Time To Go Camping

Camping - where you get out of the house and live closer to nature without the familiar amenities.

The sheep are now camping in the bunk at night for the duration of this hot spell.  Being creatures of habit they are bound and determined to stay in the barn at night, making themselves hot, breathing stagnant air and turning it into a quagmire.  For their own good we have barred the barn door, set up a water tub and bedded down the bunk where they can stand under four gigantic fans when they come off pasture for the night. Even without the fans going it's a dry, airy space and very pleasant although the decor is plain.

They grumbled quite a bit the first night.  Everyone wanted to get to 'their spot' in the barn to settle in but the gate stayed closed and they eventually gave up and slept in the bunk.

There's a barnswallow nest on top of the old fence charger (no longer used but never removed) and the youngsters will be fledging soon.  Hopefully they'll be less likely to come to grief without the sheep tramping back and forth.  The barn cats are a danger but a careless hoof would kill a youngster too.  We love our swallows.

The parents were really not happy with me standing beneath the nest and I caught both of them swooping at me. (Twelve o' clock and nine o' clock)

Andy opens the barnyard gate and heads to the lower one while the sheep meander behind.

Once through the lower gate they head over the knoll to the lowest pasture.  The pasture they have cycled out of, to the right, was clipped and is starting to green up again although it's still pretty short. 

Because the lambs and mommas are fenced close to the back of the barn we had to move the outdoor water station for the main flock.  Instead of the usual place on the east barn wall, it now sits along the fenceline below the locust grove in a fairly flat (with the help of a shovel) spot.  You can never have too many hoses or Y fittings to run water somewhere!

The lambs are growing well. So far we see no drawbacks to lambing in May.

And with only eleven it's a lot easier to make friends with everybody.

This is Peppermint Patty, the lamb from Taffy who is the very round large ewe from the last post.  She may follow in her mom's footsteps and be willing to eat just about everything.

A moorit boy (brown) and one of the colored Cotswold twins.

Ophelia is the mom of the colored Cotswold twins.  She's very personable and her lambs seem equally quiet and friendly.

"Of course we're friendly!  We are good and smart sheep.  We know who feeds us."

Friendly sheep are sooo much more pleasant to work with! 

A Year's Worth

The calendar never really starts or ends for a shepherd.  One aspect of husbandry overlaps another and seasons go by but there's never a time when nothing is happening.  The closest we get is mid winter when everyone is hunkered in and eats their way through the cold, dark months.  But then....

Shearing!

A year's worth of nutrition, proper housing and care is harvested in the form of beautiful wool.  Taking the coats off the sheep is like opening Christmas presents.  We shear in batches of ten to fifteen sheep and can get through about 45 a day without turning it into an unpleasant marathon.

 "Is it any safer on that side of the pen?"

"I don't think so.  We can't really run OR hide."

We postponed the starting date twice due to weather and circumstances.  It was a very un-springlike day but the sheep had been penned the night before and so were dry.  Shearing wet sheep is miserable for the shearer and awful for the wool as it will mildew no matter what kind of bag or container you put it in.

It snowed all day.  :-0  

But indoors is was a steady accumulation of pretty fleeces.........

Curly Cotswold...in color!

....and in white.

Longwool crossbreds

Glamour shots........

Salsa is a moorit who has faded greatly over the years but apparently this freckle's worth of wool follicles didn't get the genetic message.

And this is why we coat.  This is Peanut with her coat removed.  The grimy wool to the left is on her neck, which wasn't covered by the coat.  It will wash clean for the most part, but it sure looks unappealing now.

And these are her big, shiny, CLEAN curls.  :-D

This is one of the colored Cotswolds - Pixie, maybe? - who has a very high luster fleece in gray shades.

She looks like she's made of tin foil.

Daisy was pretty sure I had alfalfa pellets in my pocket (aka 'snack hole') and kept trying to work her nose into it.

 "Ummmm....."

"You aren't getting any ideas about shearing DOGS, are you?"

No need, dear doggie.  We save all your brushed fur for spinning and you make plenty - no need to cut it off!

