Summer & Paulette

Go back to February 28th's post to see Summer while still pregnant. She lambed three days later on March 2.

This is Summer with her ewe lambs at 4 days old. They were 7.2, 7.5, and 8 lbs at birth.

I think Paulette will take Summer's place as "the sheep most likely to have triplets".

In this case, I know that Paulette is having triplets. She was not supposed to be bred because she usually lambs at the State Fair. However, Faulkner got in with her and this is the result. A sonogram showed triplets...and this follows quads at the fair last year!

Today started at midnight when I went to the barn for a last check. I found a small lamb near Jazz who was obviously not done with lambing. There were two more lambs trying to come out at the same time.

All are OK now although that little one is sure small (only 4 .2 lbs) and I'll have to keep an eye on him.

When I went to the house I left Laura in because I thought that she would lamb next. She was lambing when I went out in the morning, but during the night two other ewes had lambed. Fran had twins and...

Pamela had twin lilac (gray markings instead of black) rams. While I was moving sheep around and making more pen space two more ewes lambed. That's 11 lambs, bringing the total to 44.

Here is what my barn chart looks like.

This is Dina with her lambs.

The lambs are getting playful. There will be plenty more jumping lamb pictures to come.

When is it Summer Time?

There have ben 14 lambs born since yesterday morning. What fun! There will be photos and videos when I have time. I'm having a little contest over on the Meridian Jacobs Facebook page. Guess when Summer is going to have her lambs. Tell me day/hour on Facebook and you'll be entered.

This is a photo of Summer taken today.

This is what Summer thinks of the contest.

Faces

Lambing is starting out more slowly than I thought it would. According to my calendar there are over 20 ewes who will lamb in the next 4 days, but I think that some of these may have been marked, but not bred when I first put the rams out. They may be a couple of weeks later. However I am not disappointed in the lambs. I experimented with breeding to Faulkner, the Blue Faced Leicester ram, to find out if I could produce larger market lambs without having deleterious effects on the ewes. Rusty wrote about the first set of BFL/Jacob lambs in his blog. (By the way, the lambs he wrote about were born to Athena, the ewe standing in the photo in my last post. I called her Summer by mistake, but Summer is the huge one in the photo below.) Another lamb was born last night.

This is a 12.2 pound lamb!

Sparkle doesn't seem to care that her lamb is so big or that she is not spotted.

When doing chores this morning I saw these ewes that I assumed would lamb during the day.

Summer didn't show much interest in breakfast.

Laura looked uncomfortable.

This is Summer again, looking even  bigger. No lambs yet, but I'm going to the barn now for the last check before bed.

The rams are jealous of the ewes that got to go out in the pasture. That is Hudson, Clapton , and  Clint.

Summer is waiting

Summer is waiting, but that's not the season. It's Summer, the sheep.

This is Summer on January 5.

January 17.

This is today, February 5. I don't have a breeding date for Summer but I don't think she lost any time after I put Clint in with her group. About a week ago I started giving her a little grain at feeding time, along with Paulette, who I know is pregnant with triplets after an ultrasound.

They both have to share their grain with the chicken who now comes running when she sees me get the grain bowls out.

Reflections & Faces

I took these photos a couple of weeks ago after our one and only January storm.

Dina

Lola

Hot Lips

Stephanie

Faulkner

Amaryllis

Sheep photos

Lambing won't start for 4 weeks but there are some ewes that look as though they shouldn't wait that long, especially when you realize that 70% of total fetal growth occurs during the last third of pregnancy.

Sparkle was bred as soon as I put her with the ram. She is due February 18, a month away.

I don't have a breeding date for Summer, but she is obviously pregnant.

I'll be surprised if she doesn't have triplets.

Jimmy is out there with the ewes and he is a very luck sheep. Most males that do not make the cut as breeding rams end up in the freezer. When he was a young lamb, I thought Jimmy had breeding potential. In fact I had a buyer for him. She was very disappointed when, after taking a closer look at him at about 3 1/2 months of age, I would not sell him for breeding. I was knew that his lower horn on the left would be a problem, but what was not obvious until I looked more closely was the freckling.

In this photo you can't see the freckling, but when I parted the fleece I could see it. Freckling in a young lamb is a disqualifying trait for Jacob sheep registration. It increases with age and it is almost as if a spotted sheep turns into an overall gray sheep. Jimmy has a beautiful fleece (although not appropriate for a breeding ram) so I decided to keep him as a wether. The horn issue was dealt with when he was castrated because, without testosterone, the horn growth slows drastically.

Why keep a wether? When you have to separate a ram for whatever reason, he needs a buddy to keep him company. Sheep do not do well by themselves. The other wether I have right now is Jerry (nice fleece, but too much black for a breeding ram)...

...and he is Faulkner's permanent buddy.

