Farm Life

The flood gates have opened…

Posted by kenleighacres on January 28, 2009
Posted in: Farm Life, Jacob Sheep, Lambing, sheep. 7 Comments

It started with Sahara really early this morning.  I checked on the ewes at 2:30 this morning and she had a lovely ewe lamb next to her.

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She is a wildly marked girl and looks a lot like her mom.  Sahara is a first time mom and she is doing a great job. 

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Next it was Frodo’s turn.  She was in the middle of having her lambs when I went out to do morning chores.  She had two more girls.  It was very chilly last night, so they are wearing coats to stay warm and cozy. 

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Her little ewe lamb, Peace, has such a sweet face.

I was expecting a few other ewes to lamb this afternoon, but they aren’t ready quite yet – I’m sure they are waiting for the cold, dark hours of the early morning.

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However, Tess and Elsie surprised me this afternoon with lambs.  Tess’ ram lamb was all cleaned up and running around.  Tess always has the cleanest lambs.  He is a silly lamb and is already jumping up on his mom.  Elsie had a ewe lamb and you will have to wait for pictures because she was not clean 🙂  She is a very big girl with lots of leg.  As I was leaving the barn Holly and Darling were fighting over the lambing corner, so I’m sure there will be more lambs to post about tomorrow. 

Morning treasures!

Posted by kenleighacres on January 24, 2009
Posted in: Call Ducks, Farm Life, Jacob Sheep, Lambing. Tagged: , , . 1 Comment

On morning rounds, I found a couple treasures!  My ducks usually start laying eggs in January and I hadn’t checked their nest boxes in a few days.

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My little gray call duck hen has quite the nest built, but no eggs yet.

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My snowy hens on the otherhand have 3 eggs in their nest. 

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Ellie had these cuties at some point during the night. 

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The little girl is so petite.  She is a lilac and her name is Demure.  I love her face 🙂  The boy is much bigger and I can’t tell if he is lilac or not? 

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The color on his lips definitely isn’t black, but around his eyes it is much darker.  I will have to take him outside today and see if I can tell for sure.  His name is Journey.

My ewes are being so nice!!!  They are taking turns in the favorite lambing spot every 12 hours or so.  I’m sure it will be different next week, but I am really appreciating it for now.

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This is Venture and he was born Thursday afternoon.

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His mom is Painted Rock Jeslyn and Wrangler is his dad.

Pretty soon the pastures are going to be hopping with little spotted lambs!

There’s nothing cuter…

Posted by kenleighacres on January 22, 2009
Posted in: Farm Life, Jacob Sheep, Lambing, sheep. Tagged: , . 6 Comments

then baby lambs with little polka dots on their noses.

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These are Maverick Marloe’s lambs by Kenleigh’s Douglas.

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The ewe lamb’s name is Bliss.

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and the ram lamb’s name is Hopscotch.  My son was so happy that he was a boy.  He really wanted to name the first boy.  We were there to see the little girl be born.  Marloe didn’t have to push very hard and I was shocked when I weighed them because the ram lamb was 10 lbs. and the ewe lamb was 9 lbs.  Marloe always has big, strapping babies.

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This is Grace.  She was born yesterday morning.  Her mama is Kenleigh’s Aurora and her dad is Kenleigh’s Dawson.  She has a very sweet personality, just like her mama.

Here are some updated, less slimy pictures of Hope and Joy.

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My son loves the babies and has to pick up and love on each one.

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The flood gates are starting to leak, but I can feel the big break is coming soon.  You may tire of seeing little jacob lambs soon 🙂 

Finally!!!

Posted by kenleighacres on January 20, 2009
Posted in: Farm Life, Felting, Jacob Sheep, Lambing, sheep. Tagged: , , . 10 Comments

Yep, we have lambs 🙂  Here are pictures shortly after being born.

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This little girl is Hope

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and her sister is Joy.

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Their very proud mama is Maybelline.  They were both 8 lbs. at birth and are healthy, flashy girls.  I just love little lambs!  I also love our Jacob sheep – I fed at 7:00 this morning and Maybelline was in a corner by herself but came over and ate her alfalfa.  I went back out at 10:00 and she had them most of the way cleaned up and fed. 

The other girls that I have been waiting on kind of had a look on their face like – “OOOOHHHHH, that’s what we are supposed to be doing.” 🙂  We’ll see if this opens the flood gates.   

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Dolly was thoroughly enjoying the back rub from my brother and son!  She is such a funny girl.

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While waiting for the lambs to start arriving, I got my valances done for my studio.  They are a brown felt with a sheet of our jacob felt felted on the front with the burgandy design.

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My brother drew out a design example for me on a piece of paper and it translated to felt well.

I also made a logo and labels for my products. 

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It is amazing what you can do with a cloud, 2 rectangles, and 2 ovals in Microsoft Word 😉 

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Off to check for more lambs 🙂

Big bellies and a mystery solved

Posted by kenleighacres on January 13, 2009
Posted in: Chickens, Farm Life, Jacob Sheep, sheep. 7 Comments

My son woke me up this morning saying that it was time to get up because the rooster was crowing 🙂  I wasn’t sure if he was really telling me the truth because he likes to tell tall tales!  I told my husband about it and he said “Oh yeah, he was crowing a bunch yesterday!”  So the mystery has been solved – ‘she’ is a ‘he’ 😉  Hopefully he stays nice and mellow.  I guess he is just a late bloomer. 

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Their bellies may be full of babies, but they can still run and throw their heels up on a sunny day.

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The ultra serious, Magoo, was feeling pretty good too.