Never Say Never

We had seriously considered not producing any more lambs.  The barn is full of animals and I don't want to 'get rid of' anyone, either selling into another flock or <shudder> send to auction.  As we have chosen to discontinue the freezer lamb part of the farm business it was hard to justify producing animals without a specific need or purpose.  And, knowing how long our sheep tend to live (we have three right now who are fifteen years old) part of our long range plan was to let the flock dwindle from natural causes until in a dozen years there would be just a few that us old farmers could manage.

But.....having been contacted by a few buyers who really, really wanted lambs in the future we decided (OK, it was pretty much just me) that we'd expose a maximum of ten ewes to three different rams.  While my decision to not breed again didn't hold, I can say that we are D-O-N-E with trying to shear and lamb in frigid winter weather.  Sheep gestation falls quite reliably between 145 and 149 days so one does the math, looks at the calendar and sets the schedule.  The boys were put with ewes in mid-December so the earliest possible lambing date is after I return from the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival in May.  Likewise, they are scheduled to come out shortly so that the last possible date will be before I attend the Central New York Fiber Festival.

In the non-Cotswold group we have big handsome Brick in with Taffy, Macaroon, Tiffany and Violet.  They are all super crimpy medium wools, and Brick should add some length and solid body to them.  All except Taffy carry moorit genes (Tiffany herself actually is a moorit herself so that will double her odds) but the color is a recessive trait so it will depend on how the genetic dice roll.   I would love to get a moorit lamb or two as some of my very old girls like Ruby and Foxy won't be around much longer.  All have been covered by him and Taffy has repeated.  I'm not too surprised since she's fat as a market hog over conditioned and may not conceive at all but I'm hoping his full attention during the second heat will have done the trick. 

Old Isador is the last able-bodied F1 (first generation) Cotswold ram from the AI we had done ten years ago using a British ram and I really hated to not ever see lambs from him again especially since I have such nice young ewes who aren't related to him.  He has a group of three -  Paige, Peggy and Olivia.

The third group is exposed to the young colored Cotswold Norris.  He has three ewes - Lovey, Ophelia and Oleander.  Lovey is two-tone gray like Norris.  The other two ewes are white but have colored parents so the chances of colored lambs from them is high.  And white would be OK too as I'm sure the fleeces will be lovely.  They are housed in a long but narrow ad hoc pen which will be fine for a limited time frame. 

Once the rams have been returned to the bachelor barn the ten ewes will be housed together in the last pen on the floor where Isador's group is now.  We can feed them most appropriately if they are together. 

So the die is cast!  We'll be lambing in May when the sun is shining and the grass is growing! 

Last Call

The flock is on the last pasture rotation for the year.  The south pasture is the first one they go to in the spring and the last one they finish in the fall.  Other years, when we were breeding the majority of the flock, they would already be penned into groups and off pasture for the year.  Not breeding does extend the grazing season through mid November and now the signal to really end it will be the first day of shotgun deer season.  The days are getting shorter, leaves are mostly off the trees, starlings are travelling in a big flock and the weather is gray and wet.

The sheep queue up at the gate around evening chore time, ready to come in, find their spots and settle down for the night.

Both Stewart and then Daisy fixed me with a look - I think they were hoping for the cookie signal:  my hand going into my front pants' pocket.

The sheep don't mind the deteriorating conditions a bit and are eating as though they know some morning soon they won't be going out.

Over the weekend we had a long rain event and so they received a good rinsing which I was happy about.  We'll be putting their coats on fairly soon and I was hoping the barn grime would be shed in a rain before that happens.

I read a good axiom last week that rings true - "Well summered is half wintered."  One certainly doesn't want to rely on stored fat to get your stock through the winter but it does help going into harsh weather to have some extra upholstery working for you.

I think Snickers has the concept nailed down.  Lordy.

Knock wood, everyone looks pretty good with just a few old girls looking like candidates for the geriatric pen and special feed this year.

 

I like this ewe's Cotswold 'presence'.

The wind was blowing hard all day and the fleece on the Cotswold ewe in the foreground is long enough now to ruffle in the gale.

The rain really freshened up their locks.

Angelica says,

"Curls?  Meh.  I haz attitude!"

And a pretty, dark fleece.  Way to go!