follow you anywhere for a chin scratch.

Jazz likes those scratches too.

This is Jade and Jazz both lined up for attention.

Jazz is probably the most huggable sheep here.

Spinners enjoyed the wonderful weather and the camaraderie.

Alison is wearing her handspun 4-ply Jacob vest. Notice the very cool felt Christmas stocking in the background. Jackie was here with her Sheep-to-Shop booth but I didn’t get good photos of that.

Claire is a friend I’ve known since we were in college in Davis in the 70’s.

I kind of like this photo because it shows a lot about the marketing of a small sheep farm. Alison and Stephany are both Farm Club members, Alison is wearing yarn from the fleece she bought several years ago, Stephany is knitting more yarn, and she bought a skull, and of course there is the sheep ready to be shorn again in a few months.

At the end of the day we decided there should be a group hug, although I realize now that this was more of a group picture than a group hug.

Next year we’ll make sure we all get in on the hug part.

The Lucky Ones

Posted on October 20, 2016 by Robin

As you must know when there are almost 80 lambs born in the spring I can’t keep them all. How many sheep would I have in 5 years? Who can do the math? My sheep capacity is about 55-65 adults. That includes a few wethers, more rams than I probably need, and the ewe lambs that I choose to keep. Someone has to go and a handful get to stay.

I just sent registration applications in for the lambs who are staying here. I was going to share their photos and then I thought that it would be fun to see their baby photos as well. For those of you who pay attention to who the sheep are I have included the (sire x dam).

16011-sylvia-2 This one is Sylvia and the photo below was taken last week. (Rotor x Sonata) 16011-sylvia-lt

16015-marilla Here is Marilla (named in a contest for her mother, Marilyn, and because she was our Spinzilla ravatar) in March and below in September. This is a good pair of photos that show that even when a sheep is black and white, the wool may look brown due to sun bleaching. The markings on the face and legs will indicate the true color, at least in Jacob sheep. 16015-marilla-left

16016-marv This is Marilla’s brother, Marv. He is one of only two ram lambs that I kept this year. He was champion Jacob ram at Black Sheep Gathering and his dad, Rotor, was Supreme Champion at the CA State Fair. The photo below shows the difference in rate of horn growth between ewes (Marilla) and rams (Marv). (Rotor x Marilyn) 16016-marv-rt

estelle-and16042 This is Stacy as a newborn lamb and below at 7 months. (Crosby x Estelle) 16042-stacy-lt

jean-16062-16063 More newborn photos. This is Jean with twins. I kept both of these lambs. The ewe lamb, trying to stand, is Cindy, below. The lamb nursing is the ram, Joker, in the photo below Cindy. (Nash x Jean)

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Joker has a group of ewes and is wearing a marking harness with a red marker.

vanessa-and-16040 This is Vanessa with her lambs. Vanna , on the right, was 5.2 pounds when she was born, but you wouldn’t know that now. (Rotor x Vanessa) 16040-vanna-rt

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Vixen is the only lilac lamb I kept. Her markings are a brown/gray instead of black. That shows up better in the photo above than below. (Nash x Foxglove) 16046-vixen-rt

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This lamb is Virginia (Rotor x Ventura). 16043-virginia-lt

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This is bide a wee Trista, the one lamb that I purchased, so I didn’t take a baby photo. But I just looked and, yes there is one on the bide a wee farm website. Here is Trista as a little lamb.

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Vixen, Virginia, Cindy, Vanna.

Breeding Season

Posted on October 8, 2016 by Robin

This week it was time to separate sheep into breeding groups. After much debate and deliberation I ended up using five rams this year. I don’t NEED five rams for the number of ewes I have but it’s always fun to find out how each ram will match with the flock…and there is also a bit of “not putting all one’s eggs in one basket”.

There are a lot of criteria in selecting a ram to buy or a ram lamb to keep in the flock.

