Lana's Ewe Lamb and Lanora's Boy

River Oaks Lana had a ewe lamb all dried off and fed when I went out to feed the sheep on Sunday morning.  I think she may be modified, her skin looks rather brownish, but her fleece is black. 

She weighed 7 lbs.  Only half as much as Lanora's ram lamb who was born Saturday morning.

I'm trying to think of a name for him. His sire is Granite, so I was thinking of maybe Slate, but then I thought maybe Glacier... Still thinking.  He was quick to nurse after birth and his was a trouble free BFL lambing except for that spurting cord.

Here he is Sunday morning, with his mom a full sister behind him on the left and yearling Shetland ewes, Freya, Cleo, and Freida on the right. He went out on pasture with mom and old sister Rhisa that day.

I had to band their tails tonight, I just hate doing that.  Glad it's over now.

Another BFL Lamb

Just a quick post to say that our white BFL ewe, Beechtree Lanora, had her lamb this morning. It's a beautiful white ram lamb with a very blue head.  Look at those ears!  He's certainly not a pinkie.  :-)

His cord was pretty thick and when I clipped it, the blood just spurted out.  How scary!  I held it clamped tight for a while and then dipped it in some really thick and fast coagulating Iodine I bought from Premier.  It quit spurting quickly and it looks good now.  But I hope he doesn't get it bleeding again while I'm gone at work this afternoon.

Lanora is being a very good mother, she licked him off and is agreeable to having her bag accessed.  I got both teats unplugged and ready for the lamb to find -- hopefully on his own this afternoon. :-)

This boy is white carrying color. And he is the last BFLlamb for us this year. Our two 2-year-old ewes didn't take last fall. I'm disappointed not to get any lambs out of Ward Harwell, he's a gorgeous ram.  Next year I'll leave my breeding groups together longer.

Overall with the BFLs lambing, we've had 50/50 rams and ewes, and 50/50 colored/white.  Now I can relax and wait for the Shetlands to start in with their lambs.

Out & About - What a Difference a Day Makes

River Oaks Rhisa 1 day old and weighing in at 13 pounds.

You can see by these photos we need rain.  We got some the other night, but we need more to get the grass growing.

And for the Shetland lovers, here are a couple shots of River Oaks Freya.  She is a yearling black gulmoget with solid sides. 

I'm noticing the rich brown facial stripes in the black gulmoget ewes right now.

This is a very pregnant River Oaks Lana, she was in the rise at shearing and she looks a little raggedy now, but she's also got solid sides. I don't know if she's homozygous black or not. I would love to get a moorit gulmoget lamb from her.

First lamb of 2010

Rhyn was in labor when I got off work last evening. Good thing for me that she chose to labor right in front of the barn cam.

It was grain feeding time, so all the ewes were inside at the feeders.  Rhyn took a few bites, laid down to push and got up for a few more bites.  I decided to watch from in the house.  Suddenly I thought I'd better go check for two hooves and a nose. By the time I got to the barn, a newborn natural colored BFL ewe lamb was sprawled out on the hay in the narrow walkway between the feeder and the wall of the pole barn. 

Rhyn was licking her like crazy.  No Shetland lamb has ever had a more attentive mom than that!  I wiped off her face and sat back to watch the new mother and baby.

I've not been very excited about lambing this year, but there's something very special about witnessing those first quiet, gentle moments of life and the bonding of mother and baby.

While all the other sheep were busily eating their grain, old Bramble Cordelia came over checked out the newcomer real good. The yearling ewe lambs were afraid to go past and they had to jump as high as they could to get past her.  Not wanting anyone to get hurt,  I moved the baby out of the walkway and into one end of the barn and I set up a panel to separate them from the flock.

Then I went back to house to watch for another lamb's arrival.  I was hoping for twins this year out of Rhyn, she seemed so big. But when none came, I clipped and dipped the cord in iodine and went to strip the wax plugs from Rhyn's teats. Again this year I had to get Stan's help in holding her still for that. I tried to help the lamb find the teat, but she resisted.  So I gave her a little bottle of the colostrum I had milked out and a supplement I keep on hand for the BFL lambs. 

