Introducing WillowGarden Daniel Day-Lewis :-)

We once again borrowed a ram lamb from Bill Stearman this fall. He's a cute little (VERY LITTLE) guy ... a lovely fawn katmoget. Here is is all decked out in a marking harness, a device that is supposed to allow us to know who he has covered when. However, we had a few issues with the harness, including size, and Jasmine (who kept untying it with her teeth ... sigh). Because he is brown (moorit) - based, any lamb that Kivu has will be some degree of moorit in colour, and either katmoget (like the ram) or gulmoget (like Kivu) or a gul-kat. Katmoget and gulmoget are patterns, not colours, and are co-dominant.


I have had much encouragement to find a large, meat-type ram to breed to the flock. As much as it makes sense, though, a few things keep me coming back to the smaller animals. For one, I get great joy out of cool fleeces (see pic below). Additionally, our sheep are easy to handle, and easy to transport (we use a dog crate in the van).


His fleece is not super-fine, however it is nice and crimpy, and quite a nice colour. Once spun it should result in an oatmeal coloured wool. However, he will be going back to Bill, so we can only hope one of the babies duplicates his colour :-).

You can see the orange crayon well in this photo.

We didn't pick him up until mid-November, so our lambs won't start arriving until mid-April in the spring. And although we only planned on breeding the ewes, we had a lot of rain over the past week and the fence separating the two ewe lambs fell over. Sensibly, they decided they should rejoin the main flock. We may try to move them again later on ... I don't think WillowGarden Daniel Day-Lewis has paid them too much attention yet :-).

Jasmine will once again produce white lambs since her genotype is Awt/Awt. Lambs from Rosemary or Loralei could be Awt/Aa B?/B? (white in colour) or Aa/Aa (brown or black). Lambs from Babette will likely be black, but there is a remote chance she could also have brown-based lambs. The genetics of colour inheritance is fascinating :-). The fuzzy babies are cute too! ;-).

Lost a ram lamb today :-(

just a few weeks before he would have been shipped. Sigh. Stupid Shetland horns. I knew this would likely happen one day... electranet fencing and horns are an explosive combination. Sadly, he got caught up sometime during the night.

I'm grateful he died on a Tuesday night, because I had to place an emergency call to "Uncle Ted" and take our other ram lamb in this morning, before he jumped in with the ladies and gave me February lambs. Wednesday mornings are the only mornings animals are taken in at Aman's, so the timing couldn't have been better. I'm grateful for my good farmer friend Arnold, who will use his backhoe to bury the lamb in the back of his property (I have bedrock down about 10" at best, so there's no way for me to dispose of an almost full grown lamb here, whereas Arnold has six or more feet of good topsoil in some areas.)

HOWEVER I just took in my potential flock sire for this fall, so I now need to come up with a plan B. I do know it will NOT be a Shetland. I really wasn't thinking .... last year I traded off my Shetland ram to Bill Stearman before his horns were big enough to cause a problem. I left it too late this year.

Sigh.

Ack ... Post eaten by Blogger

I am not enjoying this right now. My bad ... I am attempting to use the "Preview" screen to create posts. Sigh.

Blogger issues are continuing ...

I'm presently looking about for another blog host, ideally one where I can have a public blog with password protected entries for family business. I did this morning manage to get into the normal create blog screen, so I'm going to now attempt to upload the video of Claire singing "Why" in my previous post. Check there just in case I am successful. :-P Okay ... this is completely frustrating. I saved "Why" in an incompatible file format. The only way to show video now is using a YouTube Player, which will load all my videos. At some point when I'm not completely frustrated with tech stuff, I will move the Youtube Player to my side bar and where I can, reload previous videos. Time to go outside and enjoy the day (and work!)

The good (?) news is there have been no more lambs yet. I'm hoping something will happen today though, because we are now expecting five more days of rain. Based on a LLOOONGG gestation period of 155 days (sheep range from 144 - 155 days normally), and assuming that these two ewes did not conceive until Eddy's very last day on the property, the latest possible lambing date is April 19. Considering that Kivu appeared to get covered right away, I'm a little surprised.

We've had a lovely, peaceful 4-day long weekend ... including Kevin! This is the first year he has had both Good Friday and Easter Monday "off". "Off" in quotes because he did the Good Friday sermon ... and it was excellent. I was very proud of him.

A few photos ... here is Lorelai, our only 4H lamb to date:


This is Digger, Coriander's little ram lamb. He is a cutie, and being raised as a single he's packing on the pounds.


And lastly, here is Max Medina. He is a lovely, leggy long ram lamb.

Still waiting for lambs ...

It seems as though our sheep are fussy. Historically, over the last three lambing seasons (which is not a big sample statistically, but nonetheless), our ewes pretty much always lamb on the nicest days. It's certainly true so far this year. We've had extremely rainy weather all week, and no lambs.

