A little goat, a big chicken, and a bobcat!

Posted by kenleighacres on April 8, 2010
Posted in: family, Farm Life, Uncategorized. Tagged: , , . 4 Comments

After school yesterday we took a trip to visit my sister.  She raises Nigerian Dwarf goats and has a bunch of babies right now…

including his new cousin, Gracie Ann.  She was full of smiles!

This has to be the smallest baby goat EVER!  One of my sister’s doe’s had quads and this little girl was the smallest at just over a pound at birth.  Her sisters were all over 2 pounds – still tiny in my mind!  She had to be tube fed at first and couldn’t stand, but is doing really well now.

Look at how small she is compared to the bottle!

Got milk?

Bentley was more than happy to clean her up.  He was very doting – such a sweet boy.

Next, we headed outside and found this HUGE chicken.  He is a Jersey Giant rooster.

Here he is with his buddy the Buff Orpinton rooster – such pretty boys.

While we were talking about the chickens, my son had wandered off to check out other things and he came running over saying that he saw a bobcat!  We both knew that he was talking about her cat, who from a distance does resemble a bobcat. 

We had fun finding the ‘bobcat’ 🙂

He couldn’t believe how big he was.

We finished our visit by seeing the rest of the babies.

So cute 🙂

 

He got to feed two of them. 

My sister pulls some of the babies off, so that she can milk the doe for personal consumption.

A great visit on a beautiful day!

All about the horns

Posted by kenleighacres on April 5, 2010
Posted in: Jacob Sheep. Tagged: , . 8 Comments

This post is an addendum to this post.  I was talking about the qualities that I think about and breed for – and I purposely left out the horns.  The horns are a major part of what makes a Jacob a Jacob.  The horns are what captivate people when they see this breed for the first time.  The 4-horned rams are what cause people to slow down and stop to take pictures at our farm. 

They also making breeding Jacobs very difficult!!!

I have several layers of evaluation.  The first is immediately after they are born.  I try to enjoy all of our lambs and not make any decisions for a couple weeks, but it is hard not to have an initial gut reaction – be it good or bad.  Sometimes that reaction is right and sometimes it is very wrong.

Reno was one of those lambs, he didn’t do much for me, but look at him now…

he has matured nicely, and more importantly he threw some very nice lambs this year.

 

Here are two of his daughters.  Their horns are coming in very nice.  They are both 4-horned.

Here is Florence with her head up and you can see her side horns from this view.

The second evaluation is at a couple weeks.  Some of the boys are wethered (neutered) at this time – mostly for lack of or too much color.

The next evaluation is at a month and this is the one that I am the most critical.  I really evaluate how much space the horns have and how strong they are coming in.

For example – this boy has great space between his side horns and his top horns.  You want to see wool between the horns.

Here is a bad example.  See the horns touching each other inside the circle.  There isn’t any wool between the horns.  The horns will end up fusing together and will become unbalanced.  Another indicator that there will be horn problems is the side horn starting to grow upwards.  This isn’t always an indicator, but something I look for.  This lamb showed a lot of promise and I hate seeing this, but it is part of raising jacobs.

These two lambs are brothers and the horns are looking good so far.

Some people think that nice 2-horned lambs are easy to get, I don’t agree.  I am just as critical on the 2-horn lambs as I am on the 4-horn lambs.  I love this girl’s horns.  See how they are growing out sideways?  She is going to have a nice, wide horn set.  This is especially important in the boys.  They have a lot of mass to their horns and they can start growing into their cheeks.

These girls are sisters – the one on the right has the nicer horns.  They are going to be wider than the one on the left.

The horn’s section of the Jacob Sheep Breeder’s Association Breed Standard is quite large and the poor little lambs have such high expectations placed on them! 

A rainy day and colors of the rainbow

Posted by kenleighacres on March 30, 2010
Posted in: Felting, Fiber, Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , . 4 Comments

Yesterday was a nasty day – sideways rain for most of the day with a frigid wind that whipped right through you.  A good day to stay inside and work on some projects. 

My son has been wanting to felt a life sized cat 🙂 can’t say he doesn’t have lofty goals!  I wanted to try a new idea that was rolling around in my head.  So we grabbed some wool and got to work.

  

It was going to take a lot of needle felting to get a life sized cat, so I took a technique I have seen before and had him wet felt the body. 

You start by using a nylon and stuff it with wool…

keep stuffing until you have the desired shape and it is packed tight.

Then comes the easy part – throw it in the washing machine!  Run it through one washing cycle and one drying cycle.  To save on electricity and water, I threw our items in with a load of laundry.

I wanted to see if I could make the little sheep bodies with this same technique.  I stuffed the amount for one sheep and then tied a knot and stuffed more in.

I used this otherwise ruined fleece.  It is a blueface fleece that I washed and didn’t get all of the lanolin out and it is very cotted now.  It worked great!

Here is the start to his cat.

We felted the head seperate from the body and he needle felted them together.  He is going to needle felt legs, ears, and a tail today and add the finishing touches tomorrow.  He is so excited to have an inside cat 🙂

I had a request for colored sheep, so we played with kool aid and dyed the little, felted sheep bodies.

