Six lambs, 3 ewes, 4 hours. Done!

OMG, what a surprising finish-- Bluebell and both daughters lambed twins, a boy and girl to each-- all within 4 hours of each other. In fact, Bluebell and Yarrow were in two different shelters pushing out babies at exactly the same time, at dinnertime tonight.
I'd seen both Maple and Yarrow off by themselves today, nosing around-- and that is unusual. Those sheepies generally like to stay with the flock. And I thought I could see, on Yarrow, the hollow that forms below the hip bones when the babies "drop", right before lambing. Still, all ewes ate heartily at 9am this morning, and were resting in the lean-to when I checked them at noon.

I left at 2 and returned at 5:30. Emily went out to hold November's new lambs in her lambing pen (the "jug") and called me from the barn (ah-- cell phones!). She told me Yarrow was in labor-- pawing, laying down, groaning, getting up. I said, fine, thanks, come on in for dinner-- but Em wanted to stay. We ate and I went out, trading watch with Emily. I walked in to see Yarrow's first brown lamb on the ground.

Knowing a second baby could take a while, I went out to check the lean-to.
Maple was cozily tucked into the corner with two tiny, fluffy brown lambs curled up near her. June's, I thought. Tiny, perfect, solid brown-- but wait! She's looking at me like. . . they're hers!
And then, look again! Bluebell was 6 feet away, with two wet lambs on the ground!
A white one and a black and white (bersugget?) mottled lamb. OMG!

I called Howard (ah! cell phones!) and told him we needed all the troops, with towels, iodine, scissors for umbilical cords--
first we needed to clean out two lambing jugs for the new occupants, and what the heck, let's clean out the rest of the lambing barn!

And so we did. The four jugs are full, the maternity ward is abuzz for the last time this year.
Photos to follow, another day.


I leave you with this silly guy. Twin Brooks Palisade's son. Bersugget pattern? Simply a grey lamb whose mom is black smirslet? You decide.
Bluebell's got a new boy who looks a lot like him, only with wilder splashes (and pinch me, a white ewe, just like her!)

Twelve down, three to go

Ewes left to lamb, that is.
Every night, I go to bed at midnight or later, after feeding little orphan lambs & making one last barn check for late-night lamb-ers. Then I get up at 3 or 4 a.m. and do it again--every night since Easter. I know, I shouldn't whine. Some people have HUGE flocks, mine is tiny. I do get tired, though.
I lost two ewe lambs simply because I wasn't THERE at the birth, this year. It's made me hypervigilant. Last year I lost no lambs.

Bluebell and her two daughters are still holding out. Maple will wait a loonnng time, while Bluebell & Yarrow could go within a few days.

In the meantime, let's admire Minwawe Panda with her lookalike daughter and coal-black son:


And one of LRO April's little brown boys (April ALWAYS has perfect little brown lambs.)

And one of me in the barn, watching a ewe lamb, while Lily the orphan practiced jumping up on my bench.

And more lambs

The orphan babies continue to amuse. Poppy here, with Papa's bootlace. Their bottle feedings went from every 3 hours to every 4 to 6, and both girls also started eating hay and drinking from a pail today, like big sheep. They are 2 weeks old now, and are just delightful. It looks like they may go to the county fair in August. Never before have we had the time or patience to teach lambs to lead on halter, but these are with us all the time-- a natural.

I like this photo Howard shot; I think of it as "Catnip, Spring Pastoral". Here, she has one lamb at her side, while the other is off playing somewhere. Her brown, curly-fleeced ewe lambs have white on their heads-- Splash and Smudge, I'm calling them. Click on the image to enlarge it-- the spring green on the budding trees is nice.

There are another dozen lambs-- only a few are rams (nature's making up for last year, my 14:8 ram year). Ten ewes done, 5 to go. I'm relaxing about this, now. Today, Bramble Elsie delivered a black and a white ewe lamb, which Howard and Emily got to watch up close. The lambs are up and doing fine.

More later!