About a month ago I got an e-mail asking for favorite sheep photos so that they could be used for the 2012 Jacob Sheep Breeders calendar. This year's calendar is very different from previous calendars. JSBA member, Julie, who happens to live nearby, offered to create artwork from the photos to use for the calendar. Julie is a wonderful artist and the calendar is a special treat, complete with Jacob yarn binding. As a special surprise, each of us whose photos were used were given the original artwork.

This is Fanny, my oldest ewe. I absolutely love it. Thank you so much, Julie!

A Foggy Morning

It's been foggy in the Sacramento Valley, but this last few days we have been just west of the fog. It was here this morning but is burning off.

The sheep greeted me as I went out this morning.

See the 3 sheep in the middle of this photo? Paulette is the farthest right of those three. We did preg checks on her and the other 2 sheep who are the ewes I breed in February to lamb at State Fair in July. When we brought her in I thought that she had quite a belly for an open ewe. She's pregnant with triplets. No State Fair for her this year. Faulkner had got through the fence a couple of months ago and although I gave her an injectable form of the "morning-after" pill I guess it didn't work. So those are three little BFL/Jacob lambs she's carrying.

Why is Amaryllis standing here when everyone else is in the pasture? Those of you that know the flock will probably guess.

Because that's where Stephanie is.

Here are the rams. In the foreground left to right: Ruby Peak Linden, Meridian Clapton (lambs)

Center: Meridian Fogerty (lamb)

Background front to back: Mud Ranch's Hudson, Sweetgrass Clint, Puddleduck Sullivan (lamb).

This is Faulkner and his Jacob buddy, Jerry.

And, of course, Rusty is out here with me--staring at shadows.

Where will you be Feb. 21?

I know where I will be. I just transferred the breeding notes from my clipboard to my 2012 calendar (while learning to use the calendar in my Mac) and look what I discovered. I knew that a lot of sheep were bred all at once, but it's more striking when I see it in this format.

That's 23 ewes due in a 5 day span. I usually aim for March 1 lambs, but I got antsy and thought I'd start breeding a week earlier. After all, my friends will all be lambing and I'll want to have a few of my own before the rush starts in March.  I thought wrong. There are about 30 more in addition to those first 23. I guess I'll be warmed up by the time they lamb.

I've been finishing up registration applications for this year's lambs. It's interesting to look at baby photos of sheep.

This is 11038, now known as Rosie. Notice how her pink nose develops pigment as she gets older.

Rosie was developing very nice horns and I had my eye on her from the start as one I wanted to keep. She got in the ram pen when she was a few months old and, in trying to get back with the ewes, she broke off both horns. They are still stubby, but stout.

Here is another. This is ram lamb 11094, the last ram of 2011, and sired by Sweetgrass Clint.

He is named Clapton and will be the sire of several lambs in 2012.

Clapton doesn't look quite so nice after shearing...

...but his fleece is sure pretty.

Faulkner & Jerry

I haven't had time to sort many fleeces yet. In fact, other than those I've sold I have only skirted the ram  and wether fleeces.  But I'm very happy with those that I've seen.

This is the fleece of a wether, Jerry. He is mostly black, not a good Jacob trait, but he will get to live his life being Faulkner's companion. Faulkner is the BFL ram and I am not going to subject him to living with a group of rams with huge horns.

Faulkner and Jerry

This is what Faulkner's fleece looked like "on the hoof". This photo was taken shortly after I got him so it had grown a lot since then.

This is a lock after shearing.

Less than a minute in hot soapy water.

Silky, white locks!

Lambtown

Another post by Robin. I don't have time to straighten out WP right now. I think Rusty needs his own e-mail address to fix this problem. Lambtown was Saturday. What an incredibly busy day! There is no way that I could have made it through the day without the help of friends. The event was packed. Here is my booth before the doors opened.

I had the booth pretty well set up the night before when I was asked to move it 18" to the north because the neighboring booth wasn't given the allotted space. Can you imagine? I was not happy, but after dealing with it, I didn't feel so guilty about spilling over into the empty space next to me. Next year I think I'll get two booth spaces, but I'll definitely need a full-time person to help. Friends, Aaron and Alison and Jackie helped with the booth and we even pulled in a few other friends who happened to be walking by.

I taught a rigid heddle class in the morning and had five students. We crammed as many new techniques into that class as we could in 2 hours. Everyone wove a sampler with Italian hemstitching, Danish medallions, and warp and weft pick-up.

There was also a sheep show. Tina helped in the show ring and Dona and Rick spend most of their day monitoring the timing of the show. I thought that we might be showing in the morning, but there were enough sheep entered that we didn't show until later in the afternoon. This is the yearling ewe class. That is Meridian Vicki in second place. She was Reserve Champion ewe in the Primitive Breeds division.

Tina brought her service puppy in training to Lambtown. Isn't Golly cute?

Thanks to Dona for the last 2 photos.