So How Are Those Lambies?

The lambs are growing very fast right now, having good pasture and mom and some creep feed when they want it.

The Gang of Six (bottle babies) are really developing their own personalities.  They do all hang together in a little group so when the whole flock goes out to pasture in the morning they usually go with the flow and don't look for me too much.  This morning the youngest one, Flopsy, got sidetracked by something and didn't stick with the other five.  She thought she'd stay with me but when I stepped back into the barn she got positively frantic, poor thing, so I trooped out to the pasture to find the rest of the Gang for her.

The sheep saw me right away and thought I was going to open a gate into a south pasture so they all started to run toward me.

Then they thought I was going to go down the hill and open the east gate into the big, lower pasture.

After a while they gave up wishing for better and went back to grazing their perfectly nice pasture.  It was a beautiful morning and I could have happily stayed out there all day.  It did give me a chance to take some pictures. 

Fortune is the big sister of the group.  She's my C-section baby and doing very well.  She was born March 20, so is the oldest.

But still wants to come to momma whenever she sees me.

She's losing the baby lamb look and changing into a big kid.  She waffles between wanting petting and hugs and loving, and shrugging off attention to go eat or see what the other lambs are doing.

Daisy is the next oldest.  She was the last, smallest triplet from Shasta this year and needed to be in the house for about 2 days to gain some strength.  Mom almost took her back but then decided that the two she had was plenty.  Daisy is Miss Independent.... which is why I have no good picture of her yet.  She is always wandering ahead by herself looking for the best grass.  Here she's between Fortune and Snubby.

Then there are the three sisters - triplets from a mom with one functional teat and a case of mastitis.  Poof - you are bottle lambs.

Nugget, the solid tank who likes to have her chest scratched.

Fawn, with pretty dark ears and a delicate face, who is quiet but very alert to where you are....and if you might call for her to come.

 

And Snubby, (AKA Snubby-wub or Snubby-luv) who was born with a bit of a squashed face.  It's as though her nose was pressed up against something hard while she was developing, but it's more likely a bit of a genetic goof rather than a mechanical effect.  Her mouth is a little odd, but doesn't seem to impair her ability to eat, thank goodness.

She is the sweetest of the three siblings and loves to be petted and talked to.  Her expression is really quite endearing.  She perpetually looks like she's thinking, "Well, hmph.  I just don't know about that."

And then there's Flopsy, named by That Andy because of her ears.  She is the youngest by a couple of weeks.  Born to an old ewe, she was very weak and in the house for several days before being strong enough to go to the barn. 

She is still a Very Baby Lamb who wants a bottle and her momma and attention. right. now!  She loves to be petted also, and after being Abandoned! this morning she was especially clingy and stuck to my legs like velcro.

Eventually her shattered nerves quieted enough that she could nibble some grass with Snubby.

Eventually the sheep started to work their way back up toward the barn for the mid-morning drink and sit-down.

The lambs stayed grouped together so Flopsy had a definate 'family' to stay with.

I stepped back a bit and off to the side, then back some more and could finally climb over the fence into the next pasture and slink back up to the barn unnoticed.

IF there weren't so much to do I really could have stayed out there in the sun all day.

A Project 'First'

I've admired for some time the bags and purses that other fiber people have made by knitting something oversized and then deliberately felting it (fulling) to reduce size and increase fabric density.  Like so many other interesting things, I don't actually follow through and do them unless there is an additional reason.

This year our spinning guild held a group challenge called "Bag It!".  Back in November you were to provide 8 ounces of ready-to-spin fiber in a plain brown bag.  The bags were shuffled and handed out to all participants (with the organizers keeping track of whose was whose) who then were to make a bag or vessel by any method they chose and return the item to the original person.  I discovered some lovely Blue Faced Leicester wool dyed in dark shades of blue.  The spinning was quick and fun, but then the yarn sat for some time (*cough*April) until I found a pattern I liked thought I could handle.  (If you don't know of them already, hie thee to Ravelry and join, if only to take advantage of the pattern library.)

The Booga Bag looked pretty easy and I made a few changes  (more rows, more rounds) to make mine a bit bigger than I thought it would be if I strictly followed the pattern.  The pattern calls for you to make I-cord for the handle but making the bag bigger robbed me of sufficient yarn to do that.  Instead I built a small pocket into the inside of the bag and found some nice cording at JoAnn Fabrics to be handles.  And beads - I had to jazz it up with some silver and pearl beads.

I had pictures.  I really did, and it looked great.  Somehow I had a serious brain cramp and erased them to make room for something else. 

The bag was ripped from the recipient's hands collected at the end of the meeting to be included in the guild's display of Bag It items at the September festival. The variety and excellent quality of all the items was amazing and inspiring.  I already put a few more patterns in my Favorites on Ravelry to try some day.   I'll be sure to get a picture of  my bag at the festival and post it here.  I do so few projects - I need to immortalize them in pictures!  Sigh.

Sunday Stills - The Letter W

....So this week is a letter challenge and anything that begins with the letter W will suffice. :-)

Wool....

A small portion of the wool waiting for my attention.

 

Worn...

 

An old worn out disc resting on a new one.  The metal missing from the edge has been ground off  one molecule at a time grating over the rocks in our fields.

 

Work.....

