Super Special

When I trekked to KY earlier this summer with some new friends for Baaxter I also had the great fun of seeing Burrnie the rescue sheep living the high life at Equinox Farm.  He's having a marvelous life with sheepy friends and people friends and plenty of food and a big roomy barn and everything.  Seeing him happy there was gift enough but Thecrazysheeplady had a surprise in the wings - she had salvaged enough of his poor fleece to make me a HAT!  A wonderful thank you from Burrnie!

 

 

Isn't it marvelous??  She is so talented.  The goldenglow are bending down to inspect the pompom and are now feeling inadequate.  ;-)

 



 

I will love it and wear it faithfully this winter and NOT put it in a drawer because it's "too good" for everyday.  Friendship IS every day!

 

Thank you Crazysheeplady.  And Burrnie.  Sweet, happy dreams!

 



 

A Warm Bright Spot in the Cold Dark Winter

This winter has just seemed endless and I've been in the doldrums worse than usual.  Busy and working on fiber and things when there is free time but just slogging though the basics takes the bulk of the day it seems.

We lost old Danielle in early February. She had yet another TIA type episode and deteriorated through that night into severe respiratory distress so she was euthanized early the following morning.  She almost made it to 11 years.  We have a few other oldies who are hanging in there but winter is pretty hard on old animals even when they have good food and shelter.

Natasha was not handling the cold at all well, particularly the multiple days below 0 so I moved her to the wool shop.  She's thrilled and wonders why she didn't know about this place years ago.  She took right to the kitty pan although she had never seen one before and doesn't even look at the door. 

The dyed Cotswold I most recently sent to Acorn Works returned and looks great!  It practically spins itself and makes yarn that reminds me so much of a flannel shirt that I just had to name it.........

 

"Lumberjack"

 

We've gone through the flock and given all the bred ewes their booster vaccinations so they have time to put lots of antibodies into their colostrum.  We've ground corn, hauled hay to the lower barn and Andy's begun the arduous task of cleaning out the barns.  We normally do this earlier in the winter but the below zero temps were mighty discouraging to that sort of work.  He can't reach the field he wants to spread on nor does he want to take the time to spread each load so he's stockpiling the dirty bedding for later.  The material from the lower barn can be stashed in the unoccupied feed bunk but the ram barn litter has to sit outside for a while.  We're jokingly calling it Mount Crap-sta.

 

But the very best part of the whole winter was last weekend when our KY family Sara and Tim came to adopt Burrnie!  He is going to live at Equinox Farm and be a permanent resident of Punkin's Patch.

Lucky, lucky lamb.  He went in style Sunday morning.  Travel accomodations looked so cozy I wanted to go too.  (Well, I wanted to go anyway!)

 

 

He rode like a trooper, ate and looked out the window and didn't lay down until they were almost back home!

 

 

Talk about rags to riches!  Yay Burrnie!!

Meet Burr-nie !



This is Burrnie.

 

Little Burrnie is a rescue.  We are not in the habit of acquiring sheep in any fashion other than as necessity to further a breeding strategy, and exhaustive health testing is required before anybody sets hoof on the farm.  Burrnie had the misfortune to be brought home by "people" who were.... let's be very generous and say 'clueless'.  The situation was near enough that we observed it on a daily basis for many weeks.  Without going into detail about the people and local humane agencies suffice it to say that we couldn't stand it any longer and offered to trade some hay to feed the surviving cattle in exchange for the lone lamb.

We had him vetted and the blood work has finally come back - negative for all the dire diseases we usually check for.  Yay! I haven't mentioned him to hardly anyone because I didn't want to jinx the blood tests.  Yes, we're very logical and rational here.  After three weeks of quarantine on the livestock trailer he's been moved into a lambing pen in the lower barn.  He's already gained a good bit of weight since the day we got him and almost looks like a normal sheep.

He is an intact ram lamb, probably about six months old and likely some cross with Shetland involved - clearly something very hardy :-/.  His face and legs have pretty cinnamon hair but his fleece seems white.  It's a terrible mess of burdocks and is starting to break due to severe "a-grocery-osis" but will be quite fine and soft next year.  He is very shy but took an instant liking to Nilla Wafers.  Thanks, crazysheeplady!  We'll keep him here for a while while we consider what to do with him.  I think he'd fare poorly in the ram barn.  Our ram lambs are three times his size.

"Well, it's pretty nice here and the food is excellent but I'm still scared.  Everyone is so BIG!"

 

We are fervently hoping he's the only animal we ever need to rescue.  But at least now we can sleep at night.