All seemed well as I turned out the lights and I was confident the lamb would figure things out overnight.  I checked them on the barn cam during the night and they seemed to be doing fine.

But this morning the lamb was noisy and skinny, and Rhyn's bag seemed pretty sensitive. So Stan set up our new homemade headgate and we managed to get Rhyn locked in it. I am the first to admit I absolutely HATE having to milk out a ewe.  I have an Udderly EZ milker which I eventually employed, but I am just not good at milking sheep even with good equipment. And Rhyn wasn't too happy about it either. The lamb got another bottle of colostrum and I got very frustrated with the whole situation.  It really wasn't Rhyn's fault this time, it was that STUPID lamb's fault. 

I wrote about it on the BLU Board group this morning and got some very reassuring advice from longtime Shetland and BFL breeder Judy Colvin.  She said just stay out of there and don't bother relieving pressure on the mom's bag. And don't try to help that dumb lamb unless she's humped up.  Just let them be. So that's what I did.  I gave Rhyn a shot of Banamine just in case she had pain issues and I released her from the headgate which was making her pretty upset.

And now from the looks of things on the barn cam, the ewe lamb has figured it out! At least for one side of her bag - the sensitive side - it's completely shrunk up!  So the lamb is getting all that good colostrum.  Oh what a relief!  Suddenly the sun is out and the rain that fell overnight makes the grass look green.

Getting ready for Lambing and Easter

River Oaks Lana and Freida before shearing - rich black color from their Holly genetics.

Lambing seems to have sneaked up on me this year. I've been going a mile a minute for weeks now and suddenly I realize our first BFL lambs are due in only a week!  I've got to put in an order to Premiere from some Kolostral, tags, Nutri-drench and a new battery for the electronet.

This is the time of year I do daily bag checks.  I'm comparing bag shots from last year with actual delivery dates.  And according to last year's photos, Rhyn should deliver pretty close to her due date of April 10th.  I'm hoping for my first sets of BFL twins this year.  But I will be plenty happy with healthy singles and attentive mothers.  We've got two BFLs that I'm pretty sure are bred, but they could still prove me wrong.  Not much for bags on them yet.

I had the vet out yesterday to look at Cordelia's eye and give Shachah his shots. Cordelia seems to have scratched her cornea. I got a new tube of antibiotic eye ointment (my old tube was expired) and gave her a shot of Banamine which I had on hand.

Shachah got his rabies, distemper and Lyme vaccinations and was tested for heartworm and tick borne diseases.  He came up positive for anaplasmosis, so now we have to start him on doxycycline for four weeks.  He'll need five pills a day.  He only eats once a day, so I'm going to have to get him to take a little snack laced with pills in the mornings in addition to the same at his evening meal.  I suppose I'll have to put the pills in venison burger...

Zeilinger's got my 32 pounds of washed wool in time for me to get the 23% discount on processing - that discount covers the cost of shipping. In fact they've already gotten my white BFL roving done and will ship it back right away. The rest won't be done until late May-early June, they are so overwhelmed with orders.  I'm having a three-way swirl roving made from my longer-stapled black, moorit and mioget Shetland fleeces, and I'm having all the white Shetland Mule made into batts for felting (13 lbs).  The natural colored BFL is being processed into combed top - it was kind of felted after washing, so combed top was the way to go. I think the processing is worth every penny, Zeilinger's does such a nice job on everything.

Off to work this morning and then I'll be on a mission to clean this house in time for the big family Easter dinner here tomorrow. Last week we were fortunate to win $250 in gift cards from the grocery store we work at.  It really helps to cover the cost of groceries!  A couple years ago our youngest won it in cash and we split it with him since it was our groceries that won the prize (they pick an employee at random and then go check their cupboards for the store brand items,they pay $10 for each item up to 25 items).

