From all of us here on the farm – Happy Valentine’s Day!
Farm Life
At the beginning of breeding season, my son picked 3 ewes to breed to his ram, Reno. He did a great job picking the girls and the lambs are beautiful!
The first born was Echo and she is really friendly!
Here she is with her mama, Petunia.
These pretty girls were born this morning. You can really see the difference between the lilac in the front and the black in back.
The mom is almost solid lilac in color, but both lambs have wonderful coloring. The ideal jacob sheep coloring is 40% black/lilac and 60% white.
The lilac girl has the cutest little elf ears…
and the black girl has the cutest spot on the back of her head.
So far, this girl is friendly too.
He has one ewe left to lamb and he is really hoping for some boys. He asked me if I would trade him a boy for a girl if he doesn’t have any! He is working on a name for his flock.
And look…
a picture of me!!!!
I never have pictures of myself. My son is old enough that he can handle the camera 🙂 YAY!!! Paisley is still the cutest lamb ever.
These lambs are a very close second!
We have 14 lambs – 3 boys and 11 girls with more on the way very soon.
For those that want to see more lamb pictures, you can see them here – 2010 lambs
It started in 2003 with our first lambing season – what were we going to name them??? That particular year we named the boys after trees and the one lone girl after a flower. I had so many flower names that I didn’t get to use, so I used the same naming theme in 2004.
Violet
Birch
The theme for 2005 was cartoon character names – kind of obscure ones 🙂
Rafiki
2006, 2007, and 2008 were the years for car names – very fun!
Lancer
Last year was a year we all needed a little inspiration – so we had Hope, Joy, Bliss, Grace, Dignity…
and Serenity.
I had a really hard time with a theme this year – how could we have lambs with no names???
Luckily inspiration hit days before the first lamb arrived – Cities in Oregon!
So far we have Sublimity, Echo, Amity, Wren, Unity…
and Paisley the cutest lamb EVER 🙂
I’m looking forward to some boys so that I can use – Ironside, Granite, Dundee, and Gaston.
Then there are the names that I will know who they belong to as soon as they are born – ZigZag, Rufus, Dufur, and Boring!
We are up to 5 ewe lambs and most of the lambings have been uneventful. Tess decided to throw a little twist into the smooth sailing when she tried to steal Dusty’s lambs yesterday afternoon. We have dealt with ewes trying to steal lambs in the past, but not to this extent.
We went to the barn to check on the girls and found Dusty and Tess cleaning a lamb – they were both very close to lambing that morning so it took a little detective work to figure out who it belonged to. Dusty was very hollow in the hip area, so she was determined to be the real mother but Tess was positive it was hers. The other issue was that there was only one lamb. I was sure Dusty was going to have twins.
I scooped the lamb up and moved her and Dusty to a smaller pen – fighting Tess the entire way. She slammed herself through the gate twice trying to get to ‘her’ lamb! During this craziness I heard a small baaing coming from behind/under a feeder. I had my son go check and sure enough there was the other lamb! She must have been hiding from the fighting moms. We reunited her with Dusty and her sister and all was well.
Say ‘hello’ to Unity and Wren.
Tess continued to talk to them for the next 4 hours until she finally had her lamb…
meet Amity.
Poor Tess will forever be known as the lamb stealer to my son 🙂
We had our first lamb yesterday and I couldn’t be happier with the Greenwater Julian x Zettle’s Harley cross.
Isn’t she pretty???
Harley is going to be 9 this year and this is the 2nd ewe lamb she has produced that wasn’t ugly 🙂 Unfortunately, I sold the first one and was starting to think she may not produce another one for me. Her ewe lambs are usually very light in color and have very little color on their faces. Her boys are always marked nicely and are very handsome.
This little girl will be staying here. She looks to have a very pretty fleece, just like her mom and dad.
It looks like 4 more will be lambing this weekend and there won’t be any rest for me because it is a steady stream until the 18th.
Some of the girls are getting pretty big!
Kenleigh’s Aurora – she comes from a line that always gets BIG. I’m sure she just has twins, but my son says she has 5 in there 🙂
Kenleigh’s Ellie is the loud mouth of the group and has been complaining for a week now. She still has a week and a half to go. Poor girl!
