Donkey Diet

I have learned that a donkey is probably not the best choice as a guardian animal for sheep that graze irrigated pasture in the summer and eat alfalfa in the winter. My sheep eat a rather rich diet compared to what a donkey needs. So Amaryllis was put on a diet. For the last 6 weeks or so I have fed her grass hay, but to do that I have had to keep her separate from the sheep. As many of you know, Amaryllis doesn't care much about the sheep, but she  really likes Stephanie, the goat (although the feeling is not mutual). So Stephanie and Amaryllis have been in a stall at night and I have put Amaryllis in an outside pen during the day. I found a potential solution at my local feed store.

This is a grazing muzzle. There are holes that allow the wearer to drink and to eat little amounts of grass that poke through the holes. If Amaryllis wears the muzzle I can put her back in the pasture with the sheep (and Stephanie). I did that yesterday and today and put her back in her stall at night to eat grass hay. I will have to experiment with the amount of time she wears the muzzle and stays in the pasture. Maybe some horses wear it full-time.

I don't know if the sheep were more interested in welcoming Amaryllis back or wanted to investigate her new muzzle.

They were happy to accompany her back to the pasture.

Before...

After. I think I can tell a little difference.

Color Wheel in Fiber

I taught Exploring the Fiber Color Wheel this week. Here are some photos.

We used the three primary colors to create secondary and tertiary colors and complete a 12-color color wheel. Dona's wheel has some other blends in it as well.

Mary used printer's primaries (cyan, magenta, yellow) to create her color wheel.

Jean also used printer's primaries and spun her fiber.

We made tints by carding with white.

Here is the left-overs from the floor and the carders blended together.

Today I had a chance to card my own colors. I will spin this tomorrow night at Spinners Night Out. What will I weave???

You can find out more about this class by clicking here.

Ouch!

I have been vigilant in trying to watch for mastitis in the ewes. It's not easy to spot until you see a ewe that doesn't want to get up or is lame. Lame? Yes, the infected side of the udder becomes extremely painful and the ewe doesn't want any pressure against it so she limps. Have any of you women ever had a breast infection? Then you know what I'm talking about. I am learning that mastitis in sheep can progress so quickly that you often don't see any signs until it is too late. Prevention or early detection is the answer. (Do I sound like a health care ad?) I noticed a lopsided udder a couple of weeks ago. I caught the ewe and her lambs. It was obvious that the ewe was not letting the lambs nurse on one side. I found a scab at the top of the teat--maybe something that started from vigorous lambs with sharp teeth (nursing moms can relate to that too). I used an udder cream to help soften the scab and I milked her out. Fortunately the milk still looked good--not starting to get chunky or cheesy. I kept that ewe in for a few days, milking her some, but mainly making sure that she let the lambs nurse--which she did when I used the cream on her udder. She is fine now.

Today in the pasture I saw Athena from the rear and thought that she looked a little lopsided, but not too much. I was able to sneak up on her and feel the udder. Hard. Immediate response needed. I brought all the ewes in so I could catch her and her lambs. Here is what her teat looked like:

It is hard and inflexible. A normal teat is squishy so you can actually get milk out. The good news is that the milk is still OK and I can get milk out if I milk her by squeezing the lower part of the udder and the upper part of the teat. The bad news is that it is very painful for her and she will get mastitis if I can't keep the milk flowing or unless I dry her off so that there is no milk production at all. You can't stimulate milk production on one side and not the other.

Here is what her lambs look like right now:

They are 50 & 55 pounds. Although normally I would have let them continue to nurse, at that weight and 2 months old they can be weaned. So they are on their own now and Athena is in a stall with a wether (with whom she is extremely annoyed) on no feed or water for a little while to help with the drying off process (discouraging milk production). Her udder will continue to fill with milk, but that in itself inhibits milk production. I will give her banamine as a pain reliever and anti-inflammatory and LA 200 as a prophylactic aid to prevent infection (not normally done when drying off). Hopefully without the stimulus to produce more milk she won't get mastitis and hopefully the teat will heal without damage that might inhibit next year's milk production.  Athena is a really nice ewe and I'd hate to lose her for this.