Lambing LaLa Land

Whoo hoo!
Today I got to take a bath-- and clean a few places-- house, barn, porch--and bake bread--
because only one ewe lambed this morning, and the orphan babies can be left unattended for hours at a time now.
They went out to live in the barn on Sunday night.
The weekend went like this: the little, cold, Finn ewe lamb found 6pm Saturday, nursed through the night, died Sunday a.m. Howard gave her a grave in the pines, and we were all sad.
Also on Sunday a.m., we noticed that Catnip the friendly HST ewe (pictured a few blog posts ago, standing on Howard in the pasture)had hidden away at pen-in time the night before so she could lamb in private, elsewhere. She delivered two little brown ewes all by herself and we brought them to a lambing jug.
So we were down one ewe lamb, up two more. These two ewes are out of my smooth- polled ram, Kimberwood Leonardo.
On Monday, Minwawe Chicklet, the gray flecket, lambed a brown ram and a black ewe out of my LRO Shawn, the scurred mioget with beautiful wool.
So these babies begin the new wave of breeding at Little Red Oak: toward polled rams.
Tuesday morning, LRO April presented two brown ram lambs, also out of Leonardo. We can see what their horns or foreheads look like in coming weeks--
No more babies today, so I got caught up somewhat.

I sat in the barn for hours this morning, letting the orphan babies play all around, and I let Catnip and her babes out of the lambing jug.
Orphan Lily tried to play with Catnip's lambs but was not appreciated by their mother. She persists, though.
They'll be running together by tomorrow, I predict.
And about 3 more ewes will lamb within 48 hours.

Arrghhh, Lambing!

I know Nancy at Bluff Country reports annual anxiety at lambing time; maybe I will develop more. . . we have a lamb, tonight, that won't likely make it until morning.

Let me first tell you, the orphan babies are FINE. Kindergarten naughty monkeys, that's what they are. . . still living in luxury in the laundry room (that's 3 wash loads of floor quilts & towels this week). I'll end with their picture.

No, the little lamb that has our heart saddened tonight is our own first born lamb of the season, a Finn lamb out of my colored Finn ewe, Lassi.

I was in the Twin Cities all day with my family, doing good deeds for aged parents, sittin' in coffeeshops, visiting the Minnesota Textile Center and the Weavers' Guild-- while my child was in Cool Science at the U of M. I knew there was a risk we'd get our first lamb today, but no ewes looked "ready" when we left at 9am.

When we came home at 6, Lassi stood in the field over her barely moving, fawn flecket ewe lamb. Lassi's a first time mother-- anything could've gone wrong, or nothing.
All I know is, the lamb was chilled and sluggish. We gave up on Lassi, who was acting helpless about her lamb-- and brought it inside to warm and try to feed. We ended up trying to tube feed the baby-- and it surely doesn't seem to have worked.

More later, I'd better go hold her awhile.

So for now, here are the little laundry room rascals, Poppy and Easter Lily. Poppy's the favorite, in front.

Orphan HST ewes, oh my.

We helped Kim and Bob at Kimberwood with their shearing all day today. We workers were looking forward to hot baths, had changed out of filthy barn clothes, and then I checked the phone messages. Our neighbors, the ones who are new at raising Shetlands, had left a distress message on our answering machine telling us a ewe had died after lambing, as well as one lamb, and the caller feared for the second.

To make a long story short, guess who's living in our laundry room?

It was true, the ewe did die, a sad shame. Probably a retained placenta. But both lambs were alive and lively, and apparently a few days old. I guess one lamb was sleeping when they gave it up as dead. The other wasn't drinking, but soon came around to the bottle. Spotted moorit and musket ewe lambs. We offered to care for the lambs as our neighbors didn't think they could do it, so they told us they'd be ours if we would.
We fed them little bottles of milk replacer, gave them CDT shots and settled them into our laundry area for the night. I hope they make it, and that we don't go crazy taking care of them.

Tomorrow's Easter! We'll bring lambs to my folks for the afternoon in the city!

Wow-- wool!

This is Little Red Oak Maple before shearing:

And here she is, lithely leading the pack, the day after!


She's a musket (usually oatmeal color?)meaning a "grayed" brown sheep-- but she's
nearly white at the skin. A mioget golden base, I swear.
And a six and a half pound lamb fleece!
Just like her mother, Bluebell, her brother Mullein, her sister Yarrow.
Nice crimp, amazing length, sofffftt fleece.
Amazing.

The ewes are sheared, lambs on the way. . .

And our neighbor showed us "our grandchildren", twin ewe lambs born to Little Red Oak Mallow and Anders, sheep that we sold to them last fall. Anders and Mallow are both solid brown, and from them, he got this little HST and a solid brown ewe. All are healthy and doing fine!

