Sorting ewes

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This is getting confusing. This post is by me, Robin, even though it says it's by Rusty. He has his own blog and did not write this post and this is not his blog. Rusty's blog is here. Today was breeding group sorting day. Many thanks to Dona, a Farm Club member, who helped me all afternoon (and brought cookies).All the lilac ewes or those with lilac parents went to Hudson's paddock. He didn't waste time. Three of seven are marked.

Clint whispering sweet nothings to Delilah.

Faulkner  wasn't to be left behind.

The Puddleduck ram lamb (I still haven't decided on a name) is on the left in the picture. He isn't quite 6 months yet and was given a challenging group of girls to work with. He's starting to get the hang of what he is supposed to do, but the ewes are giving him a hard time.

Ruby Peak Linden and Meridian Clapton are the other two ram lambs I'm using. Linden seemed more interested in food tonight but Clapton got right to business although he had to work hard to reach the adult ewes in his group.

It's fun to see the colored rears and know to expect lambs in 5 months, but I hope we have some good rains before shearing day so the marks won't be so obvious.

A plethora of rams

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It's almost time to put the rams in with the ewes. I've been looking at my sheep list to match up ewes and rams. It makes the most sense for me to use only 2 or 3 rams. Keep the biggest group in the pasture and smaller groups where they will need to be fed hay. But I have an exciting stable of new rams to try. So I think that I'll have more groups than is really smart.Faulkner is going to be used on some older ewes . This is an experiment to see how crossbred lambs will do for the meat market. My guess is that they will be ready for market sooner and at a higher weight. There may be some interesting pelts as well. Faulkner is a character. Dan says that he reminds him of the Grateful Dead. "truckin', just keep truckin' on"."Hey, man, good grass."

Mud Ranch's Hudson is a lilac ram with spectacular horns. He will be bred to all my lilac ewes or those with lilac parents. It's been several years since I've had lilac lambs and Hudson will give me plenty. (Most Jacobs are black and white. Lilac refers to a color other than black--usually a brownish-gray.)

This is the yearling, Sweetgrass Clint, ready for some ewes. He came from Michigan last year.

Clint's son, Clapton, out of Meridian Jazz. He will be 6 months old the first week of October. I hope he'll be ready to work soon. His horns and fleece look great. I would have shown him at State Fair but somehow he knocked out 3 teeth just prior to the show. You can't take a sheep with a bloody mouth to the fair. Clapton is an "E" generation lamb and I'd like to breed my unrelated E ewes to him.

Here is one of the new ram lambs, #337 is from Ingrid Painter's Puddleduck flock in Oregon. He needs a name.

 

Ruby Peak Linden is also from Oregon. These two rams lambs will be 6 months old in mid-October. I'm going to give them both some ewes and see what happens.

If I haven't forgotten anyone that is already 6 rams, which is more than enough. So these ram lambs may have to wait until next year unless someone buys them this season. This is Meridian Siskiyou, sired by one of my favorite rams, Tioga.

 

This two horn ram has a great horn spread and I'll probably keep him around to see how he turns out.

I like the horn spread on this ram also. I like his color, also, even though he is on the dark side and should not be used with ewes who are also very dark. His wool looks quilted in this photo but is is not when you see him in real life.

 

 

 

 

Boys will be boys

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You saw the photos of the new girls in the flock and how they ran out to greet the rest of the sheep. I brought home two ram lambs as well. This is Puddleduck 337 (needs a name) and his fleece is below.

This is Ruby Peak Linden.

I put 337 and Linden in the pen with Faulkner and his little buddies (4-horn April ram lamb and 2-horn wether). I figured that there wouldn't be any issues because the lambs are still on the young side.

Linden, however, thought that he could take on the big guy.

 

 Faulkner finally had enough of the pipsqueak and decided to put him in his place.

One more time for good measure.

That should do it. Now they can be friends.

Wonderful awards

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This is the "official" photo of me with Meridian Vicki and the judge, Martin Dally. (Thanks, Shannon.) This is a close-up of the award.

Shannon Phifer created needle-felted awards for the Champion Ram and Champion Ewe of the show. I am so pleased to bring this home. Did Shannon have some prior insight? We think that the sheep on the award looks very much like Vicki.

But there is more! The winning sheep was also awarded a halter with a personalized tag!

More from AGM

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Yesterday was a busy day at AGM but I didn't get many photos as I was involved in many of the events. I did not have room to bring rams to AGM so took a few photos of the ram show. This is Shannon and Joan with their ram lambs. Shannon's ram, who is going to live with Joan, won Champion Ram.

Rams are sometimes challenging to show.

