No Shearing Today

Not that that bothers me. Not that I'm bitter. Nope, not me. Not sulking either.

So it's March 28th, Spring is sprung and all that. Grass is green, flowers and trees are a blooming... and it's snowing. Or will be, before this day is over. Right now, I think it might be trying, I can't tell. It's sideways precipitation with a whitish cast, so draw your on conclusions.

It has poured on and off since about 3 a.m. this morning. Yes, I noticed the time, because it would be even worse if it didn't rain, since I canceled the shearing. Talk about bitterness. Wow, that would have not even been the least bit pretty. There are inches of water standing around, and the paddock is a muddy mess. So I'm justified, and everyone can suffer for it. At least the sheepies can crowd in the barn, when the rain gets too heavy. Before the day is done, snow is suppose to move in and well, the eventual accumulation seems to be up in the air...so to speak. The temps are in the upper 30s, and once again, I have a roaring fire in the stove, and my feet are cold.

I keep telling myself we need the rain and all that nitrogen will be free fertilizer if we get snow. See I have one, maybe two positive thoughts here.

I've been preparing for shearing for weeks now. So much to do. My house is pretty darn clean---and I even cleaned off the book shelves and sorted through and culled some. I listed sixteen books on PaperbackSwap this morning. (Although my motives are not entirely pure in this. Sure I needed to clean the bookshelves and sort and get rid of, but I'm also totally out of credits! What if a book on my wish list comes up and I have no credits? Hyperventilating here...) Anyway. The bookshelves are clean, and I better take pictures now. The house is cleanish. I had food bought for shearing day, I had people lined up to come and help. I had panels set up in the garage ready to pen sheep up. Shearing is a Big Deal, and I really get stressed about it, in case you can't tell. But this happens on occasion. I think this may be the second or third year I've gotten rained out. I have no large barns to keep sheep up for several days ahead of time. And they must be dry to shear. Neither do I have anywhere for the shearer to work inside. We set up in front of the garage, which is a nice flat area and near enough to the house to plug in the equipment. So in the end, the weather decides whether we shear or not. (Can I add the word wether in there too??) Like it or lump it, thems the breaks.

In other sheepie news... well there isn't any. River was due Friday and is just standing around chewing her cud and taunting me. I think she is waiting for it to start snowing before she lambs. Duckie may or may not be due next week. The little lovely flock of solid moorit lambs continue to grow. Eve and Conway (sorry little guy) are now out on pasture with the others during the day. However Rosemary is stall bound until her wee ones grow just a bit more, or the weather clears up, whichever comes first. So far the two bigger lambs haven't 'found' each other yet, but I expect they will soon. In case you lost count the it is 2 Ewes--2 Rams.

Thanks to Michelle at Boulderneigh, I had a dream last night that there were twin moorit gulmoget lambs born here. (If you don't know what a gulmoget is, check out her blog---what a cute bunch of lambs!) A ram and an ewe, no less. Within the dream at one point, I questioned how I could genetically have moorit gulmoget lambs, but blithely ignored the impossible answer, instead showing them off to a large group of admirers, one of which was the shearer. No, I'm fine really. In this dream I also had a very large two story barn. A fine, fine barn. Except the ewe and lambs were on the second floor, lambed in a very narrow isle, with one side a sheer drop off. Analyze that if you want.

I've rescheduled shearing, but it will now be on a weekday, if I can get off. The shearer is booked Saturdays through April and into May. If the sheeps dry out, I'm going to try and hand shear Duckie Monday evening. I would like to know what is going on under all that wool. If that goes well, I may also shear Tabitha, Blackberry and Rouen as they are all on the suspects list after the (two) ram breakouts last fall.

And that's about it. I'm being lazy today, catching up the blog, listing books, paying bills. Oh, and making frequent trips slogging out to the barn to see if River is done chewing her cud and lambing..for crying out loud. Ahem..

Not To Be Left Out

Luna's Moorit Krunet Ram Lamb

Luna was due on Thursday, but I guess she figured if Rosemary was gonna lamb, she might as well too. When I got home from work (for the day) I was busy with the two tiny babies, but I did notice that Luna was acting squirrelly ---going out into the field by herself and looking at me with great suspicion. I was pretty tired by then, so the best I could do was, whatever...