At Little Red Oak today, we got our 15, apparently pregnant ewes sheared by Mike Anderson out of Frederick, WI-- the rams couldn't be kept dry for shearing and will have to wait. Mike and his nephew, the trainee, drove several hours to get here through an early morning snow.
What misery for them! I hope they got more out of the trip to Minnesota than the little check they got for shearing here-- but that seems to be a shearers' life.

I'll get some freshly-shorn sheep photos soon. My sister, as well as Handspinners/flockowner Kim and Angie and their husbands came to help me sort sheep and fleeces for the third year in a row, now. It is such a pleasure to work and share time with them.
I'm hoping to return the favor at Kim's Kimberwood Shetlands soon.

We found the Finn fleeces to be amazingly crimpy-- Angie wanted to spirit away the fawn colored one that is already promised, but she did get to take home the white Finn fleece. It'll be fun to see what she makes from it this year.

Okay, gotta go look at lamb photos on other blogs, now!

April Fools!

April fools!
The weather turned back on us, with a coating of snow that's sure to make shearing, this Sunday, a wetter business. We'll keep our fingers crossed.
This past week, poor Minwawe PandaBear got an owie and some nice red vet-wrap to cover it while it healed. She caught it on the edge of a pallet while (I'm sure) running to join the ewe flock escaping out the lean-to back door. Wheee! We haven't been in THAT barnyard for a while!
But poor Panda, narrow ankle caught between two wooden slats on the pallet, went down, Whump! and laid there, in a dead sheep pose. I freed her foot. Still dead, by all appearances, except open eyes. Fear-frozen! That's our little Panda.
I rolled her completely over and away to convince her that the pallet didn't have her anymore. She found her feet, and limped away.
I freaked, thought she'd broken a bone-- 3 weeks before her lambs come--
But she's fine,now, and wearing her beautiful red bandaid until we shear on Sunday.


Dear Husand went out and laid in the field on Saturday, taking arty sheep pictures. There are a few overly friendly sheep, ahem, like this one, standing on him:

And then she and Mari the finn ewe fought over him:

Oh, fun news: My nearby neighbor, who bought a trio of my ewes and a ram to clear an old pasture (never mind what's happening to their lovely wool coats)let us know they have LAMBS! "One's black and one's black with white legs and face", she said. Now, I think they must be brown, but very dark, I'm sure: The ram and all 3 ewes were brown-based sheep. But it sounds like they got an HST-- and I wouldn't be surprised, as one of the ewes is. We want to go over and see them-- we won't have lambs for another two weeks!

March is half gone-- and Spring is half-here

There's even less snow now than on this day a week ago. . .

It took forever to get this new computer to make and post pictures, to get AOL working right. . . but we're here. Still learning. . .


And guess who is my new best friend. . . Little Red Oak Maple, the shy lamb!

Spring is coming; shearing, then LAMBS

I believe it's coming-- I see the lawn again-- spring is around the corner!
We had a heat wave last week in Minnesota-- it hit 40 degrees for several days and melted away piles and piles of snow. It did leave ice slicks on the driveways, but they'll go away soon enough. My mom said "in the old days" they tossed ashes on the driveway to melt the ice-- so I've done that. It's working-- I wonder if it will be a mess when the ice is gone.


First, I want to introduce Osmo the Finn ram. Beautiful fawn color and the mildest, sweet boy you could ever meet. These pics were after a bright white snowfall around February 1st. Click on any to "bigify" them.

Actually, all my boys are pretty sweet this winter. Most want a chin scratch and no-one charges me when I am in their yards. I like them all. Nancy H. in NY bought Little Red Oak Mullein's lamb fleece and wants to see what the big boy looks like now, so here he is at 21 months. He's BIG for shetland-- and his crimpy, silky gray fleece is so big he looks even larger.