I will have to wait until friends send me photos of the ewe classes. My yearling ewe won Champion ewe. I was also pleased that the ewe lamb I entered in the Best Fleece class almost won that class. The judge looked at my ewe lamb and Shannon's ram lamb, went back and forth between the two, talked about them both, and then gave the award to Shannon (whose ram is truly beautiful). Even though in the real life of livestock production awards don't mean anything (and some of the best producing sheep would never win a ribbon) it's sure fun when you do win!

Workshops were scheduled after the sheep show. I taught a rainbow dye class to about a dozen women.

Shannon taught wet felting...

...and needle-felting.

We enjoyed excellent meals and company and meeting new people and a lot of sheep changed hands. I had a full load on the way back (in fact one more sheep came home with me than I took north) and didn't dawdle on the drive. The temperature hit 100 by the time I was in Redding and didn't go below 90 until I was about 45 minutes from home. (I have A/C, but the sheep do not.) I think this was the fastest trip I've ever made back from the Eugene area. It was about 7 1/2 hours (including my 9 minute nap at the Rogue River rest stop).

Back in California.

Faces on the Farm

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   A ram lamb with a nice horn spread.

Hudson surrounded by the young rams.

A ewe lamb.

Amaryllis

 

More amaryllis

Paulette and her lambs born at State Fair.

 Just another pretty face.

Stephanie.

The youngest ram lamb born in the spring and Clint's only son. He would have gone to the State Fair except that he injured his mouth and lost three front teeth the week before.

 Faulkner.

 

Photos on the farm

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I needed to get photos of lambs to update my website. It's hard to sell a 5 month old lamb with photos taken when it was 2 months old. I sorted lambs, took photos and then somehow between the camera and the computer the photos were gone. They disappeared off the card. Take 2. Now the sheep were out in the pasture. I had moved the portable electric fence so that the sheep would graze the ditch in anticipation of irrigating this week.

The dallis-grass is heading out. At this stage it's hard to get the sheep to eat it all. They don't like the stalks and the leaves are getting coarse.

It's kind of hard to get photos of sheep in this jungle. The flowering part of the dallis-grass is also sticky. The sheep get sticky grazing here and then the dirt sticks to them. It will take a good rain to clean off the fleeces.

Amaryllis doesn't seem to mind the dust and dirt.

In fact, I think she likes it.

It's easier to get photos of sheep back in the corral area.

Do you suppose it's time to wean some lambs?

A pretty pose.

 

 

 

Black Sheep Gathering-Day 2

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Here are a few scenes from  today's events.

 

All the champion ewes and rams return to the show ring for selection of Supreme Champion. Theron and I represented the Jacob breed.

The winner was Terry Mendenhal's beaufiful Merino ram, the third white sheep from the left in this photo.

The Spinner's Lead competition was held in the evening after a huge  potluck dinner. We were last of 18 entries and had the biggest applause of all (thanks, all you CA friends). Chris, Jackie and I all wove v-shawls from Jacob fiber and had a good story to explain all the details. It's too late for me to explain more, so here is another photo.

We are having a great time! More tomorrow.

Black Sheep Gathering - Day 1

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Farm Club members, Kathy, Dona, Tina, and Jackie are ready to leave with me and the sheep for Black Sheep Gathering in Eugene, Oregon. Friend, Chris was already in Oregon waiting for us.

Synchronizing phones.

UhOh!

The Shasta County Deputy calling in the suspicious livestock. It turns out that I am the legal owner. What if I hadn't had the health certificate? The only reason I had paperwork was because I was on my way to an out-of-state show.

Hot Lips thought it was no-big-deal.

Gas stop in Oregon. That's Jackie's van behind the truck.

Unloading the van. We had all the gear for 5 of us, dozens of fleeces, spinning wheels, etc packed in the van and the back seat of my truck.

Shaul's Manufacturing is one of our favorite vendors.

Although I come to BSG primarily for recreation, the purported purpose is showing sheep. I did not bring a yearling ram to the show because I don't have room to transport one and take all the other sheep in the back of the pick-up. I brought 2 ram lambs to show and, being born in March, they don't show as well as they might if they were a month or so older. The Jacob breeders are all pretty good friends and we were all happy to find out who won Champion Jacob Ram:

This is Theron with his ram lamb.

Part of the ewe lamb class. Jackie showed her lamb, Nellie (who was a bottle baby from me), Tina showed Venus, and I showed Ventura. We placed 3rd and 5th in this class. I have heard that Nellie will be writing her own version of the show later on (and may have quite a different perspective) and will publish that on Jackie's blog (Wooly Adventures).