I did go out and check her off and on, and she had moved to the Shetland barn, so she was definitely up to something. I wasn't as concerned about her, as she had lambed before and knew what to do.

In the meantime, a new show I wanted to watch came on, so I settled down to relax for an hour. The minute I did that, we had idiots show up in 'town'. This is a long story, and to put it shortly, we seem to be on the route for the local school kids to prank and hang out here, in the dead of night. There is more to it than that, but the gist of it is they come in, turn off their cars and lights, sometimes get out and prowl around and yada yada. It makes me furious, since we are talking private property. There have also been breakins around, so it's not easy to tell who is just up to what. Anyhoo...(as my blood pressure rises), I had to go investigate that, and call my folks to let them know we had yay-hoos in town again so they could cover their end of 'town'. I finally got sick of it, because by then, Luna was lambing full throttle, and I didn't want to worry about people roaming around while I was out there in the dark. I heard the people in their car, parked down the road, lights off etc etc. and Boone went all alert and boomed out a bark--and boy that dog can boom. I yelled out really loud, 'get 'em, boy, get 'em', and Boone complied by barking even more. Probably a coincidence, but they roared out of there pretty fast and didn't come back. ;-)

Proud momma and her leggy son

So in the meantime, Luna delivered a large leggy ram lamb with no problems. I thought she might twin, but she passed her afterbirth about an hour later. I gave her the same treatment, trimmed her udder and bedded a stall and penned her and the new lamb up. I gave him nutridrench,iodined the navel and sat back. He was vigorous and I was pretty sure he could figure it out on his own. When I did one of my checks on the twins later that night, I checked him again, and he had a full belly and warm mouth. All was good.

Wait mommy! I gotta get these leg things figured out!

Luna produced a yuglet sokket last year (Orion) so I figured her as my best bet for extreme color. Well, I figured wrong, but the little guy sure is cute with his large krunet marking. And I ask you, does he not remind you of Conway Twitty? That wave of excessive hair over the forehead? Hmmm? Unfortunately Conway seems to have stuck, but no one ever need know about the Twitty part....

Phew...can I go to bed now?

Rosemary's Baby(ies)

Rosemary and her twins

Two days ahead of her marked due date, Rosemary decided to lamb. Evidently it just kinda 'happened' and she plopped them out on the pathway to the field. She had shown no visible signs of the impending event, wolfing down breakfast with gusto at 6:30 a.m. By around 10:30 a.m. my Mom heard weird noises going on up in the pasture and came to investigate, while I was at work. All was not well in lambtown. The bigger (and I use that term loosely) of the two was valiantly trying to find the milk bar, but was being defeated by Rosemary's very luscious locks of wool. The smaller of the two had not gotten up and lay in a shivery heap. Mom called and told me the situation. Fortunately I was able to come home from work having saved vacation time for such 'events'. Also in my favor was that I had just finished another installment of the Posados County mysteries and learned in great detail how to drive and handle corners at high speed. (just kidding...just kidding...)

Rosemary's Ewe Lamb

Once I got home, I rushed inside and changed clothes and grabbed my lambing bucket. I wrapped the babies in a towel and carried them into the paddock so I could shut the gate and keep the other sheep out of the picture. I ended up getting the halter and leading Rosemary down, because she was convinced her babies had disappeared into thin air instead of paying attention to me carrying them. The lambs were so very very tiny. Rosemary had shown a little favoritism to the the bigger lamb, so my priorities were to save the lambs but also keep either from being rejected. To that end, I did everything on the bigger lamb first---brisk rubdown, and nutridrench, to get the system fired up, then turned to the tiny one. He could not stand and just lay shivering. He did have a little spunk though and would bleat occasionally. Once I got the initial round of 'emergency' care done, I bedded a stall and got Rosemary and the lambs in there. I set Rosemary on her butt and trimmed her udder area. While I was doing that I put the smaller lamb to her teat, and miraculously he latched on and sucked a little. He still couldn't stand, but I was able to steady him against her (with my third hand, which all shepherds grow during lambing season). I tried the same with the bigger ewe lamb, but she had suddenly 'shut down' and wasn't receptive to even attempting to suck. I finished the ewe up, let her up and haltered her. I worked at trying to get the ewe lamb to nurse, but she was just not going to. Hmmm.... You can hold them up, open their mouths and put the teat in there, and tickle their tail bone, but you can't make them suck. So I sat back and decided on Plan B. Off to the house I went, found a little bottle for kittens, a small container and some animal crackers. Back to the ewe and lambs. I tied Rosemary up again, gave her some crackers and milked her out. I attempted to get the babies to suck the bottle, but no interest, so I ended up just putting some in a small syringe and squirting tiny bits in their mouths at a time. They responded to this, and the littlest lamb would nurse off his mom if I held him up.