My two horned rams, July and Mullein, shared a pen this winter. I kept them from the hornless or half-horned rams so that nobody'd get hurt- those 4 had their own yard.
Here are Osmo, the Finn, with mioget scurred-horn Shawn on the left-- lovely wool-- and little snail-scurred,gray Ulysses on the right. All sweet boys. Three different lines, so they all got some girls. Shawn's mom was (fawn) JustaLitl Sarah, dad was Little Red Oak Mullein.(Earlier, I'd said he was out of another, mioget ram. Wrong!) That tells me Mullein carries modified AND polled, since Shawn is so golden, and Ulysses is so scurred. Ulysses is Mullein's son, too, and his mom was Sheltering Pines Ferah, a moorit. Kimberwood Leonardo, my polled Shetland ram, is still in with the girls.
I worry because I don't want to send any to the butcher this summer, and I'll have to if no-one else needs their services. So anyone who wants ANY of these rams this year, talk to me, I'm reasonable. My breeding strategy, with such a small flock of ewes, is to simply move the older rams out every year and get a new one.

I had to toss in this flock picture-- the beautiful blue sky, the crisp white snow, the incredibly rusty, beat up lean to that the ewes live in all winter till lambing time. . . is actually a lovely old straw filled haven inside, with a heated water pail and Christmas lights giving light. ..
And do notice what the horned guys did to the lower left wall of that building last year. Tsk Tsk.

Monday I'm going to the Weaver's Guild (MN Textile Center) in St Paul for a fun fiber day, meeting 4 women who all have different aims for going there. So fun.

And now, for sure, Shearing day is April 5th, Palm Sunday. Sorry you church-goers, the shearer didn't have a better day available. Come to watch, help, or pick your favorite fleece.

February sun

This is Kimberwood Leonardo and (we hope) his girlfriend, LittleRedOak Catnip. Leonardo's claim to fame is his handsome, hornless forehead. See that? It's the wave of (our) future. We love the horned look, truly we do-- but my buildings are made of tin foil, it seems, and those boys gave them a a beating.

Woo Hoo, we had a thaw on Saturday! 42 degrees and sunny, so good Minnesotans, we ran outside with just sweatshirts on and shoveled slush and ice away so we could celebrate dry sidewalks again, and hauled in firewood before the melting snow got it all wet, took photos of lovely sheep, and skirted fleeces shorn last fall so they can go to the mill. (Skirting, you non-shepherds, means removing the undesirable stuff from a sheep's fleece-- the stuff one wouldn't want in the wash water, like barnyard debris and hay). I only have brown and black balls of roving available for sale, now, but soon will have white, oatmeal and gray again.

I got a shearing date, tentatively, Sunday April 5th, 9 a.m. So if you want to come out to watch or join the work party, drop me an email.

Two weeks later, the lambs will start coming.

Our new computer has "had its moments", including a week back at the Best Buy! It doesn't like our old laser printer/copier or our old Adobe Photodeluxe, so some tasks are still not done.
I'm going to paste in a picture here, but it may be a bazillion pixels. We'll get that fixed soon, really. . . sorry, you dial-up folks.

Happy New Year!

Hooray, I got a new computer. It is like, I guess, having a fast little new shiny car. I dunno, because I don't care about little cars any more, though I did, way back. . .
this computer's got a big, wide, flat monitor I can SEE on. . .
and the brains of it don't get stuck and refuse to recognize me on my own blog. . .oh, the possibilities.

Will check back with photos when we get directories set up and pictures in it. . .
in the meantime,

It's winter! cold, snow, you know the rest. The best part: spinning with friends. Next week there's a spinner's retreat-- on my birthday, again! DH dutifully asks if I'd like to do something special for the big day and is so relieved when I tell him I already plan to!

Sheep are fine-- birds are fine, cats, family, can't even complain about the economy. Though the newspaper makes me worry about folks. . .

Take care, everyone.

December, Christmas is coming, Hanukkah's here

I'll find a photo or two to insert later-- I'm at the library!
My camera isn't doing justice to the winter wonderland outside, and it's so danged cold this month I haven't been strolling around taking pictures.
Lycra "longjohns", snowpants, barn boots, two pairs of socks, balaclava, lined leather gloves, heavy "barn" coat, and I head out the door each day to feed and water the sheep and birds.
When I come in after 45 minutes, I rarely want to go out again.
If you live in the US you have heard how cold and snowy it is, enough said.

On my last post, I posted a goodbye picture from July the ram. . . who is still here, keeping big boy Mullein company. The Willis' from WI prefered a gray spottie I had named Mike, they renamed Wrigley (his mother is Minwawe Chicklet).
I used NASSA's new online system to register the ram--that was so slick! So now Wrigley lives in WI. We did the interstate paperwork correctly, too-- another thing to learn. Vet check, etc. . .