Here is the high point for me. Meridian Hot Lips won Champion Jacob Ewe. She will show again against all the other winners for Supreme Champion Ewe.

 

A Typical Day...

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...or why I don't get everything done that I have planned for a day.

First up is morning chores and spend some time admiring Hudson, my new ram from Mud Ranch Jacobs. Joan brought him yesterday and took home a couple of ewe lambs. Hudson warrants a blog post all by himself, but he'll have to wait for that. Hudson is a lilac ram and by breeding him to my lilac and lilac-carrier ewes I'll have lilac lambs next spring. (Lilac is a Jacob color different than the more common black and white.)

 

 

One of the risers in my pasture water line pulled out a couple of days ago and I had to wait for the water to subside to be able to fix it. I left the hole open awhile to make sure that there are no more leaks.

 

 

Here is the result of a repaired pipe line--drinking water in the pasture so the sheep don't have to come into the barn for water.

I will have irrigation water tomorrow so I needed to set up tarps in the ditch. The water is provided by the Solano Irrigation District, not my well. The tarps allow the water to back up and fill the ditch and then flow out into the pasture. 

The green forage is the result of irrigating. Even with all the rain we had recently it wasn't enough to keep the desirable pasture plants growing. Notice the brown part on the left. My 24-hour irrigation hasn't been enough to get water to the all the pasture and that brown area is part that wasn't irrigated when I had water on last month. I have asked for 36 hours for this irrigation and hopefully I can get water to the rest of the pasture. Otherwise I have lost about a fifth of my forage for the summer.

This small green area is a section in the eastern paddock that my son burned earlier in the spring. He didn't think that the burn was successful because the medusahead was green and didn't catch fire readily. However, the burning killed it allowing other plants to grow. I want to burn the rest of it but I'm a bit worried about burning now--even if the burning would be permitted now. Maybe next year.

 

Throw in a littel bird watching in the morning.

 

 

Spend some time petting Stephanie...

 

after trimming her feet which she considers to be an insult.

 

More bird-watching.

 

Scrounged and cut wood to fit inside the feeders so that hay won't fall onto the backs of the sheep.

Jackie and Chris came out about 1 to help with halter breaking. (By the way, thanks to all the help, the lambs are showing remarkable improvement after only 3 days.) I thought a couple of them had rather droopy ears.

I pulled these out of one ear and found one other lamb with foxtails bothering her, although not lodged like these were. It makes me wonder how many I'm missing.

That's about half the day, but a long enough post.

 

 

 

Farm Club Comes Through Again

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I sent an e-mail Friday  to the Farm Club  in which I said I was going to vaccinate lambs today and did anyone want to help? Dona and Tina were already planning on being here for a spinning class in the morning so they said that they would stay. Jacki, Shelby, and Allison came too.  Wow! What great response with only 24 hours' notice. I bought a new tool. For years I have been vaccinating with single dose syringes. That means that you have to reload the syringe each time you give an injection.

I just never thought about doing it differently, but I was at Higby's Country Feed Store (my favorite store) and saw this syringe. There is a bit of a learning curve (remember to tighten needle, make sure you depress the handle part all the way, don't drop because the barrel is glass--OOPS!), but what a huge difference it will make after I replace the glass part that broke about a third of the way into the job.

I appreciate all the Farm Club members (who are now friends) who show up for projects like this. Shelby manned the camera, as well as caught lambs and played with the loose chicken.

Alison, Jackie, Tina, and Dona all helped catch and mark lambs and...

fill syringes (after the unfortunate incident with the new one).

Shelby took the following portraits.

After vaccinating I let all the sheep out but then needed to catch one more lamb.

So Rusty had a chance to get involved also.

Thanks to all of you for helping. Wait until you hear about the next unscheduled Farm Day. I think it's coming up soon.

Ram horn growth

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I have been talking to people who want to buy sheep. I explain that it's hard to predict at this age (2 months) how ram lambs will turn out when they are six months or a year old. I finally got around to finding photos of some of my rams as younger ages. I have posted several of these in the photo gallery on my website to illustrate how the horns can change as the rams mature.  Here are a few of the photos, but look for the rest on the website.

Look at that nice spread.

These horns are still OK although as they have grown they have moved closer to his jaw.

Diego's horns looked OK at 4 months.

At 6 months I had my doubts about his longevity.

Here I can barely get my finger between his right horn and his jaw. Diego became the entree for a crowd the other night and he will also provide a great pelt.

