Lambing has started. My husband said that he’ll see me in April.
Four ewes were bred on October 1 and three of them lambed today. Suzanne was first with twins.
This is her 4-horn ram lamb.
This is Spot with her twin ewes.
Rusty is hoping that he can get involved.
I’m heading back to the barn to make the last check and see that the lambs born this evening have nursed.
I’ve been sorting fleeces. Here are samples of Glenna and Millicent, 2009 March lambs that I got just before Christmas.
That is black wool from another sheep in the middle and here is a close-up:
When I got these sheep there was one definite lilac among them. (For those of you non-Jacob sheep people, lilac is a color other than the more common black and white, usually a shade of grayish-brown.) I wondered about the others because they are out of lilac ewes and sired by Kenleigh’s Nitro, who is registered as a lilac. Shannon, Nitro’s breeder says that he was very dark and one of the JSBA inspectors said he was “chocolate” lilac.
Gladys is the obvious lilac, but what about her sister?
This is Millicent, out of Nitro and Meridian Millie, a lilac ewe who I sold a few years ago.
Here is Meridian Tess, who was born here, definitely not a lilac, but I thought she would be a good comparison.
So is there a difference between the black and white Tess and Millicent? Telilah is Millicent’s half sister/cousin (sired by Nitro and her dam is M. Tillie, a lilac ewe and the identical twin of Millie, but that’s another story.) Of course it’s hard to know what color you’re seeing on the computer, and I had decided that these sheep were regular black and white. But after opening up their fleeces today I think I’ve changed my mind.
Here is the group of these new sheep playing in the early evening. They stay together most of the time–I think they’er happy to be on the pasture.
While we’re looking at sheep, here are a few that look ready to explode. The first lambs are due in about three weeks.
This is bide a wee Haylee…
and this is Hillside Paula.
The Open House was Saturday and the threatening rain had me worried. The clouds and wind actually were a huge relief from the heat we’ve been having and there were only a few drops of rain. Here are some photos:
Cute kids and cute lamb. Note Rusty’s involvement.
And here are cute cookies provided by my friend Jackie. Can you tell they are Jacob sheep (without horns)?
This is what my shop looks like now.
The lambs in the last post are 10 days old now and yesterday I let them into the pasture with all the other sheep. Last night I found the little ram lamb limping and I diagnosed a broken leg, but wasn’t sure where. I took him to see my vet today and she came up with this splint to immobilize the leg. The break is at the top of the tibia and this splint holds the joints on either side immobile. We’ll leave it on about 3 weeks and see how he is.
While I had my camera in the barn I took other photos.
Amaryllis, the donkey.
Jasmine, one of my son’s does. He has gone to his summer job and I’m milking the goats that are left.
Ewes and ewe lambs on the pasture.
These ram lambs were so happy to get out onto the pasture after being in a dry lot getting hay for weeks. I have to keep them separate from the ewes now so my options are more limited. This pasture now has plenty of feed.
This is trefoil, one of my favorite flowers, and good sheep feed. There is a lot of it in that ram pasture.
My husband came back from the hardware store and told me he bought something for me. The other day when I was irrigating I broke the only shovel that I could find –one with the handle taped. So this is MY shovel.
I decided to donate a lamb to the raffle held by JSBA (Jacob Sheep Breeders Assoc) to support AGM (Annual General Meeting)– http://www.patchworkfibers.com/raffle.html –but I needed to figure out which lamb. So it was also time to figure out which lambs I want to keep (and choose the raffle lamb from this batch). This is not an easy thing for me, especially since I just counted sheep after an auction trip and I still have 114 and I really should have only about 50 by the time breeding season comes around! The first step was to sort out the ewe lambs and then sort them into 2 and 4 horn groups. I didn’t get them all in here, but I sorted out most of the older ones.
This is most of the 2-horn lambs.
And this is most of the 4-horn ewe lambs.
I don’t think that there were any lambs that I wouldn’t be happy with in the flock, so it was a tough decision. Here are the 2-horn lambs I chose.
Here are the 4-horn girls.