This is the first of 8 days of Hanukkah, and my family celebrates that tradition as well as Christmas, which will be here soon, as well.

I am writing the annual Holiday letter and mailing cards at the last moment... but it's fun to create the letter.
I took pictures of Howard plowing snow with the big red tractor yesterday-- I'll see if I can get one of those photos in here.

Everyone enjoy this last two weeks of 2008; especially the time you spend with families and friends.

November 08, Election over, hooray!

I just got tired of it. Everyone did, I know. But I got tired of the meanness, people forgetting to care that when they insulted the other candidate, they might be insulting their friend or acquaintance who LOVED that candidate.
I think unless you're on the high school debate team, mediated, you need to watch what you say to others.
Okay, that was MY soapbox moment.
Back to sheep and family-- we have a new president, hooray. It's done.

My ewes are getting really wide with wool-- but snowy backgrounds make the picture dark, so here's a shot of grassy green September days. This picture makes me yearn for warm weather, already!

It's LRO Maple front and center, but perky Lassi, the finnsheep, is peering around her. Lassi has "smirslet" white head markings and white feet, with a fawn, crimpy wool. The finn wool is, I think, like Bluefaced Leicester-- crimped tightly, and lustrous.
This weekend was our first shocking winter cold after a week of balmy 70s-- good thing I took advantage of that time to mow, rake, clean barns, etc. On Saturday, we caught, wormed and hoof trimmed my 15 ewes, some of whom seem HUGE now with all their wool (and maybe, they DID get enough to eat this fall). Someone called to talk about getting a ram, two other folks came out for other reasons, and we baked pumpkins and pumpkin bread in the house. A nice, cozy way to spend the rest of that day.
Sunday, we visited Carlson's Lovable Llama farm with the 4H group-- piercing cold wind, but nice proprieter. He told the kids how they could lease a llama, for next to nothing, and learn to show them. We all walked llamas around on lead ropes. Gentle animals. Incredible long "fleece" on them, some ringleted. Interesting.

I'm still deciding breeding groups, here, wanting to limit the number of pens I have to bring hay and water to throughout December.
I have recommended July, out of LRO April and a mioget ram, Firth of Fifth Bourbon, to the Wisconsin family looking for a last-minute ram . I really think he is perfect, with a tail and legs I'd like on all my lambs. However, he's pretty related to a lot of the little ewes, and I don't really want horns anymore.


Here's friendly July, saying hello/goodbye. They might choose a spotted gray, Mike, we'll see.

Enjoy your holiday preparations, everyone.

October's Chill

Here are some ewes in the field on Saturday, when it was warm and the fall colors glorious.

The chill is from sending little rams off to butcher, sigh. But so much less pressure on the pastures and hay barn, it's a great relief.
I had butcher dates for the 10 ram lambs I did not need, and got their lovely fleece sheared off on Saturday. I decided to spare one with scurs, several other really good looking boys. . . Then, a local guy called me and came to take all the lambs, himself, off to his restaurant buyers. Less work for me! And the price was just what I'd have made through processing and selling the meat myself.
But I remember the little rams sadly.
I'll recover. Here is pretty little Mari the finnsheep, our sweetest, follow-you-everywhere lamb who was a bottle fed quad, at one time.


And this is the, ahem, social activity at the fence line lately.


Every sheep thinks the other sheep smell VERRRY interesting. I'll keep the boys from the girls for another month, so the lambs will arrive after April 15th, 2009.
I just started a tax specialist job at AgStar Financial. Tax returns for farmers, what could be better?

Fall Fun

We had a little fun with the garden produce tonight. Of course, I have to weigh any of the zucchini that hide until they are bigger than my child was at birth.
And Howard had to photograph the event, so I added garden veggies for a still life!
Orient Express and Fairy Tale eggplant, cocozelle zuchini, a tomato. . . The old scale indadvertantly acquired at an auction really works, and reads 7.25 lbs.



The other day, I took a few pictures of Little Red Oak Maple, my best ewe, Highland Hollow Bluebell,'s '08 daughter. Here are the two lovelies. I was thinking I'd sell Maple, because she doesn't like me, and you know, more room in the barn this winter, more hay for everyone else. . .
but she is so very pretty, I couldn't do it. She looks like Bluebell did as a lamb, with that super-pouf coat of wool. She is musket, but her brown base is really a modified one-- it was obvious at birth. So she can throw some more lovely lambs, maybe solid mioget. Now, if I can only get her to be less afraid of us. Bluebell's not!