It's been a week since Meet the Sheep, our spring open house. My internet service has been sketchy and every time I started to add photos it was too slow and I gave up. I think technology has been upgraded and hopefully all is well with our internet tower. I can see that tower on the mountain several miles away (one of many--I don't really know which it is--do you think they could put a ribbon on it so I can pick it out?) and if I can see it, shouldn't the little thing on the roof be able to pick up the signal? The Saturday of Meet the Sheep we had gorgeous weather and I know that was one reason we seemed to be so popular. Dozens of people came and enjoyed the sheep, the goats, fiber, fresh air, and a wonderfully sunny (dry) day. As always Farm Club members were a huge help.

 

Paulette always enjoys a good scratch.

This is an Angora kid owned by my friend, Julie, of Black Oak Ranch.

Julie brought kids and a bottle lamb, all of which were very popular.

 

She also did a dying demonstration.

Shelby brought her tame chickens.

Jackie demonstrated carding and...

...Alison taught a visitors how to spin.

First handspun yarn.

Photo opportunities

Fashion footwear

Checking out chickens

Fresh yarn

Of course it was all about Meeting the Sheep:

The grass really IS greener on the other side

Faulkner, the BFL ram lives with his buddy, Jerry,  because I don't want to put him up against the adult Jacob rams with horns. He lives in what used to be the pig pen back in our 4-H and FFA days. I have been meaning to expand his pen ever since last year and finally got to it (with the help of son, Chris) yesterday.

Happy Sheep.

Barn chores

Today I decided to clean the ram pen. Over the last few months the rams have broken a few bars out of the feeder. I didn't realize until a few days ago that they had been pulling most of the hay through the broken area, so there was a big build up of wasted hay.

Rusty moved the rams to the back and I had him keep an eye on them while I worked. (You can read Rusty's blog post about this.)

This shed that the rams have for shelter is an old concrete building that has barbed wire instead of rebar for reinforcement (there is a hole where you can see that). I have reinforced the end of this wall with wood and this is where the gate hangs. That is also where I throw the hay into the feeder and hadn't noticed how it had built up. I was filling up the wheelbarrow and then I noticed this:

This pen had flooded a month or so ago and all that old straw was wet. Look at all those mushrooms. I was glad that my friend, Jackie, was coming over in a little while because I knew that she would be excited about mushrooms.

Jackie has been doing some natural dyeing so we scooped up a lot of these mushrooms and she is going to experiment with them.

Jackie's daughter and her boyfriend are visiting from New York. While her daughter visited with the sheep, Jackie and Mark pitched in and helped me finish cleaning the ram pen. That's my kind of visitors!

Pretty faces

I think I am procrastinating, but I like looking at pretty sheep photos...especially when it's dreary and raining outside.

This is a ram lamb but he doesn't look so tough when he still has little tufts of hair on his horns.

Hot Lips

Rosie

Faulkner's lamb

Nap Time

BFL x Jacob

Several people are anxiously waiting for the black BFL (Blue face Leicester) x Jacob lambs to grow up so that we can evaluate their fleeces. The BFL is a long-wool breed (but with a finer fiber diameter compared to other long-wool breeds) and Jacob wool is in the fine-medium range. Crossing these two doesn't mean that you get a fiber in the middle range of fleeces. Here are some photos of the BFL X fleeces and lambs.

The photos below are of the youngest lambs. You can see quite a difference in their fleeces.

By the way, I did not cross these breeds with the idea of keeping sheep for fleece. My goal was to produce a larger lamb and be able to market them more quickly at a higher weight.