Today is supposed to be sunny with a high of seven. Tomorrow, another week of cold ... and SNOW (blech).

So ladies, today would be very, very good!

Can you imagine ...

that today, in a fit of maternal protectiveness, Jasmine BIT OFF the end of Roger's tail? Rotter. Roger seems none the worse for wear at the moment after use of a styptic pencil and antibiotics. Do you think he will now understand that Jazzy genuinely doesn't like him?

Rosemary seemed to double in size today; she may in fact be carrying twins. If she's not, I'm a bit worried about the increase.

Kevin survived the spring UCB Share-A-Thon ... he was an exhausted puddle tonight. This was his baby, his planning, his hard work and organization, and it was a very successful event. His boss said to him ... "Do you ever plan something that is NOT successful?" ... which was very affirming for him.

Crazy busy weekend in store with LOTS of plans ... I'm hoping that any further lambs wait until ... hmmm ... Sunday afternoon would work just fine. Ha ha.

I checked the ewes today, and ...

boldly predicted we wouldn't see any more lambs for a number of days.

Then Rosemary, later in the afternoon, dropped** ... and was holding her tail out (just a wee little bit).

Alison went out at 10:00 p.m. and she's making mommy noises to her unborn lamb (assuming once since it's her first time) and the tail is now cocked completely to the side.

It looks like another sleepless night :-P.

Note to Lona: How do you guys do this with such a big flock? How many ewes do you run? There are folks around here with 200 or 300 ... I can't even imagine. When I dropped of Claire's Venture application today, I was speaking to the receptionist and made a crack about lambs interfering with us getting it done earlier. She laughed, and said in the last week she's seen a number of teens (AND staff) enter the building looking haggard and drawn and unslept, and in each case it was because of lambing. You know you live in a rural area when lambing is the predominant cause of sleepless nights, rather than partying!

**Dropping prior to birth ... you can actually see depressions in the flanks of the ewes as they get ready to give birth. NORMALLY this isn't a big clue for me ... but Rosie made it very obvious this afternoon. We'll see. I'm still a little shocked that I was correct in predicting Corrie's impending lamb.

Claire's grad photo proofs :-), plus update on lambs and Roger

Claire's hair is still Annie-red ... only slightly subdued, and it is growing out beautifully! It's starting to look highlighted, and she doesn't have dark roots showing because the hair colour tones were almost identical. It's actually quite lovely, but she can hardly wait for her own hair. And wait she will have to, because NOTHING at our budget level covers this red! She has decided to go with Image 1 for her order. She has grown up SO much this year ... and not only on the outside. I'm very proud of her :-).

We just completed Claire's Venture Portfolio (what a big job this is!). This is toward her entry into the Venture program at the high school in September. Gasp. Two in high school. I just have to run in town and get a signature on a letter of reference and pick up a CD (she is including video of two of her musical performances, snippets from Annie and Enchanted Sleeping Beauty). Then, off to the high school to drop the binder off and pick up Alison for the weekend!

All I can say is ... hurray for weekends!

Farm chores ... gave new little lamb his Selenium-E shot last night, and will likely band him later today. Iain will be doing shop class this morning ... I have to modify our creep panel so that our smaller adult sheep can't wiggle their way in. Iain, with my guidance, will cut the correctly sized piece of wood and screw it on to the panel. For those not in the know, creep feed is a feed ration specially made for little lambs. It's a delicious concoction of various crunchy pellets, some grains, and molasses. Adult sheep LOVE this stuff, so a creep panel is a length of fence with a lamb-sized door cut into it.

Speaking of homeschool, here is Iain yesterday doing math ;-), along with Coriander and her new little guy. Unfortunately, Corrie liked nibbling on the math book ... which belongs to our school district ... so he had to move to the other end of the shelter.


And for those of you asking about Roger, here are some "Mr. Roger's Neighbourhood" photos. This cat, honestly, is the neatest cat I've ever been privileged to meet. I'm so glad he showed up. He has graduated from following Alison out to the bus, to following us EVERYWHERE around the property. When Iain heads over to the pond to explore, Roger follows him. When I took Dickens for a short walk a few days ago, he trotted after us for quite a distance! When any of us head out to the sheep pen, he now knows that fence is off and he comes out to play with the sheep. He loves the sheep, and Rosie and Coriander adore him. Here are two photos taken yesterday:

Here he is in his "Overseer of Sheep" position:

(He tried this when Jasmine was in here with her twins, and she was less accepting of him. But he and Corrie are buddies!)

And here is his as "Overseer of the Neighbourhood":



And lastly, two of Corrie and her babe. Here Corrie is attempting to recover from the birth. Aren't you glad human babies don't do this??? I'm glad we don't shear before lambing!


And the two, snuggling ...

