It Takes A Farm Club ...

I've thought about titles for this post for a couple of days, but I've been too busy and/or too tired to write it. It Takes A Farm Club to Run a Farm. Or Farm Club Experiences Life and Death. FC met here on Saturday. I am so appreciative of everyone in FC. I know that they are getting experiences they wouldn't otherwise, but I am benefiting tremendously as well. There was a lot going on that day. My day started with a ewe that I though might have milk fever. I treated her with calcium gluconate and put her with her lambs in a pen so I could watch her. The first FC members arrived as another ewe, Onyx was lambing. Lambing pens ......and the rest of the barn were cleaned while we kept an eye on Onyx. Onyx is a BFL/Jacob cross bred to a Jacob. She had a black lamb and a Jacob-looking lamb while FC looked on. I'm glad that she lambed in the barn. If she had been in the field I would have been looking all over for a Jacob ewe missing a lamb.Look at the horns on that lamb. Ouch! It's unheard of to irrigate this early in the year, but we have had almost no rain since December. The irrigation district charged the ditches so I put in a call for water. Gynna and Lisa helped by clearing debris from the ditch. We checked this ewe lamb's broken leg. I showed FC members my bone-yard ( a pen where I put skulls that are in various stages of decomposition). Shelby sat with the ewe who later died (not of milk fever, but  a metabolic problem similar to pregnancy toxemia, according to preliminary necropsy results).Then we had to bottle feed her lambs. (The day before I had just grafted the bottle baby I had onto a ewe. Now I have more bottle lambs.) And there are always plenty of lambs to hold. We checked all 70 lambs for split eyelids and number of horns and I gave them all BOSE injections. I don't have photos, but a guest of a FC member worked on my buttons--sanding buttons that I had cut out months ago.  We can't have Farm Day without Donna's brownies...and now Lisa's sheep cookies and  Mary's O'Henry bars.  Thank you to everyone who came and helped and then shared the warm afternoon sun.