We sold 3 more ewes last weekend to a farm-neighbor who was missing having sheep. He used to raise suffolk/hamps. This should be different for him! We sold him some very good brown and spotted ewes as unregistered-- we're getting down to only my favorite or best stock, now-- there are 13 shetland ewes remaining, and two finn girls. I still think springtime lambing will be wild with their thirty lambs coming! And right now, they all fit in the horse's shed in a rainstorm!

September, ushering in Fall

Cool nights, sunny days. . . and school is in session again.
We finished summer with a trip to the Minnesota State Fair. Emily had a 4H exhibit and earned a blue ribbon; I put weaving and spinning entries in (for the first time!)and we all enjoyed our day walking the miles of fairgrounds, taking in the exhibits, sights and sounds.
Here am I in front of the fiber art case:


And here are Emily and Howard in the big butterfly building exhibit:




We had so much fun.
The next morning, I piled out of bed, assembled materials and drove up-country to Pam Davis', another Shetland shepherd near Cokato, MN. She was hosting a natural dyeing workshop taught by Karen Rohnsvoog. The participants had spent Friday gathering pots of dye materials, and when I arrived Saturday, I just had to make little skeins of white wool and try the different dye pots. Oh, and also help everyone mix up a vat of indigo I'd brought from my vegetable garden. The colors were amazing-- see here some results:



The dyes were: left: a combination of lead plant, goldenrod and indigo. I'd dipped a ball of yarn in the three pots in succession. Next, indigo, near the end of the day, so lighter blue; the gray is from purple basil; canary yellow is from apple bark; bright orange-yellow is wood sunflower; light sage green is Black Raspberry (leaves?); dark indigo blue from an early dip in the vat; goldenrod; and logwood.

Amazing. Beautiful, naturally obtained colors. I want to weave a plaid scarf from the colors just to remember that day and how much fun it was.



I'm meeting spinners on Thursday for another fiber outing-- the Northern Lights Handspinners' group-- and I regret that I WON'T be going to the big Shetland Sheep show and Fiber weekend in Jefferson, WI this weekend. A family reunion, and finally, the necessity of bringing the last of our hay into the barn on Friday clinched that decision for me.

I'll spend the coming weeks processing garden produce-- selling some, giving some to the middle school teachers, librarians, anyone!-- and canning and freezing more.

Today I worried about hay for the winter-- the last cutting is laying on the fields, drying after a drenching rain on Tuesday, sigh. And there isn't much baled from this whole summer. This summer and last, a younger guy with haying equipment did all the work of haying our 8 acres of hayfields and gave us a third of the take. Last year there was enough for 23 sheep and two horses.
The horses are gone now (Yes! KC found a good home!) but this year there won't be enough for 25 sheep, even.
So I worried. And made an appointment with a country butcher to process 10 lambs in a month or so. Ram lambs. Nature makes too many of them, I'm afraid.
Anyway, Fall begins. It's a beautiful time of year.

August, Summer's last hurrah

Yikes, 5 weeks since last blog! Too busy enjoying the sun and green and all growing things, I guess.
First, we hatched a lot of monarchs in the kitchen again. This one is a boy. . .

. . . and this one is a girl. Google the answer as to how we know, or you can ask me! ;-)

Next, we got about 30 exhibits ready and took 'em to the Carver County Fair. Garden flowers, zucchinis, eggplant, Child's weaving, my spinning and weaving. . . At the fair, Sister, Child and Husband posed in front of someone else's lovely pumpkin exhibit.

And when that week was done, we brought all our ribbons home. Four days at the fair makes a happy, busy week.

I remembered this year!--to enter in the sheep's wool exhibit in the livestock building, and we took home the grand champion and reserve champion ribbons! Yay for LittleRedOak Mullein, the Shetland ram (light gray, just crimpy-gorgeous)and good old Minwawe Panda Bear, an older ewe with silvering black fleece! I wouldn't agree with the judge on his order of ribbons, but what the heck?

Tomorrow I'm taking my 90-year-old Father in Law to the library to show him what a blog looks like.
Hello, Arnold! We love you!