Oh and I almost forgot, our youngest finished his schooling two weeks ago and has landed a full time job with benefits! He'll be a help desk operator for the Apple iPhone after he completes 5 weeks of paid training.  The bad thing is the training starts tomorrow, Easter Sunday!  Strange, huh? Oh well, we are just so happy he's got a job and will be able to make the payments on his student loans.  This is such a tough time to find a job.  He plans to continue to working as a freelance videographer which is what he went to school for. But he needs to invest in a good computer and camera now that he's done with school and won't be able to use their equipment any more.

Coming up for Air

I'm so happy to finally be done with the Shepherd's Harvest booklet! It's being printed now, but you can download a copy from the website. Unfortunately, Bob Padula won't be at the festival doing the micron testing this year.  The committee members decided it would be best to wait and have him next year along with Phil Berg from the Pipestone Sheep Program.  

Of course I said I would like to have Bob there every year testing fleece samples, but others didn't think there would be much demand for that.  Oh well, I tried and the majority rules!  There are still lots of other cool things going on to draw people in to the festival.  I'll send my fleece samples to Texas A & M again this year.

Events really spun out of control this week with Stan and my brother installing our new kitchen floor on Tuesday, the same day I started my job training and was finalizing the booklet.  The new floor looks great, but it took until this evening to get the kitchen and living room put back in order again.  That's also because we
took time out to enjoy a wonderful boiled dinner with friends last night for St. Patrick's Day.  I always love St. Patrick's Day because it means spring is on the way.


I'm still hoping to get my washed wool shipped out to Zeilinger's next week. And then I need to start in on skirting the 2010 fleeces.  I can't wait to get a good look at them!

We frost-seeded our pasture paddocks on Monday. I hope it wasn't too late in the year, but we couldn't have done it any earlier -- the snow pack just melted two days before we seeded.

A few photos while I keep working...

Shachah in the morning

I had my photos put on a CD so I could share a few here. I got a new laptop yesterday rather than buy myself a new card reader for my old computer (which is almost 5 years old now).  Hopefully I can get the laptop set up in the next few days.  Until then, here are sheep photos from early March.

Ward Harwell - yearling ram

Ward Harwell, what a beautiful face for a guy!

River Oaks Rhaya before shearing

Lanora's face too

Rhaya in front and her mother, Rhyn in back -- before shearing

Things have been so busy around here this week.  We got the shearing done on Monday and all went well. I love the rythym of shearing, the sound of the clipper and the predictable, repetitive motions used to rid the sheep of their fleece. I never like to have a crowd on hand for shearing, the best times are when it's quiet, just the sound of the clippers, the smell of sheep and just Stan and I and the shearer.  I make up the CDT shots ahead of time and labels for each sheep's bag of fleece. Then I just have to scoop up the fleece and put it in the bag before helping to put the naked sheep back into the pen.

All the sheep are in good flesh this year.   Unlike last year when I was feeding sub-par hay and they were SO horribly thin at shearing. And yes, there will be lambs as planned in April! It's always a relief to see the bags starting and the round tummies.  I will upload photos of the shorn sheep when time permits.

I'm am working like a mad woman on the Shepherd's Harvest booklet.  In fact, I've been so involved, I left  poor Ozzie out in the rain overnight last night. I left the light on so I wouldn't forget he was out there, but I was so wiped out that my reminder didn't work.  Bless his heart, I think he's forgiven me already.  I just hope he doesn't get sick now.  The booklet should be done on Monday.  So you can download a copy on the Shepherd's Harvest Sheep & Wool Festival website shortly after that.

The Census Bureau called the other day and I've been selected to work another detail.  I'll be in training for four days next week. This time I'm not adjusting my work schedule at the deli, because I can always work those few days in while I do the census work.  I have really enjoyed the census jobs I've done so far.  I've met people and learned a lot about the area.  It's kind of like being on a treasure hunt finding the right home and then hoping to find a person to talk to once you get there.  The only thing that has me a little worried this time around is the flooding.  There are so many rivers in our area and with our recent melting and rainfall, they are rising fast. I don't want to have to drive through any flooded country roads.