Fleece is the most important characteristic for me. If I don’t like a ram’s fleece then I don’t want to use him no matter how great he looks otherwise. I want to stay within the Jacob breed standards but consider fleece weight, fiber diameter (determines if a fleece is soft or scratchy), crimp, and freckling. One problem with making decisions about young rams is that you’re better off waiting until 18 months to fully evaluate fleeces. That is a long time to hang onto a ram and then decide he stays or goes. With my small acreage I just can’t hang onto several rams to evaluate a year later. I need to make my best guess at about six months old.

Here is an example of a ram lamb from this year who lucked out. I love his fleece but he is freckled. He’s castrated and is the donkey companion for now.

Horns. You can have the best ram from all the other standpoints, but if the horns grow into the face he will have to go. Here is a blog post with examples of two-horn rams.

Color. The Jacob Breed Standard states that registered sheep must have 15-85% color. That’s a broad range, but not all sheep fit that category.

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Jerry is a 5-year-old wether who won the sheep-lottery by having a beautiful fleece, but with too much color to be kept as a breeding ram. He was castrated as a lamb and was kept to be a buddy to any sheep who had to be separated from the flock. He lives permanently with Faulkner, the BFL ram. Also note how narrow his horns are. If he had not been castrated those horns would have grown tight onto his neck or face.

There is more, but this was going to be a post about the rams I am using this year, not a how-to-choose-your-flock-sire post. However other traits to consider are personality (yes, really), conformation, size, birth weight, gain, and is he a single/twin/triplet.

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I hadn’t planned on keeping Meridian Joker, but as I looked at lamb weights over the last few months he stood out as one of the heavier ones. I sell at least half the lambs for butcher and the sooner they can be sold the better. So rate of gain is important. His horns don’t have a huge spread, but hopefully they will be all right as he grows.

By the way all the rams in these photos are wearing marking harnesses with red crayons. That’s what all the color is.

dragon 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. buster 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.

Meridian Catalyst is a ram who was born at the 2015 State Fair Nursery. He is a lilac ram with nice fleece and markings. That’s him in the middle of the ewes on the second day of breeding season.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. 15071-skye Skye is in Catalyst’s group. 15050-jillian Jillian is with Faulkner. 16063-joker-2 Joker looks a little disheveled after a few days. buster-2 Buster has his work cut out for him to reach those big ewes… buster-3 …and needed a nap after the first morning out.

For any of you who pay attention to this stuff and may be wondering about the other Jacob ram I bought this summer…I discovered a few weeks ago that he must have been injured by another ram and his horn had changed position so that it was growing right up against his jaw. I found that the point of attachment was movable (I don’t know if went all the way to the skull which means that it would have been fractured). I tried to give his face a little more space by using wire and duct tape but that didn’t work. This is not a sustainable situation so he is no longer with us.

A Sheep Adventure – Part 2

Posted on August 22, 2016 by Robin

I forgot to put a couple of photos in the last post. Besides the BearFest that was going on through the summer in Grants Pass, there was also a Fifties celebration the week we were there. There was a car show that evening and here are some cars that we saw in the motel parking lot.

I have no idea what they are but I took these photos to show my husband.

This is not how butterflies normally look on my headlights.

We got on the road about 7:30 and drove to Selma, Oregon where Jackie’s sheep had been delivered the day before. She was picking up two English Leicesters that came from Michigan.

Carol Ronan graciously took time to give us a tour of her beautiful farm. She raises Angora goats (above) and Gotland sheep (below). Information about her sheep and goats (and the beautiful farm which is for sale) is at this link.

The animals have access to this 100+ year old barn that has been reinforced and given a new roof (which will probably give it another 100 years).

I don’t remember the dogs names but this was an older one who put up with the nosy sheep.

I took this photo because I wanted to remember this oh-so-simple feeder idea. That welded wire panel is not a fence. There are two panels attached to a 2×6 at the bottom and to posts with slightly tapered pieces of wood on the sides. Perfect for dropping in a flake of hay and feeding on both sides.