Rolling Hills Veronica is the biggest of the girls this year. She isn’t just wide…
but deep as well.
Stay tuned for more lamb photos!
Status update – still no lambs…
So, I’ll write a post about the best helpers ever!
Kate and my son make an awesome team!
Most of the time I can just open a gate or two and have the sheep go where I want them.
Moving through a pasture of lush green grass, can be a little difficult though.
Time to call in the first part of the team.
I love this dog! She has so much power, but knows when to use it and she is so gentle with my very pregnant ewes.
She has tremendous work ethic and wouldn’t leave a sheep behind, but I have to remind her to get the llama 🙂 Here she is after I told her to ‘look back’.
She obediently heads back to get him, unfortunately he doesn’t have a lot of respect for her. I know from experience that he will finally move for her, but sometimes it is better to call for back-up…
there, that got him moving!
Kate’s got his back just in case he needs it.
I would be remiss to not mention Magoo in my list of helpers. He often makes catching the sheep a little more difficult than it should be, but I am very grateful that his watchful gaze is always watching over the flock.
Thanks guys!!!
that make me happy 🙂
Such as a swinging, lockable gate at the back of the barn!!! There has been a hog panel back there for longer than I care to say. To shut it, I had to wedge it between the barn wall and a huge stump and hope the ewes didn’t push it open while I was putting hay in the feeders. As far as locking the sheep in the barn – well that is just laughable!!! I was so happy when this went up I felt like doing a happy dance.
Also, notice the nice footing?
This wasn’t such a small task, but oh so nice!
This is what the back of the barn looked like. With lambs due shortly I was having nightmares of going out and finding lambs stuck in the mud up to their bellies. So, I had a load of hog fuel delivered and spread it really thick behind the barn. I swear a few of the ewes smiled at me when I let them out of the barn 😉
We also set up the maternity ward! Now comes the waiting…
Remember the puppies from this post? They came for a visit yesterday!!!
The breeder and our friends, Jim and Debbie, wanted to see how much herding instinct they had. My ducks were perfect for this task. I originally got my ducks for herding with my dogs, but they haven’t been worked in awhile. They were very good for the puppies and the puppies did great.
My son was a great helper and encouraged the puppies, while I took pictures. This is Buster, the lone boy.
He showed them all how it was done.
Little Trixie is staying with Jim and Debbie and will have a lot of herding opportunities in her future!
They are going to have their hands full. She is a little pistol…
but very sweet. Mmmmm – duck poo kisses 🙂
This girl is my favorite and it is a good thing she has a home. She is so sweet and wanted to get loves and hugs from the people instead of playing with the ducks. I love that face 🙂
where did you come from?
This flew into our pond this morning. I’m not sure where he/she came from, but I believe it is an African Goose.
I heard a goose this morning, but didn’t think anything of it – we have geese flying over all the time. When I looked out the kitchen window later in the day I thought it was another decoy that the boys had thrown out.
While I was doing afternoon chores, I noticed that he was a little too life like! Sure enough, he was moving around the pond.
Bless my son’s heart, the first question he asked was “Can we keep him?”
He looks smaller than the pictures on the internet, so I am wondering if he is a juvenile???
We gave him some food and will name him if he decides to make our pond home. Does anybody know how to tell if it is a girl or boy?
according to our 6-year-old son 🙂
We were in the barn feeding and he wanted to hand feed one of the sheep. I told him that Holly would probably eat out of his hand, so he grabbed some food and started feeding her. Pretty soon Holly’s son, Dreamer, came up and started eating as well. My son started asking questions about who he was and if he was going to be a daddy? I explained to him that he is a wether and is a boy that can’t have babies. He processed this for a little while and then asked, do we have any boy sheep that can have babies. I didn’t think about this question ‘literally’ and said, well yeah, remember Reno is going to be a daddy. For which, he quickly asked – you mean he is going to have babies? I understood what he was really asking and reminded him that only the girl sheep can have babies. I was trying to not go too deep in this conversation 🙂 His reply was better than anything I could have come up with – he said, you mean that god takes the babies from the daddy sheep and puts them in the mommy sheep! I very quickly, said yes, that is exactly what happens and for right now that is all he needs to know 😉
Only 2 more weeks until lambs start arriving!
Stories from the Farm 