Farm Day

Last Saturday was Farm Day and 8 of the 10 Farm Club members were able to make it here. We caught all the lambs and checked for split eyelids (a condition that sometimes happens in 4-horn sheep) and number of horns.

With this many people here it went quickly. Everyone else caught sheep and I weighed them. I don't usually weigh lambs as they grow, but I'm interested in finding out if my BLF cross lambs grow at a different rate than the Jacob lambs. I'll report back on that.

After working with the lambs everyone grabbed pitchforks and shovels and, with 3 wheelbarrows going, they made quick work of cleaning the barn.

What a great group of friends!

Lambing: Two Failures & a Success

Here is a story from last week's lambing. FAILURE: Last Thursday a big yearling, Helen, delivered a lamb that was dead when I found it.

FAILURE: The Saturday before that a yearling, Hattie, delivered twins. Both were alive, but one was almost dead when I found it. I think she had delivered standing up and when the lamb came out the body landed so that the lamb's neck was bent back with the head behind. The lamb couldn't shake its head to break through the membrane over its face and the mom was still working on Lamb #1. I removed the membrane and the lamb started breathing. I knew that this lamb wouldn't be up right away so I milked the ewe and tube-fed the lamb with colostrum. Then I left the lamb there for the mom to clean and hoped that it would be strong enough to get up. When I came back less than an hour later the lamb was still breathing, but had not moved and was almost dead from cold.

I brought the lamb into the house. At this point it was breathing but it wasn't moving at all. Here is how I warmed it.

This is a pot of water at about 100 degrees. I wasn't keeping track of time (it was already 1 a.m.) but after the first water bath (10 minutes ?) the lamb's body temperature was at 91 degrees. I filled the pot with more warm water two more times and eventually got the lamb's temperature up to just over 100 degrees. I wrapped the lamb in towels warmed in the dryer and tube fed it with more colostrum. I was worried that if it did regain strength it would uncover itself and get cold again so I took it to bed with me. In the morning I thought it was probably dead because it hadn't moved. No. It was alive. I put it in a crate in the kitchen and warmed milk for it. I was surprised that it actually sucked from the bottle. It tried to get to its feet but that was a struggle. Eventually the lamb could get up, but it was very wobbly. I also noticed at that time that one eye was opaque and blind. I couldn't decide it the lamb was also blind in the other eye. I started thinking brain damage from oxygen deprivation just after birth. Eventually the lamb gained strength and was walking around OK, but was still blind in at least one eye.

SUCCESS: When I found Helen's dead lamb I thought about  trying to graft this house-lamb onto Helen. Helen wasn't particularly interested, but at least she didn't try to kill the lamb or get away from it. I skinned the dead lamb and used that skin as a coat on the new lamb.

Helen was not enthusiastic, but was more interested now that the lamb smelled right. The next problem was that the lamb had never nursed from a ewe and didn't show any interest. (You can lead a lamb to the milk, but...) I left the lamb there since it didn't seem to be in any danger and I thought that maybe it would at least have a mom to follow around even it I remained the food source. By the time I finished chores it was past feeding time for the lamb. I brought a bottle from the house and the lamb was definitely hungry. After a few mouthfuls and took the bottle away and moved the lamb over to the ewe. She started to root around, found the teat, and started to nurse! SUCCESS

This is the lamb with the dead coat removed.

Three New Weavers

I taught a weaving class last weekend. Here are the projects while on the looms:

Here are the projects off the loom and three new friends.

Running with the Big Boys

It was getting dark tonight when I took these photos with my i-phone so the quality isn't great, but they are kind of amusing. Look at where this lamb ended up today.

I don't think he was too happy about it.

But of course he wouldn't let me catch him anymore than the big rams will let me catch them. They needed to be chased into a pen.

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

Playing with the drum carder

I taught a drum carder class today. Here are some results.

Dona added neon green to white Jacob.

Ania blended blue and gray.

Paula went wild with color mixes.

These are some of Ania's blends drafted into roving.

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.