 



Remove every disc and replace with a new one.  The shaft that runs though the centers and holds them in a row had snapped too, precipitating the sudden task.

 

Whew!

 





Sunday Stills - White

This week's challenge is the color white.  They are predicting SNOW here tomorrow and tomorrow night which would have been a good challenge capture in a dreadful sort of way.... but since it's not here yet we'll go with

Candytuft

and

Lamb's Ears (the real kind, not the plant)

 



I really, really don't want to be editing this tomorrow to add snow......

At Last

Spring has been a long time coming this year.  There were no teasing warm days in March or April.  We just hung on to winter and temps that couldn't crack 40 for weeks.  Things finally changed last week and we've had full sun and temps in the 70 range.  That brought on the pasture enough that we could start introducing the flock to green grass again after seven months of being on dry hay.

This is the small pasture directly adjacent to the barn yard we call the Baby Pasture.  It will only last a few days even though we only allow them a limited grazing period to help them acclimate to fresh forage.  Sheep have no self control and would eat themselves sick on this lovely stuff.

Of course the lambs have never been beyond the fence and everything gets thoroughly investigated.  Apparently, bare dirt is the best. stuff. ever.

The ewes don't waste any time or energy - they just graze as fast as they can (although they do run to another spot if they think someone has something better than they do.)

 

This is a dreadful picture of him, but this little guy has very cool moorit and white markings and is going to live in KY at Equinox Farm when he's weaned along with a companion or two.

 

 

But these lambies have a few more weeks with mom before that happens.

 



 

I'm sure the time will flash past like lightning.

 



Sunday Stills - Flowers and Wildflowers

Happily we finally have some spring flowers!

The ever-popular daffodil in both two-tone form.....

and solid yellow.

Little blue flowers whose name I don't recall.  See the honeybee at top/center?  :-)

Down the road the banks are covered with creeping myrtle.  Later the other weeds wild plants cover them over but at this time of year they get all the sun there is to have under the bare trees and they flourish.

And more daffodils; pretty double-flowered ones.

I think at this point they fall into the 'wildflower' category because there used to be a home and service station (yes, for cars and trucks with gas pumps and all) on this site FIFTY years ago.  Everyone associated with that is dead and gone except the daffodils. 

There are certainly worse things one could leave behind when your time on Earth is over.

And Our Last Contestant Is......

..... a hefty 16.25 lb ram lamb from Cotswold mom Gilly, born Friday morning before noon.

I wanted to get a little closer so naturally he got up and photo-bombed me.  I like the symetrical curly hair in front of his ears. 

It's been an awfully hectic few weeks - so hectic that I failed totally to blog along the way.  I have to sit down with the record sheets to cite facts and figures, but I can say it was definately a "ram year" with significantly more ram lambs than ewe lambs born.  I had no colored Cotswolds born because I used a white ram on all those ewes and his white trumped their color.  That's OK.  When I put those daughters with a future colored ram I should get lots of color. 

It was a rough year health-wise for the flock.  We lost Pearl before lambing and a Cotswold ewe named Kuddles to pneumonia.  Hazel gave me Fortune via a C-section and sadly expired once off anesthesia.  And a Cotswold named Ilsa had triplets that got tangled up with each other a few days before she likely would have delivered and it caused the death of at least one lamb which caused her to have an abnormal labor resulting in a long vet visit culminating in 3 deceased lambs and Ilsa having to be euthanized due to a perforated uterus also likely caused by the triplets becoming entangled with each other. 

We had three live sets of triplets.  One set became a trio of bottle babies when mom developed mastitis.  Another from a different set became a bottle lamb due to being so much slower and weaker than her siblings.  The third set of triplets was cause for worry because mom really didn't like lamb #2 or #3. 

For various reasons I found myself with upwards of ten lambs who were wholly or partially being bottle fed and I was only half way through lambing.  I started getting a little panicky since I know darn well that I get too attached to bottle lambs to do anything but keep them.  Happily - thankfully - the wonderful lady that runs the Wool Center at the state fair is also heavily into 4H and knew some families craving bottle lambs.  I sent her off with seven early in April with a happy heart knowing that they would have good homes.  Two of them were lambs #2 and #3 from the above-mentioned reluctant mother.  Of course I kept Fortune and the three siblings from 'mastitis mom'.  Also the small weak triplet that had become a bottle baby and one last lamb from an old ewe who was so slow to get started that she ended up in the house.... for several days..... and so ended up a bottle lamb.  Coincidentally, even in a 'ram year' the bottle lambs are all girls. 

The Gang of Six.  It must have been meant to be since they all fit on the bucket feeder :-/
That's Fortune on the far right - noticeably bigger than the others.

And here's a more flattering picture of her.

 

The others definately look to her as the ringleader big sister.

 

I used a new Cotswold ram on all the white ewes this year and I like the nice blocky lambs I'm seeing.  Many have the dark nose and tinge of dark in the ears that is fancied in the breed.

 

 

Everybody's growing quite well.

 

Annoying Mom.....

 

 

Investigating the world beyond the barn doors.....

 

 

This guy was more agreeable about having a close-up taken.

 







Enjoying the sunshine....

I like how the colored lamb is resting on his brother....kind of squishing him, actually.  But the sun is so nice he's sleepy and doesn't care.

And I'm happy that I can sleep through the nights again!