Corrie's new ram lamb

born around 3:00 a.m. this morning. He's a very interesting colour, and actually seems to have a pattern of some sort, but not the one I was hoping for :-). Still, adorable.

Nooooo ... not tonight, dear (lamb) ... I have a headache!

I just got home from a lovely evening at Vic's home. She hosted a Norwex party ... very cool cleaning supplies that are, sadly, out of budget in a big way. I spent quality time coveting the mop system, and a special kitchen scrubby that apparently cleans showers with no effort. Mmmmmm.

Did a sheep check after I got in at 9:00 p.m. ... no lambs ... hurray! ... oh, but wait ... what was that noise? Was it ... NO ... yes ... mommy noises. Little Coriander is walking around with her tail in the air making mommy noises. NO. (Click the link at "mommy noises" and scroll down for a video of Latifah making those noises to her newborn twins in 2008 ... the baby draped over my leg is the one that may give birth tonight!)

But it's going to be so late!!!! (Or I'm wrong). We have been spoiled thus far in this shepherding business. Lambs have been born from 5ish in the morning to 9ish at night ... no middle-of-the-night shenanigans. I guess I'll grab my alarm clock and sleep in the family room ... set my alarm for 1ish and if nothing has happened by then, she'll likely wait until morning.

Two photos from today:

Here is Jasmine with both of her lambs. Little girl lamb had some issues this morning, but they seem to have been all sorted out. We did a quick run for "just in case" lamb milk replacer, which turned out to be unneeded, thankfully. We also had to milk Jasmine several times because she wasn't letting the lambs nurse on one side.



Here is Jasmine's little girl...

First lambs of 2009, courtesy of Jasmine ...!

who once again graced us with 8 pound lambs, one boy and one girl. The only difference? This year the little ram lamb has the eye patch, which is definitely too bad. I'm laughingly calling these lambies my Quarter Sheep (think Quarter Horses) because of their breeding. They are 25% Shetland, 25% Bluefaced Leceister, 25% Texel and 25% Rideau Arcott. All quarters.

The little boy, who has a few spots ...

The pair:



Encouraging little girl to get the first colostrum ... yummy!


Little girl (so far nameless, but this might be Rory), wearing her fashionable cowl neck sweater (ha ha):


Alison's vacation was slightly extended since I was at the ER for a UTI ... Kev came home ... no lambs ... 20 minutes later there were two. Jasmine is a real trooper. Kev headed off to get Alison from school to come home and take care of them since it's bitterly cold and very windy today (although the sun is shining). I ended up in and out of the hospital quite quickly, and we all arrived at the same time. They were very cold, and hadn't nursed well yet, so I'm glad we were not much longer.

One down, three to go :-).

What do these photos have to do with our 2009 lamb crop?

Any guesses?

These shepherds have too much time on their hands (this is amazing!)

Am I sore ... :-) ... edited ;-)

It's been a tough winter ... the pneumonia really knocked me out through January, and I really felt as if I'd lost muscle. I've been a little worried by this lack of fitness. Today we trimmed feet and crutched the ewes ("crutched" - snipped away all the extra fleece bits that a lamb might confuse with a teat). We also re-tarped both of the sheep sheds, amongst a bunch of small chores. You know you're not very fit when you're sore by the time you walk back in the house!

Good news: all four ewes are definitely pregnant. And very fun (something we've not seen before) ... we spent some fun time watching lambs rollicking inside of Corrie. We didn't shear until the fall last year, so the staple is still quite short and we can see these big lamb movements.

Bad news: a couple of the ewes seem REALLY pregnant (swollen ****** (insert word for lady parts here, lol) , tails lifted already, very uncomfortable) and I'm feeling a little concerned about our trip to Burlington on Wednesday. By my calculations, the very earliest day we should expect lambs is March 24. We should be just fine. However, little Coriander worries me. She is quite tiny, and is carrying either twins or one large lamb (the second option is the worrying one). Alison has valiantly volunteered to stay here and sheep sit. However, I really want all the kids to come. What do do, what to do ... well, nothing for tonight, and we will keep checking tomorrow and make a decision by tomorrow night. I hope.

In the meantime, I'm going to attempt to stand up and make my way to the family room to watch TV with the family. Ouch. Pathetic.

Hi all

I haven't had a whole lot of time to blog lately ... just busy juggling school, work, transportation to events etc. I quickly wanted to mention that lambs will start arriving no earlier than about the 25th of March, for those who visit because of farm interests :-).

The girls had a wonderful weekend at Joy Bible Camp. The leaders took the group through a video/book series for Josh Harris' "I Kissed Dating Goodbye" -- a book that all the girls in this house have already read and loved. It correlates well with my long-held theory that dating is the best preparation for divorce there is! (But that's for another time). Apparently there was lots of animated discussion, in particular from the kids who ARE dating right now :-). There was also tubing, sledding, snowboarding (Claire was able to give it a try), long discussions well in to the night and pranking, in no particular order. Fun times!