Pasture management revisited

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Regular blog readers may know that in the late summer and fall I start complaining about the unpalatable late summer grasses. I'm sorry, but I'm going to complain now even though it is only spring. I only graze about 7 acres so all of it seems precious. We dealt with some of the issues of the thick dallisgrass a couple of weeks ago by burning it. I hope something starts growing where all that heavy thatch was. Today's issue is the condition of the east paddock. Medusahead is a nasty, unpalatable grass that goes to seed in the summer, covering all the soil with thick dry thatch. The medusahead is starting to grow now and the only other thing growing with it is a perennial grass (Elymus--wild rye-- I think) that the sheep don't like either. The rest of the soil is covered with the dry residue from both of these. My goal in this paddock is to  graze it hard enough that they will at least trample and break up the dried up grasses from last year and hopefully eat some of the less palatable grass.

As I was uploading these photos I realized that they don't show what I've been talking about.

This is the view looking south. You can't tell, but it's the east side (left) of the east paddock that has the problem vegetation.  It took them only a day to clear off almost everything in the south part of this paddock (as opposed to 2 days in equal sized paddocks with better vegetation).

They are hungry and ready to move.

I took this photo as I opened the fence and stepped back so I wouldn't get trampled.

Arthritic Stephanie follows the running sheep.

Amaryllis brings up the rear. She will follow Stephanie anywhere.

This view is looking north, from the part of the paddock they just left. In this photo you can't really tell the difference in vegetation between the west (now on the left) and east sides of the paddock. It's much easier in person, but notice where the sheep are. There is no fence keeping them from the east side--it just doesn't have what they want to eat.

Compare this photo to the one where they are running into the new pasture. There is a blue cast to these plants--this is very sparse (although it may not look so in a photo from this angle) and it is so tall because the sheep avoided eating it the last time they were here.

Tomorrow I will start irrigating. I hope for some warm weather to follow so that the clover and trefoil will come in faster.

A Rainy Farm Day

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Farm Club members braved stormy weather to make the March Farm Day a fun and productive day. As usual I had more tasks on the list than we could hope to accomplish in the morning but we made good progress.

First on the list was a lesson on using a halter and tying a rope, using a knot that can be easily released. I didn't mean that the people had to wear halters, but Shelby is always ready for anything.

Everyone helped catch lambs and record the number of horns and whether or not there were any eyelid defects.  (Split eyelids are not uncommon in 4-horn sheep.)

Next task:  Empty this wagon that has been accumulating electric fence parts and who-knows-what-else for a could of years and sort it.

Good job, ladies! Now the trick is to throw out the true garbage and keep everything else sorted.

Tina, Shelby, and Lily cleaned lambing jugs.

Shelby volunteered to brave the lake and dump the loads.

Can you see the rain coming down in the background?

Shelby holding Shelby, the sheep's, lamb.

Tina's turn.

Dona holding her favorite.

Here is the crew ready to have lunch and spend the afternoon in visiting in the warm, dry shop.

Thanks to all of you for your help and cheerful attitude!

 

 

Lambs....again.

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Are you tired of new lambs photos?

This is the wet butterfly look. The ears remind me of recently-emerged butterfly wings.

This is the "Jacobs come in all colors" look.

Weigh-in of new lambs. I don't usually weigh lambs, but to be able to answer the question, "How much do they weigh?", I'm weighing them all this year.  My guess is an average of 7.5-8 pounds but I'll report back when it's all over.

 

Knitting better

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Today Meridian Jacobs hosted a knitting class taught by superb knitter, Nancy Jane Campbell. The purpose of this class was to evaluate our current knitting habits and work to "Knit Better'. There was pre-class homework.

These are two garter stitch swatches. The difference is that one is the result of knitting every row and the other is knit by purling every row. There is a difference. Nancy pointed out that my purl sample is much more even than the knit sample. The stockinette sample (no photo) also showed that I knit and purl with different tensions, resulting in subtle ridges and uneven stitches.

Lunchtime. We went to the barn so I could feed Nellie. Yes, I named the bottle baby.

We found more lambs.

Soliloquy had twins--smallest lambs so far this year at 5-6 pounds and Victoria had triplets.  I dealt with all of them and went back to the shop for the afternoon session of the class.

Before lunch we had measured and evaluated our samples. After lunch we started working on changing our habits and learning new techniques. The sample above may not be too impressive, but notice the very cool knitted cable cast-on edge.  It looks much neater than my long-tail cast-on. And notice the inch or so closest to the needles. There is a a big difference in the knitting for that inch than the couple of inches below. At the risk of knitting too tightly I have been knitting way too loose. It's a lot easier to be consistent when there is a little more tension on the yarn and the added benefit is that the stitches aren't always falling off the needle. This was a great class and Nancy is going to come back and teach a color knitting class later in the year.