Lambs

It has been a busy year.  Yesterday was the birthday of the first lamb born on our property.  

We have decided to make some changes. 

I sold some lambs in January and that was a mistake.  Right now we have so much grass we had to mow our lawn for the first time since buying the sheep.  

Hot Rod has become too aggressive.  I love him and have learned a lot from him but he is going to hurt someone so he has gone to become my friends ram.  The most important lesson from Hot Rod is not to give lots of love and affection to any future rams.  Let them grow up afraid of humans.  The reason Hot Rod became so dangerous is he loves to be scratched under his chin and if you do not respond fast enough to his desires he is more than willing to ram you.  

We have decided that our baby born New Years Day will be our new ram.

He is a handsome young ram with a healthy cautious nature when it comes to humans.

Beautiful sweet Blackwell had twin girls this spring.  I thought she was too old but she is a wonderful sweet mother and her girls are fun loving and curious just like she is.  

Blackwell seemed to be suffering heat exhaustion pretty regularly and our winter/spring has been really warm so we decided to shear the sheep early.  

Blackwell after shearing is the the gray sheep.  Her poor babies didn't recognise her so they spent the hour and a half after we finished shearing her running around screaming.  Even hours later they would nurse from her and then look at her and "BAAAAAAAA" they would run around frantically looking for someone who looked like their mom.  

We decided to avoid that with Dot and her baby.  So we decided to have Twenty-Something Daughter hold the baby while I held Dot and Teen Son did the shearing.  It worked really well.  

The lamb is sleeping on the shearers that we only use on the finer hair.

Even young sheep enjoy a good red wagon.

We didn't have time to shear Max and that turned out to be a good thing because she gave birth to twins 2 days later.  Sadly one was stillborn but we have a very healthy young ram lamb.  

Shearing Attempt

We started sheering the sheep for the long hair sheep to just not be so yucky and the show sheep to get ready for fair.  

Dot's baby isn't happy, "My mom is being messed with, aren't you the dog that protects her?"

We had been busy and my back was killing me so we started with the smallest gentelist sheep.  All went well with Dot then we started on Blackwell.

Resting my back while Teen Son tries to fix the shearer.

Wouldn’t you know ½ way through trimming Blackwell the Shearer’s blades quit working.  We borrowed the school’s sheers and bought a used pair to finish the sheep for the fair.  We have not finished Blackwell or the rest of the sheep but it is on the short list, hopefully tomorrow (I said that 2 days ago and the day before that).  Poor Blackwell looks really funny, a man came on the property  to check our power lines joked he was going to report me to Animal Control for allowing her self esteem to be hurt.  

Late Night Phone Call

It has been a crazy few days.  Yesterday Darling Husbands phone rang at one in the morning.  We both shot up in bed and about 329 bad, horrible things went through my head in the seconds it took him to answer the phone.  His brother’s voice cheerfully says “What are you doing up so early in the morning?”  Maybe people who have no kids or animals can turn off their phones at night.  Since we have kids and animals we sleep with the phone by our heads.  My brother in law was stuck at the Emergency Room at the Hospital.  He had crashed his dirt bike and dislocated his shoulder, was dropped off at the hospital and needed a ride home but he wanted to have DH pick him up on the way to work and take him home.  We looked at the clock.  Darling Husband said I can’t leave my brother in the waiting room for 3 more hours.  So he left to pick up his brother.  Darling Husband finished the night sleeping in his truck at his work. 

When Darling husband came home from work he was understandably exhausted.  Our 9 year old was the only one home when it was time to take care of the animals.  It took poor Stick Boy and me almost 2 hours to do the fodder, feed the chickens and put them away,

attempt to put the sheep away,

get 11 sheep put away, feed the cattle, put 4 more sheep away,

walk the dang dog because we still have Maxwell and her baby out, go back and get Max and the lamb in.

Lambs

Sunday afternoon Dragster had her lamb. 

Look how big the chickens are already.

 When I was at work Monday morning, Deer had twins.  

When it was time to put the animals away for the night we found another baby.  

Then a lamb was born every day until Thursday.  

 

Rain and Sheep

 

 

It has been a very dry year.  Even though the sheep have most of 10 acres to roam and eat they have taken to running into the pasture and sneaking the cattle’s food in the morning.  We received a little over an inch of rain in early March and we are seeing some grass from that rain. 

 

 

The FFA sheep and our original 8 sheep are kind of 2 different herds of sheep.  The FFA sheep love the dogs and want them around while the rest of our sheep would rather the dogs run away.  They are starting to interact more and it’s fun to watch the dogs try to stay calm when they really want to lick the sheeps faces.  A few of our sheep are looking very pregnant and I wonder how much longer we have before we have baby lambs. 

Thanksgiving Break

Shrew on her last day.

Shrew picking a fight.

We bought a turkey The Shrew to replace our female turkeys that had been eaten by the coyotes.  The Shrew was a nasty mean bird who killed a baby turkey and would pluck the feathers off of any bird she could get near.  We decided to butcher her for Thanksgiving.  In the weeks leading up to butchering time I watched a lot of Youtube videos on how to butcher a turkey.  Finally the day arrived and Teen Son, his friend, and I got to work.  We hung the shrew upside down slit her throat and let her bleed out.  Plucked her and then cleaned out her insides.  It was not as bad as I worried it would be.  2 days later we cooked her for Thanksgiving – she was tough but delicious. 

The Shrew was a nasty bird and she was only 6 lbs it's a lot of work but not horrible.