Rosemary and her ram lamb.

(Yes she is ticked off at me, and she is also laying down, to put the shot in prespective)

To keep a long story from getting even longer, after several hours the lambs were up and sucking on their own and had full bellies. They were warm and dry. I needed to go back to work to finish up some things---that's 100 miles all told on the road for that work day!

Ewe Lamb

When I got home around 3 and half hours later, the lambs still seemed to be holding their own. I made sure each one was actually up and sucking every two hours until around midnight. By then it looked pretty promising.

But that isn't the end of the day.....around 9:00 Luna decided she was going to lamb too....to be continued.

Tuckered out ram lamb...being born and fighting for survival is hard work

(I weighed the babies 24 hours later and they were 3 and 4 lbs respectively, but I'm convinced they gained a great deal during that time frame...so I'm guessing the little one was closer to 2.5 lbs... No idea why they were so incredibly small)

And yes they are solid moorits...yes they are...;-)

Eve's Big Day

Eve a'growing.

Over the past few days, I've been letting Lark and Eve out in the evenings for a little while. Yesterday they got out a little longer and today they enjoyed almost the entire day out. It's difficult letting the little ones out 'unsupervised' so to speak, since I work away from home. Eventually they will be out all the time, but for a few weeks, until more lambies arrive, I'll probably keep Eve under pretty tight surveillance....

Eve's first time out caused quite a stir amongst the flock, but Lark handled it very well, and kept her little girl close. Chickie was a monster! Yes, I know, the spoiled ones always are, but she was chasing little Eve around and butting her like crazy. Lark was doing her best to keep between the two, but it was chaos for a while. The next night I captured Chickie and penned her up! After I turned her out, she started in again, and finally Lark just whacked around on her good. That helped. Today she was still curious, but only for a brief time. Not sure if she was just wanting to bully the 'new sheep' around or was wanting to play. Anyway....we've all regained our composure, sheepie and otherwise. The rest of the girls were interested, but in a polite way.

It's something when your 'lamb crop' is born smaller than the chickens. (Can you see Chickie getting ready to dive bomb off the bale of hay---let the fun begin! For her anyway)

Exhausted after a day of play

Mother & Child

Tomato Cages......

Sage

Spring is finally here! The weather has ranged from cool and rainy to warm and steamy the last few days. We got some much needed rain, with more to come over the next few days. Keeping my fingers crossed that it will clear out of here by mid week so that everything dries out for shearing on Saturday.

Still no new lambs but there are three ewes due this week. Their due dates are Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, but I am hoping they will follow Lark's lead and lamb a few days early, so it'll be done before shearing.

I've been limiting computer time as I have had to really scramble to get things in some sort of order before Saturday. Since it rained most of Saturday, I spent the day cleaning house. It's amazing how dirty and piled up the corners can get over winter! I've still got a few more areas to hit, but it's coming together now. In between the rains and house cleaning, I've been moving panels around and building temporary fencing for the big day. I can't do a whole lot until Friday but this will help have everything in place.

My tomato sprouts are up and growing and the peppers are tentatively poking their little heads up out of the soil. As you can see they had to be 'caged' for their own protection! I've had to use a grow light on them at times, as we had a week or so of grey weather and they needed the boost.

I can't believe how the grass is growing now, after the rain. In another three to four weeks, the lower pasture should be good to graze. That'll be appreciated by the sheepies and the new babies.

That's it for now. Hopefully things will settle down a bit after this week and I can start posting regularly again.

Have a great week!

Gratuitous Lamb Photos

More lamb, or should I say Eve photos, since she is still the newest and onliest lamb born thus far. It will be a few days before anyone else is due, so I'm getting to enjoy this little sprite. She loves to be scratched and loved on. Her mommy tries to tell her to run but she can't, she is too busy melting down from all the lovely scratches. Things are pretty hectic right now, as lambing moves along, and shearing is scheduled for the 29th (and I'm still cleaning out stalls..). Lots of things to get done between now and then! Hope you enjoy the photos!