Dyeing with kool aid is so much fun and very safe for kids to help with.

You can even blend colors!

Look at all the pretty colors!!!

Much prettier than outside where it is STILL raining and our pastures are full of creeks and ponds.

Let’s go herding!

Posted by kenleighacres on March 29, 2010
Posted in: Border Collie, Dogs, Farm Life, Herding, Jacob Sheep, sheep, Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , . 3 Comments

I started herding with my Cardigan Welsh Corgi, Darby, a little over 8 years ago and have been teaching lessons off and on for almost 5 years.  My son has been watching for almost that long.  He started watching from his stroller while eating Cheerios and now he enjoys taking lessons of his own.

Kate is very willing to be his lesson dog!

These boys are the ‘herding’ sheep.  They have been trained to work nicely for the beginning dogs. 

My son loves that they follow him around 🙂

I didn’t realize how much he has learned by watching for so many years until he was working Kate last week.  He was flawless with the directional commands.  The directional commands are ‘come by’ (clockwise) and ‘away’ (counter clockwise).  They are the most challenging thing to learn when you start herding.  He is hooked and has already asked if Kate can be ‘his’ dog 🙂

This is Apache and she has been coming for lessons for a couple months. 

I love how she works…

she is mindful in her work and very respectful to her sheep.

She is beautiful to watch!

One of my pet peeves when it comes to herding is when people see the sheep as a tool or piece of equipment.   My goal when I go out to move our sheep is to do it with the least amount of pressure.  I don’t want them to be run around and I certainly don’t want to cause them stress.

I like this definition from Wikipedia – Herding is the act of bringing individual animals together into a group, maintaining the group and moving the group from place to place—or any combination of those.

It really rubs me the wrong way when someone calls and asks if they can come chase my sheep with their dog.  Chasing is NOT herding and is NOT allowed here.

My search for chasing came up with hounds chasing animals for the hunter and dogs chasing small prey animals.

Herding dogs must exhibit the stalking and chasing aspects of prey drive, but should have a strong inhibiton to prevent them from wounding stock.

So, let’s have fun and go HERDING 🙂

An unplanned visit

Posted by kenleighacres on March 18, 2010
Posted in: sheep, Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , , , . 5 Comments

I always enjoy visiting Tammy’s farm and my son LOVES to see her and her animals. 

I had just talked to her about coming to see her new lambs, but we hadn’t set up a time.  Circumstances made for an unplanned visit yesterday! 

This little (big) guy was the reason for the unplanned visit.  Tammy was in town teaching a class and her son was home and noticed that the ewe was having problems.  A couple calls later I was on my way down to see if I could help.  He is a big lamb and the ewe had managed to get him most of the way out, he just needed a little help making it the rest of the way.  I’m glad it was a fairly minor problem and it gave us a good excuse to see the rest of her lambs.

Tammy has Jacob, Katahdin, and Blueface ewes.  She crossed them all with this handsome guy…

 

He is a Blueface ram

and has a beautiful fleece!

This angelic lamb is a Blueface x Katahdin ewe lamb

and this is her adorable sister.

These two are natural colored Blueface ram lambs.

This girl is a real beauty

and this is her handsome brother.

I had fun watching the lambs play and interact with the chickens. 

My son’s favorite part was this goat.  I’m not sure why she thought his head tasted good, but that’s a goat for you 🙂

I love this picture!

On our way home, we saw a bunch of wild turkeys and this guy let me take his picture.  A great afternoon!

A beautiful weekend!

Posted by kenleighacres on March 15, 2010
Posted in: Farm Life, Jacob Sheep. Tagged: , , , . 5 Comments

After a few showers Saturday morning that lingered over from Friday’s all day downpour, it cleared off and turned into a beautiful weekend!  It was a pleasant surprise and perfect for what was on the agenda – sheep maintenance!  The lambs needed their booster shots, the adults needed their feet trimmed, and everyone needed wormed.  A BIG task!

Katlin, a friend, and I had the task of vaccinating and worming while my husband trimmed feet.

This little device was a huge time saver and I highly recommend it for anyone that has more than 10 sheep.  It is an Auto Drencher from Premier Sheep Supplies and works great for worming.  It allows you to worm without filling up the syringe after each animal and when you have 92 sheep to worm that is a beautiful thing 🙂  Holy cow, that is a LOT of sheep!!!  When did that happen???

Kate would patiently wait for us until we needed to move the next group.

We finished the ewes and lambs on Saturday and they enjoyed the sunshine on Sunday.

Which left the big boys and little boys for Sunday.

There are only 3 big boys, but I think they were harder on my husband than the 35 ewes he trimmed the previous day.

Sometimes the horns come in handy and sometimes they are just plain difficult to manuever around.

Trimming their feet is much like cutting your fingernails and is painless for them.  A little bit is taken off the edges and the front and makes it easier for them to walk.

 I leave you with this picture of our barn.  Linda had asked if the pretty red barn in the background was our barn, sadly no, but for practical reasons I LOVE this barn.  Our property was an old chicken farm and we had 4 of these barns – we had 3 removed.  The dimensions are 52′ x 320′ and the back 1/3 is set-up for the sheep.