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Most of the ewes have big udders now and lambing should start this weekend.  The weather looks beautiful all week, which is a big blessing!  Pretty soon you will see cute little baby lambs here 😉

 

I’m gonna miss this girl

Posted by kenleighacres on December 29, 2008
Posted in: Farm Life, Jacob Sheep. 7 Comments

Darby (the sheep) went down a week ago and despite treating her as the vet prescribed, we lost her Christmas night.  She was such a special girl and I am really going to miss her.

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She was 10 and in sheep years that is getting up there, but I wasn’t ready to part with her yet. 

She came to us in a round about way and I am so glad we said “yes” when we received the call about buying back some of our sheep along with 20 others 🙂 

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She blessed us with a set of beautiful triplets in 2007 and I am so fortunate to have both of her daughters.  Joan at Mud Ranch has the handsome brother.

We did a necropsy on Friday morning and it looks like she died of complications from a hernia that was discovered after shearing about a month ago.  The vet assured me that I did all that I could for her, but it is still really hard to lose the special ones. 

A boy and his lamb…

Posted by kenleighacres on December 7, 2008
Posted in: Farm Life, Jacob Sheep. 11 Comments

I’m not sure what the difference was, but most of our 2008 ram lambs were overly friendly.  This is not such a good…and we butchered a lot of them – mainly for other reasons, but it made me feel better than selling them.  Unfortunately, the friendliest of them has taken up residence here and is my sons favorite sheep.

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No wonder – he walks around on a halter like he is a dog and that is after not doing anything with him since the end of June!

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They had fun climbing the wood chip pile (well at least my son did)

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Reno was a great little trooper!

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Even out in the pasture with all of the ewes, he was the perfect gentleman.  I was afraid he was going to get loose because my son wasn’t holding the lead rope very tightly, but Reno didn’t pull on him once.

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Even when all of the ewes ran off, he just stood there watching them go.

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After being such a good boy, he gave him a little treat 🙂

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They make a cute pair!

Shearing – part 3 of 3

Posted by kenleighacres on December 6, 2008
Posted in: Farm Life, Jacob Sheep, Llama, shearing, sheep. 3 Comments

I was really hoping that the mild weather we have been experiencing would carry over to today, but good old mother nature had other plans.  I woke up to a chilly morning and was dreading shearing the rest of the ewes.

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Here is Danica all bundled up, ready to go out to the barn with me.  I’m sure there were a couple ewes that would have paid good money for her jacket 🙂

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Luckily the sun came out and it feels good to have them all sheared.

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There are a few that are looking very pregnant and some are starting to develop little bags, a definite sign that lambs will be here soon!

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This is Rolling Hills Veronica, she is Reno’s mom.  She has always been on the smaller side and I was shocked when I looked at her today because she seems to have grown this last summer.  She is 3 years old.  I haven’t paid attention to how long ewes grow.  The rams definitely grow well into their 3rd year and it appears that the ewes do too.

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I put them on a new pasture after shearing and Magoo decided that this man made concrete mountain was the perfect place to keep an eye on his charges.  We have numerous concrete pads on our property from where the chicken barns were and my husband is slowly breaking them up and piling them to eventually haul off.

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I am very thankful that Sheryl, my shearer, did such a fabulous job with my girls.  They were all handled nicely and the fleeces are beautiful!

Call me crazy…

Posted by kenleighacres on December 2, 2008
Posted in: Dogs, Ducks, Farm Life, Jacob Sheep, Llama, sheep. 8 Comments

but I was really hoping to get a Christmas card picture of my son with a sheep, duck, and dog 🙂  Unfortunately all of our dogs are very prey driven and were extremely keyed up by the presence of the sheep and duck!  I figured Darby was my best bet – boy was I wrong!  He may look slow with his little legs, but it is just a big trick.  He was able to run behind and pull a little bit of wool off of Reno’s butt – poor guy!  So, he was very quickly sent to his kennel for not listening and before my son dropped the duck and became Darby’s dinner.  Next was Kate’s turn and it was very apparent that her and Reno were just going to stare at each other.  So…we went with just a sheep and a duck and Magoo, the llama, decided to join in.

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I’m not thrilled with the picture, so we will try again on the next nice day.  Poor kid, he was quite the trooper.  At least now I know not to try any of the dogs!  I’m happy to say that no animals were hurt during this photo shoot 🙂

Shearing – part 2 of 3

Posted by kenleighacres on November 24, 2008
Posted in: Farm Life, Fiber, Jacob Sheep, shearing, sheep. 5 Comments

This post could have a lot of titles:  Brrrr it’s Cold, Who thought this was a good idea, We’re moving to Cedar Pond (more on that later), Murphy’s Law is in full effect – well you probably get the idea…

The first round of shearing happened Thursday morning and that night it dropped down to 30 degrees!!!  The previous week felt like Spring and now it definitely feels like Winter.  It never fails that when we shear in the winter time, the weather makes a drastic turn for the worse and this year was no different.

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This morning I woke up to blue sky and frost everywhere and boy was it chilly!

I started out by telling the girls that I was very sorry and that I would give them extra food.  They promptly told me that they were running away from home and were going to hitchhike to Cedar Pond’s farm.  They heard that Kathy gives her girls heat lamps to huddle under.  They didn’t care how much extra food I was going to give them.  So, to keep them from causing a pile up on the highway, I had to resort to turning them out on the green grass…

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It may have been sunny when we started shearing, but the fog quickly rolled in and it looked like this when we were done…

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and it just got worse as the day progressed.  Luckily it isn’t going to be freezing tonight and they are all tucked in the barn with extra straw tonight, but if any of you see a group of Jacob ewes hitchhiking up I-5 will you please send them home…