The girl on the left is the lamb for the raffle–guess I should come up with a name. Here she is:
She has a very pretty fleece and her sister is in the 2-horn group that I’m keeping.It was a tough decision. I think that my thought process on this might be a good topic for my Farm Club News–maybe that will be the next one.
http://www.meridianjacobs.com/exec/eFarmClub.asp
The rest of my lambs are on my website:
http://www.meridianjacobs.com/exec/eSheep.asp?categoryID=Ewe%20Lambs
I’m trying to finish up all kinds of things that have been put off or just didn’t get started. Part of this is in anticipation of Meet the Sheep, our Open House that is this weekend. So there is clean up to do, class prep, etc. Also, I think I can start getting back to weaving soon and I’d better get caught up on some other stuff too. So here’s some of what I did yesterday:
1. I spent a lot of time on Jacob Sheep registrations. I am behind there because of my one-handed typing. I just started typing 2-handed again–I consider it therapy because the left hand doesn’t really bend the way I need it to.
2. Dealt with the ram that was butchered last week. Good thing it isn’t summer or I couldn’t have waited this long.
3. Lolita finally lambed. Two weeks ago I treated her for hypocalcemia and other metabolic problems. She recovered and I’ve been waiting for these lambs–2 girls and a boy.
By the way this ewe lambed at State Fair last year (August). That’s 6 lambs in a year. No wonder she had some problems. She seems fine now. I’m keeping plenty of food in front of her.
4. Taking photos of new lambs and here is who is in the way.
5. Speaking of goats we are feeding 9 kids. It seems never ending although its better now that they’re on 3 x’s/day instead of 4. I do a lot of the kid feeding but Chris has been milking. He’ll be gone this weekend though and I told him that he has to get the milking machine cleaned up.
6. I picked up butchered lambs and had no room left in the freezers. I had to take a turkey out to make room for the lamb, so I cooked a turkey last night. Can’t cook a turkey without the stuffing and mashed potatoes! At least we’ll have leftovers for quite awhile.
Aren’t these lambs cute?
After playtime it’s naptime.
I have photios of some of my 65 lambs on my brand new website– http://www.meridianjacobs.com
If you are a faithful Meridian Jacobs blog reader you may remember my attempts last fall to get the sheep to eat and/or trample the shoulder high dallas grass. Dallas grass is a late summer perennial that takes over the pasture. There is so much thick dead grass that nothing grows under it.In this photo see the little bit of green with all that dead grass that takes over the field. (That’s a hay field in the background.)
My oldest son is a firefighter for the U.S. Forst Service and I talked him into burning the fields for me.
These are my two sons. Chris is lighting the fire here–he will be working on a hotshot crew this summer after graduation.
This is oldest son, Matt, and his friend, David. Matt is lighting the fire and David is hosing down the fiberglass posts to keep them from melting.
As the fire crew (also included my brother and a friend of Chris) was working I was working with a previously scheduled class. Talk about double-booking. In the shop we were winding warp, warping looms, etc and I made a couple of quick trips out with the camera. Some of the class participants enjoyed the time spent in the barn watching lambs. The last 3 people here were treated to watching a lamb being born. However this was more interactive than observation as the lamb turned out to be a huge ram–over 12 lbs! Thanks to Chris for helping and getting her hands slimey (but not spotting her white shirt!).
Chris also stayed to help me get the electric fence back up so I could put the sheep out on the pasture. Unfortunately some of the insulators at the south end of the pasture were melted by the fire and the wire broke (burned?) So I need to do some fence repair in the morning.
More photos tomorrow to show the results of the burn.
It has finally stopped raining for awhile. So I was after some action shots.
Wheee!
Meridian Suzanne and her twins
Meridian Doris and triplets--up and nursing when I went back to the barn.
These are twins born last night to Meridian Paulette.
This is how my barn looks from above. I've been moving ewes and lambs out of the jugs quickly.
Here is the other side of the barn with the ewes still waiting to lamb.
Just as I was going to take this photo of 4 lambs the chicken walked in front.
Here is the photo I was trying for.
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