Little baby of mine, let me tell you about this one that gives good scratches....

She also brings cookies...but sometimes you must earn your cookies...

Bee...boppity bee..I just want to play Mommy!

And then rest on this nice pile of hay that the one who gives scratches left for me!

Chickie: "What do you mean, I'm not the baby anymore???"

Boone: "And you say I'm not the Center of the Universe for the next few weeks? This cannot be true!"

Spring has officially arrived here at Fairlight Farm, even though the calendar says otherwise. Fairlight Eve (name subject to change) arrived at 9:30 p.m. last night. She is out of Three Ring Just Jack & Fairlight Lark. She is a beautiful little solid moorit with a little white butterfly marking on her forehead.

Lark delivered her quickly and with no visible problems (I was in the house trying to give her time without me staring at her). Lark secluded herself for a day and half before going into labor. This is typical in this family line, but I was still a little concerned. Since shearing is later this year, all the girls are woolly, so that added to the confusion. Many ewes (especially first timers) have this little dance they do, after their lambs arrive. They won't let the lambs anywhere near the udder, instead spinning around so that their head is always touching the lambs. It can get comical when you have an especially aggressive little one. This usually resolves itself in less than an hour, and then it's all magically figured out. Last night Lark was pretty squirrelly about letting the little one nurse, and with all that wool it was getting a bit dicey. Finally I plopped Lark on her behind, and guided the lamb to the udder while I snipped away the obstructing wool. Then I went to the house and lay down for awhile. I gave them an hour then trudged back out to the barn. Lark was still acting silly, and I was just about to intervene and halter her, when the lamb had a sudden energy burst and was able to latch on. At that point Lark calmed down and it was time for me to head off to bed.

Obviously I'm still in denial about the fact that it's lambing season, since last night, with only hours to spare, I got my lambing kit together. I keep a bucket stuffed with those things I'll need in the barn during lambing--towels, paper towels, nutri-drench, syringes, iodine, latex gloves and the ever present animal crackers. I also make up 'baby kits' in the garage--three to four flakes of straw and one flake of nice hay tied together with baling string. This makes it easier when the lambs invariably arrive in the middle of the night and I'm staggering around half asleep.

So...one down and three scheduled to lamb next week, beyond that I haven't a clue. There could be up to four more that lamb due to the ram 'breakout'. I should be able to tell more after shearing. It wouldn't break my heart if it was just these next three to lamb and then be done.

If you'll notice Eve is not .... spotted. She had good odds to be spotted, but alas, it was not to be. Thankfull I'm finding that it's not as important an issue with me this year--if I get a few spotties (ewes!) that would be great, but I'm hoping to enjoy the lambs a little more this year, regardless of color. I was just laughing and questioning Lark as I walked up to the barn last night and saw the dark blob on the ground. That sure doesn't look very spotted to me, girly! Eve is certainly a sweet little thing and is already coming up for scratches and wags her tiny tail. She is very dark right now, and for a minute I even thought she was black, although I knew that wasn't possible. Her mother has remained a very dark chocolatly color near her roots.

So there you have it! Hot off the press. Lambs are arriving at Fairlight!

And...computer is back, and I hope to get it hooked up tonight, and learn my new Ubuntu Linux system. Of course that is after I plant potatoes, play with Eve and clean out more stalls!

Reporting In from The Farm

Meshach

Things are ticking along quickly now, with the grass greening up all around, and jonquils blooming their little heads off. The weather has given us several very warm days, but we will be getting colder temperatures tomorrow and the rest of the week. Eight days to go before the first lambs are due! Yikes.

I have made a list. It's the 'there is no more time to put things off' list. On it are the things that have to be done in the next few weeks. So far I'm knocking something off it every day...but the week is pretty young yet. ;-)

Right now I am computer less so posting will be scarce until I get my computer fixed (hopefully it can be fixed). It's at the computer hospital right now, and I'm awaiting the verdict.

Hopefully I'll be up and running before the lambs start arriving! Have a great week.

I See Cat People...

....and they are always watching....

Crime Scene--The Teddy Bear Files

Another painful scene from the Teddy Bear Crimes

"I swear I don't know what happened! I'm innocent!"