We walked to the field with the bucks…

…and examined fleeces.

Here are Jackie’s new sheep who had been housed in the trailer overnight.

They were easily switched to my truck and we got on the road. There are not too many photos of the part of the trip that became more of an adventure. I didn’t want to backtrack to Grant’s Pass and I-5. BORING. If you take Hwy. 199 south from Selma you can turn off onto a road that winds its way through the rugged Siskiyou Mountains to Happy Camp. It wasn’t a good idea for me to be taking photos while driving on this road that was full of switchbacks and Jackie probably would have thrown my camera out the window. We didn’t stop because we had spent a lot of time at Carol’s and had planned to make the next stop by mid-morning (weren’t going to make that) and get home in the afternoon, trying to avoid being on I-5 through Redding at the hottest part of the day.

At Happy Camp we turned east onto Highway 96 and watched for landmarks until we got to this sign and across the road…

…this bridge where we crossed Horse Creek and drove north along hillside edging a green valley . We were supposed to go 2 miles and find the correct street address for the farm where my ram would be. We saw a few numbers on mailboxes, passed what should have been the right place, found a place to turn around and chose a driveway that seemed to be in the right place. We drove in past barns and farm equipment but didn’t see a house, sheep, or any signs of someone looking for sheep buyers who were late. We drove out of the driveway, down the road and chose another driveway with the number that would be the neighbors to the place we were looking for.

As I drove down the steep driveway, several large dogs ran out barking. However I saw someone looking through a window and waited for him to come out. He wasn’t happy about seeing us and told us to go back up the road and take the driveway with “the lifetime gate”. “Can I drive forward and turn around down there?”, I asked. “No” was the answer. OK then. I’ll back up the steep rocky driveway that has a sharp turn onto the road and a steep drop-off to the side, while trying to see the end of my truck through the plywood sheep crate on my truck. I did that with several back and forths and only one minor mishap.

Finally backing into the road in the wrong direction we drove down it again, passing this sing, turned around and came back. (Note: When my sons have fought fires in these mountains they have been turned away from entering access roads to the forest by surly land-owners. The firefighters are warned by their supervisors to be careful in or avoid areas where they have spotted marijuana or equipment for growing or harvesting.)

So we took the same driveway we had before with the barns and cattle equipment. Steep-Driveway-And-Big-Dogs-Guy was there to meet us, having gone from his house, across the creek, through the barns, to this upper driveway. He pointed and said “no, go back to the lifetime gate”. Lifetime gate? When we looked more closely there was a closed gate down a dirt road that branched off to the right of this main driveway. Jackie opened the gate and we drove into what looked like a little used driveway that stopped before you got to a house where I could hear children. So at least someone was home.

I found the sheep owner who strapped her baby on her back and we walked out to the barn with other kids running beside us. We arranged bales of hay to create a step up into the truck and loaded the ram. She pointed us out a dirt road that ends up on a different paved road which seems to be their main access and is “easier”.

This is the field (sheep in the distance) that Kenleigh’s Legolas left behind.

We drove east through Yreka to I-5 and headed for home. I always stop for a photo at this overview of Mt. Shasta. We stopped several times to check on the sheep. There was really nothing we could do about the heat but the truck thermometer was showing 108 (or was it 109?) through Redding. It was in the 100’s for most of the trip, but the sheep survived. I didn’t dawdle, wanting to get them out of the truck as quickly as we could.

I put Legolas in with the young rams and a wether. They followed him around for awhile.

There was fighting among themselves, but not with Legolas, because it was obvious that he would be the dominant ram of the bunch.

This will be the first year that I will breed the bulk of the flock to 2-horned rams. There is Kenleigh’s Legolas (Lego for short), Meridian Catalyst, a 2-horned lilac ram, and bide a wee Buster, the younger ram with 4 horns.

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