New Finn Sheep!

Yep, I decided I really wanted these new beauties. My spinner friend Angie said "I'd vote for that, they have yummy wool". I wanted sheep that would get a little bigger than Shetlands, while having a similar look, colors and patterns.
And I like it that they are polled, too.

I bought these registered Finn sheep from Gale Woods Farm, a Minneapolis-Metro area (Three Rivers Park District)farm demonstration park. The site manager has a flock of cluns, border leicesters, finn and icelandic sheep.

A light brown ram was available, I heard, and I picked a white ewe (we named Mari) and a spotted, light brown ewe we named Lassi. We're calling the ram Osmo, for Osmo Vanska, the conductor of a local Minnesota orchestra. It was one of the few Finn names we knew.



Other doings here include the usual summer vegetable gardening, some remodelling on the house, drain tile excavating being done. . . and we're selling the little horse we got last fall. We decided to spend the money his hay costs on lessons instead of feeding and watering the horse. More fun! So if anyone wants a little POA/Morgan cross who used to do barrel-racing, he's waiting for a job!



I've also been selling ewes and lambs (those who don't like me) to a young man from a nearby farm who is, apparently, smitten with the Shetlands. I'm giving him a very good deal, and I feel like I'M getting a great deal: these ewes can go on to lead productive lives at Andrew's farm while he learns about breeding our beautiful little sheep. So, I have no guilt, while keeping my flock size manageable.

I do have a number of little rams this year, and I hate to see the great modified genetics of FirthofFifth Don Telmo Bourbon go for naught. His beautiful mioget color will surely shine out of some of his descendants, if anyone needs a ram.

I had 14 ram lambs this year, and at least 5 were moorit/fawn/mioget (it's not apparent with many of the modifieds, for a while). These rams are out of Bourbon and Little Red Oak Amy, LRO April and LRO Mallow. Amy is fawn, April and Mallow are both friendly, great-looking moorit ewes. They are 3 very different lines. Their sons are all handsome boys I can barely tell apart. Here's one, hanging around while other lambs get lamb-lead class.



Also pictured is one of Minwawe Chicklet and Minwawe Equator's gray and white flecket sons, Mike or Ike; they are also available.

I hope everyone's having a great summer that included fireworks on the Fourth of July!

Learning new genes-- for Horns and Modified color

Hi everyone,
I am one lazy blogger -- or one busy shepherd, this spring. You'd think I didn't have sheep to sell, I've been so reluctant to post information! I DO, so if you need sheep or lambs, email me!
But right now, I'm puzzling on colors and horn types that cropped up in this years' lamb crop.


One handsome lad, the first born, who has a modified (fawn? mioget?)golden color --
He is a twin out of Justalitl Sarah, my fawn ewe-- but the dad was not my mioget ram, FirthofFifth don Telmo Bourbon-- he was my best fleece/tiny horn guy, Little Red Oak Mullein.
So what gives? I wonder. 'Splain to me these horn genetics and these modifieds. . . because it sure looks like he's got the tiniest little horns coming I ever saw in a 7-week old ram. I knew his dad had tiny horns-- and I still don't know if they are "scurs" or just "teacup" horns or "aberrant" horns-- they should teach a class. I know, I AM a member of the Yahoo group about Polled Genetics, and I'm doing my best to "get" it.


Soooo.... here's a picture of several rammies last April, woefully unclothed after shearing. This is AFTER they remembered each other without their fleeces, and were on speaking terms again. ;-) There's a lot of head-butting until then. You can see Mr. Mighty Horns, LRO Alex; a nice brown (moorit) boy with normal enough horns, and third, Mullein, the guy with the not-so-hot but maybe that's good- horns. His right (our left) horn broke the tip off when he was younger.


I throw in this post-shearing picture to show the difference between a mature moorit ewe, in the middle, Sheltering Pines Ferah, contrasted with the mature fawn ewe, Justalitl Sarah, on right. Really pale color at the skin. And some light hairs on her nose-tip, something I've seen on another modified ewe Kim Nikolai brought me, Bramble Bess.

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Finally, I just cave for these little white lambs I got this year. This is Little Red Oak Elwood, out of Bramble Elsie and LRO Mullein. He's handsome, don't you think?


See you next week, when I really , really need to talk about which sheep need new homes!