Part of the Thanksgiving gathering.

 We went to a friends for Thanksgiving.  We had a wonderful time and stayed after dark and the sheep were still out.  When we got home we all went in different directions to find the sheep, feed the cattle, take care of the dogs, put the cats away, take care of the fodder.  We found the sheep near the top of the property and they were feeling full of piss and vinager jumping, skipping, and running.  The sheep ran down to the sheep pen then turned and charged the fence to the cow pasture.  The cows didn’t like the sheep running towards them so they charged the fence.  Our young heifer, April, didn’t stop in time.  

April eating happily after she recovered.

The spot where April got stuck.  The new silver is an old gate we "fixed" the hole in the fence with.

We have a telephone pole laying against the fence and she slipped over the pole and against the fence and ended up trapped on her side between the pole and the fence.  It was 9: and very dark, the wire cutters were not where we thought they were the other cattle were mooing and stomping around us.  I turned the flashlight on my phone and held it in my mouth and got the hay and fodder to the rest of the fodder while Darling Husband took the good flashlight to find some wire cutters, and Teen Son tried to keep April calm.  Finally we got the fence cut and April free.  She refused to eat and walked with a limp but she didn’t seem hurt otherwise. 

Getting the sheep used to Tessa.

Every day of Thanksgiving Break we worked with the dogs and sheep.  Our sheep love to run and dogs even Livestock Guardian Dogs love to chase.  Luca is a really young dog to be trusted with the sheep.  Tessa a young Anatolian Sheppard is intense.  She likes to follow them at a distance of 30 to 50 feet and they like to run so she kept them running.  Every day we would put Blackwell, Hotrod, and sometimes another sheep on leads and the Guardian Dogs on leashes and walk first one dog then the other.  After a couple hours we walked the sheep without the dog on a lead.  That worked great until we added 2 dogs.  When Thanksgiving Break ended we were able to allow both dogs and all the sheep to free range.  It is so nice when things work.

A silly Pielbuey

The sheep have anywhere on the property to go so why are they stealing the cattle's food?

Shearing The Sheep

 

Our first attempt  with Deer

First attempt with Blackwell

The wool sheep needed to be sheared and Teen Son’s FFA sheep needed to be sheared. Teen Son’s FFA teacher loaned us her shearers.  We decided to start with one of the sheep that will not be shown at the county fair.  We started with Deer and the shearers did nothing to her fur, we actually pulled more off with our hands than we cut off.  So we it tried on Blackwell and it started going through but it was a long slow process.  It took 30 minutes to get one hip done. 

Teen Son contacted his teacher and she told him to wash Penelope before we tried shearing her again.  Penelope did not enjoy being washed but we got her done and then the shearers worked a little better but still very slow.  Poor Penelope got immensely board, we got tired and frustrated. We stopped torturing her when she was about 1/3 done.

 We called the feed store we normally use and they do not carry shearing supplies so we went to the other store and bought Large Animal Clippers.  A man at the store said he had just used them to shear 20 sheep so awesome! We bought them.  We were able to shear Penelope but still painfully long and not beautiful so we cleaned them and returned them.  By now poor Penelope was about ½ sheared. 

I ordered Oster ShearMaster Shearers.  $300 and a few days later as soon as UPS dropped off the shearers we sheared Penelope quickly and easily after school one evening.

Penelope finally sheared.

The other sheep checking out Penelope.

 

Let me take a break to talk about the process of sheep shearing.  If you look up how to shear a sheep on You Tube you will see lots of videos of people (mostly large men) flipping a sheep up on their butts and holding the sheep against the mans body with one hand and shearing the sheep with their other hand. When the sheep are flopped on their backs or buts they seem to pass out or relax.  Blackwell would lick me while we were trying to do it.  This works great if you are over 6 feet tall and strong. – I am neither!  We watched hours of the videos looking for a way that didn’t break my back.  When it came down to it, it was much easier for me to hold our sheep either on my lap or them standing and me sitting in a chair.  Maybe if we had wild sheep the flipping them around might be better. 

Maxwell

Saturday morning we start shearing, I held the sheep while Teen Son used the shearers.  We started with Maxwell because I caught her first and she is the most skittish so we thought we would get her done first.  Maxwell was sheared quickly and easily with our new shearers.  She had one slight cut.  We were super confident.  We grabbed Dot and she was so relaxed while we were shearing her she kept reaching for grass to eat she took a step while we were not holding her skin tight enough and took a slice out of her leg.  We called College Girl and asked her to bring home some antibiotic spray for Dot's cut. 

Blackwell before

Then we started on Blackwell and decided to have fun with her hair cut and we left the wool long around her neck like a lion’s mane.  We were able to trim Blackwell with just a few nicks.

When we finished shearing the sheep and they all were together again Penelope realized she was not the smallest sheep she was the biggest!  She spent a few hours pushing the others around and butting heads to make sure everyone knew she was a big girl. 

Blackwell after, being told by Penelope "I'm Bigger than YOU!"

Teen Son took Penelope to be weighed and his teacher felt she needed to be resheared, again, so her wool would be shorter.  Teen Son contacted the breeder we bought Penelope from and asked her to help us.  She came with a shearing stand!  It is pretty similar to a goat’s milk stand and we put Penelope on it and she gave us a lesson on shearing.  Unfortunately her shearers were not working right.  She showed us how our shearers are shaped badly and make it easy to cut the sheep.  She and Teen Son got the wool on Penelope much shorter.  We felt very successful.