Updates on Kev and snow :-)

... who is now stranded in Tokyo. Good things: he is with his boss, not alone. The sushi is truly amazing, and he never imagined eating sushi in Japan. They get a day trip into Tokyo today (tonight our time) which was unplanned but should be fun.

Bad thing: He is now truly desperate to get home.

WE continue today to help move our pastor in ... and blow snow. Expecting 5 cm today and possibly 15 cm on Monday. Yikes!

Here are some "ladies-in-waiting" and snow photos:

Our flower box before snowfall number two:


Jasmine breaking snow in their paddock. The sheep have maintained a path to their feeder; otherwise the snow is untouched. It reaches right over their fence in some parts, however they are not particularly interested in leaving.


"Why are you dragging me through this, Alison?"


Rosemary's first winter. I don't think she's so sure about this!


Now I know she's not sure ... bawling for help! (Or food)


"That's better!"



Okay, only loosely a snow photo ... Iain carved this polar bear out of ivory soap as part of his unit on aboriginals. I'm sorry it's blurry, but I though he did a great job.

Last night we had a "Kev survived 2008 party", and more Roger photos ...

It is hard it believe now that Kev was in Kingston General Hospital, seriously ill, a year ago.

It is hard to believe that he was told he would use a cane for life, and yet not only is he walking unaided but running on a treadmill. Thanks to the good folks at "Fit for Life" he is appearing as the main guinea pig for a "Fit After 40" segment on UCB.

2008 has not been Kev's favourite year, so this party bid 2008 a not-so-fond farewell! I'm grateful though, that God chose to work in this manner. 2009 could have started so much differently than it did.

And two photos for all of you that are following little Roger's attempts to become a chicken :-). We still haven't managed a pile of chickens with Roger's nose poking out, but here he is ROOSTING with the chickens at night, and drinking out of their water bucket :-).

M.J., meet Shetland fleece (another fibre addict in our household)

We could NOT keep her out of the raw fleece last night.






And yes, it's true ... in the last photo she is kneading the wool, and sucking it :-P. Ewwww.

This does explain, however, why last year our outdoor kitty ripped in to a bag of fleece in the garage and lived in it all winter :-). I'm thinking a Rubbermaid container full of raw fleece would be the ideal outside kitty house. Inexpensive too when you have your own sheep.

Finally, we managed a photo!!

Is that not the cutest thing? We have one more photo to get now ... when we go in to the coop at night, after eggs are collected, very often there is a large pile of chickens keeping warm together. If we look very, very carefully ... we can see a little pink nose in the middle of this feather blanket.

Perhaps we should be calling Roger "Rocky" instead, since he thinks he's one of our barred rocks!

Some people have point-and-shoot cameras; we have a point-and-shoot border collie.

The best thing I've done recently is to train Dickens to mouse. Two summers ago it was very dry and we had a huge explosion in the mouse population around our home. He caught on quickly, and, better than a cat mouser, actually learned to mouse on command. "Get the mouse!" said in an urgent voice would send him to the woodpile, or in to the field on a mission that wouldn't stop until he was successful (the wonderful obsessiveness of a border collie).

A few nights ago our garage door was not closed fully early one morning. Outdoor kitty made it in the house and was shooed out quickly. Apparently we had another guest as well!

For the last few days we've had gremlins. Cupboard doors mysteriously open, with things falling out. The dog searching behind our antique radio, where the cats don't fit. Yup, you got it.

Last night I stayed up until 11 (late for me) and as I headed upstairs, locking up, it finally occured to me that there had been a LOT of animal noise ... cats "playing" .... dog chasing ... I stood and watched what I presumed would be the dog chasing the cats ... and discovered instead all three chasing some unseen common target. Yup. A mouse in the house.

This would explain the open cupboard doors, the food falling out as the cats tried to squirm in to find the mouse. It explains the obsession our dog has had with our antique radio.

However, rather than being the crisis this may have been in the past (I have less than fond memories of our home in NJ; mouse traps, mouse "alarms" etc) ... instead, I called Dickens to heel and said, "Dickens, there's a MOUSE in our HOUSE! Get the mouse". I pulled the sofa aside, and he had it in about 8 seconds. I then called him, and told him to take it outside and drop it. And he did! Because he's a wonderful and very useful dog :-). No traps, no poison, no hysteria ... just calm and hyper-focussed border collie obsession. I tell you, I practically threw a party for him when he came back in the house; he knows he did a very good thing.

Here is he is in his "kick back and have a beer" pose. But you still see the glint in his eye ... "Anything else you want me to do? Huh? Huh? Can I find another one?"

Good dog.