I hope you enjoyed your weekend!     

A dreary day in the neighborhood

Posted by kenleighacres on March 12, 2010
Posted in: family, Farm Life, Uncategorized. Tagged: . 2 Comments

We have had a very mild winter and have enjoyed numerous spring like days with plenty of sunshine – today is not one of those…

 

I think the neighbor’s horse’s body language says it all. 

 

It has been raining sideways all day and the sheep venture out to do a little bit of grazing before they head back to cover.

It is a good day to stay inside and enjoy the warmth from the woodstove.  If only I didn’t have animals relying on me.  I love them all, but I really don’t like days like today. 

Podengos running through the Portugal countryside

Posted by kenleighacres on March 11, 2010
Posted in: Felting. Tagged: , , , . 2 Comments

I have been working on awards for the Podengo National to be held in April.  When I was first contacted they asked if I could felt a wall hanging with Podengos chasing a rabbit through the Portugal countryside. 

I hope I responded intelligently because inside I was laughing 🙂  I think I said something like “Um, sure I could probably put something together for you.” 

Ok, I don’t know how confident she was that I could do it after that response, but to be honest I wasn’t really sure I could do it either.  First of all – what does the Portugal countryside look like???  Second of all – every Podengo I have seen looks completely different from the next and I couldn’t find any pictures of them running.  So, she very kindly offered to send me a video of Podengos chasing a rabbit through the countryside of their homeland.

Here is the logo from their organization…

and here is a brief description – The Portuguese Podengo is an ancient multi-sensory hound (sight and scent) breed of dog from Portugal.  There are three sizes – small (Pequeno), medium (Médio), and large (Grande).  Each size with two hair coats (smooth and wire) and its own unique temperament.  All three sizes love to hunt in their native country. 

At the end of the conversation I had committed to making a large wall hanging…

The overall size is 3′ x 4′.  Here is a close-up of the dogs.

A medium wall hanging…

and two smaller wall hangings.

They wanted the smaller wall hangings to have the dog(s) standing with a rabbit.  I think these were the hardest ones to do.  Pretty plain with just dogs and a rabbit, so my mom helped me come up with the leaves and swirl idea – thanks mom!

I love working with dog clubs and the people are always so nice.  This is what she had to say when I sent her pictures…

“Thank you SO much for your time, your work, and especially your creativity.  Can’t wait to see the surprise on people’s faces!!!”

I wish I could be there!

I hope I did the Portugal countryside correctly because the judge is from Portugal!!!

A little note about my Studio blog – As much as I like the idea of having a blog for the studio, it just isn’t reality at the moment.  So, I will be sharing studio news here again.

Such form and grace

Posted by kenleighacres on March 8, 2010
Posted in: Farm Life, Jacob Sheep. Tagged: , . 7 Comments

Remember Chance from this post?

She has almost run out of Chances and will be looking for a new home soon.

This is what she does for fun…

Doesn’t she have beautiful form?

It is a little hard to appreciate it when she jumps from here to there just because she can.

She is awfully cute and I love her horns, but I don’t know how long she is going to be welcome here.

I was teaching a herding lesson a couple days ago and she jumped 3 fences just to come say ‘HI’.  Once she saw what we were doing she jumped all the way back to the barn.

We are in the process of putting a few more fences in, which will give us more pastures to rotate the sheep through – she just laughs 🙂

Post lambing wrap-up

Posted by kenleighacres on March 4, 2010
Posted in: Farm Life, Jacob Sheep, Lambing. Tagged: , . 5 Comments

I have been waiting for Dolly to lamb to do this post…waiting and waiting!

  The rest of my girls spoiled me by lambing within 18 days and I guess Dolly wanted to stay true to herself and be ‘special’.  She is actually my son’s ewe and the most anticipated lambing of the year for him and he was really hoping that she would have a boy for him…

well she lambed last night and gave him a very cute boy

and a beautiful girl!

He has been very attentive to Dolly for the last couple of days and even more so today.  Dolly deserves the best food, the cleanest pen, and the freshest water 🙂

Dolly was wise to wait and not lamb in the middle of the chaos – we had 23 lambs in 4 days!!!  With her lambs, we have a total of 48. 

Here are the stats –

172% lambing rate

58% girls/42% boys

Average weight for the lambs – 7.5 lbs.

Here are some of the traits that I was breeding for and am happy with in this year’s lamb crop…

Pretty, consistent fleeces

Coloring – The ideal Jacob should have 40% black/lilac and 60% white.

Spotting pattern – big bold spots.  (I love the spot under her tail)

Structure

and mothering ability.  I hope this lamb is as good as her mom, Bronwen.  All of my first time moms were EXCELLENT!  I have retained several daughters from lines that have particularly good moms and it is amazing how similar the mothering styles are.

A little surprise is all of the blue eyes we have this year.  None of our rams have blue eyes and just a handful of our ewes have marbled eyes – blue and brown swirled.

The first born lambs are already getting big! 

Paisley is still the cutest lamb 🙂

and this is my favorite picture!