Thursday, March 25, 2010

Shearing Day was Great!

Great weather, in the fifties, blue sky, lots of friends, good food, good help.
Here's a picture of several women skirting a fleece in the great outdoors:

One of me trimming hooves, while big Dave holds the ewe captive (look at the pregnant finn ewe belly!  3 weeks yet!)  Dave Little holds a sheep who's next for shearing;  Mike Anderson's bent over another ewe.
Candy T., with her back to the camera, bagged fleeces as they came off the sheep, labelling the bags with the sheep's name. 



My daughter, Emily, played vet tech this year, and gave the CD&T vaccines and ivermectin wormer.  I was fiercely proud of my girl, and very grateful for all the fine helpers.  Afterward, we ate pretty well in the house, and collapsed.
Fleeces off the sheep, half sold, and now some will go to Zeilinger's woolen mill this week.

Happy Spring!

8 comments:

Sabrina Wille Erickson said...

Emily has become so TALL! And you should be fiercely proud of a good daughter. :)

Congratulations on a great shearing day!

Connie Peterson said...

Can't wait to see Yarrow's fleece. Candy said she had a great time.

Gail V said...

Sabrina, she is taller than me, now, but that wasn't hard to do. And I was so amazed, she just took the job on because it needed to be done!
Connie, I hope you like Yarrow's fleece. I don't think I can ever part with that girl...

Connie Peterson said...

Even Norm approves of Yarrow's fleece. It is beautiful, very clean and awesome, to say the least. Joy will LOVE her Elise fleece. Thank you.

Anonymous said...

Nice photos. Love the Finn belly! And Emily IS getting tall!

Ebonwald Cardigans said...

Gail!

A few questions:

How much bigger are the Finns than the Shetlands? How about fleece weight and crimp?

Are they about the same as far as mothering ability, parasite resistance and ease of lambing?

What made you choose Finn? The finns we had locally about 10 years ago were extremely wild, had quads all the time and were white and very lanky. Producers that bred those rams to their commercial flocks had tons of bottle lambs and most no longer do the cross.

have you had huge multiple births like that?

I'm not planning on switching to Finn, just extremely curious about them :)

thanks for your help!

Gail V said...

Hi Garret,
I should do a whole post on this, perhaps. My biggest attraction to Finns is that they have so many of the same color/pattern/wool qualities of shetland, but are bigger, so potentially more wool/meat per animal; are twice as prolific, same logic--
and the spinners really prefer this to my shetland wool.

Gail V said...

Connie,
I am glad you love Yarrow's and Elise's fleece. The ladies skirting oohed and ahhed over Elise's crimpy baby fleece. Yarrow avoided me all winter so she stayed out from under the hay more than others, I bet. Thanks for your post.