Spotted half-Finn Surprises

If you look at my January 2011 post you see a little Finn spotty ram we got in November.  He had a roommate in a ram-lamb pen, Aspen, who was lost to a gate-jumping accident-- and then the Spotty was put in with the ewes because at 4 months, we figured he couldn't breed any of the unbred ewes.  We also thought, if he did, so what?  Cute babies!

Well, the so-what babies started popping out a week ago.  I showed you Candy, the little HST Shetland ewe who gave us some ewe twins, and here they are:

I KNOW they are half-Finn, partly because their legs are so long-- and their ears are a little pointy--










And because the first mate I'd chosen for Candy was Kimberwood Harrison, whose pedigree show no ancestors or offspring with spots!   And, the timing....
I think these beauties will be a great cross.  As newborns, they were more vigorous than the Finn lambs-- but their Finn genes already put longer legs on them, nice wool-- their prolificacy should be increased to, probably, triplet expectations--and I expect they will be 1-1/2 size of their pretty Shetland mom.  The Finnsheep Breeders Association has a crossbred registry, so ... that may be useful, too.  I'll sell one or both of these lambs, your choice, $250.

Last of the first lambs

The last twin ewe lambs were born last night.  (Not quite accurate:  two more ewes can lamb in another few weeks.
However, the first big wave ends with the new ewe lambs.
Stats:  30 lambs born to 13 ewes;  I think it's about 22 ewes to 8 rams.  Wow.

Anyway, a teaser-- here is the last ewe that lambed, Little Red Oak Candy, a photo taken 3 weeks ago.  She is a surprisingly spotted ewe, friendly, out of LittleRedOak Licorice Snap and White Pines Parker. 
She was bred to Kimberwood Harrison, a black gulmoget ram, but then she went back to the ewe barn, where the little spotted Finn ram lamb was hanging with the older ewes-- drum roll to see her babies' pictures in a day or two... dimly lit, indoor lamb shots are rarely worth the trouble...

Naming the Finn lambs

Meet Nappylainen and Loimu.  Meaning "spot" and "blaze", according to Google translator (in other words, don't blame me if we've got the Finn language all wrong!).

Really, more lambs?

A few people are interested in Finn Ram purchases this year.  One wants to see the udders on the mama ewes because she has a dairy flock (cool!).
So DH took an udder shot of Mari, who amazed us this year with triplets in three different solid colors:  black, white and brown!
The ewe lamb is white, her brothers are the solids.
(disclaimer: it's a true udder-- though I felt compelled to "touch up" the color on said udder right up under her tail, where evidence of a recent birth experience had not yet washed off in the rain... ) 
I'm no photoshop pro, it's apparent!
But I digresss.  Ta da... Mari and the kids-- er, I mean LAMBS!

Then, we have Mari hangin' with the other moms-- notice how Mari's babes all cluster around the milk bar behind her--
while Mari jaws with Abby (Crabby Abby, we call her)-- and Abby's ridiculously splashed-up baby ewe sleeps on the lamb playground ramp.  Abby's baby will fade to ... musket? and white, and be splashy only on her legs and face.    Oh, and Licorice Snap, black Shetland with white head splashes, looks on from the left, rear-- while her brown ewe and black ram lamb play on the lamb-ramp...  The other black ewe, rear, is a Finn-- Heidi, a yearling who hasn't lambed yet.

Then we have a few lambs you have already seen:  These are 2 of Finnsheep, Lassi's, quads examining the photographer's bootlaces. Lassi had 3 ewes and 1 ram-- and he is on the right, here:

Next, Bluebell's phaeo-spotted ewe lamb (bonus, who is very nice and not afraid of us).  She is pictured with another of Lassi's brown quad ewes.



And have you seen how well my tiniest finn ewe lamb is doing?  This one belongs to Kimi-- and nearly succumbed to hypothermia, born out on the lawn on a cool, breezy day.  She was the tiniest of triplets, weighing half of what the largest one weighed.  We bathed her, blew her dry, fed her bottles and kept her on a heating pad in a laundry basket for 12 hours-- and when she was strong enough to nurse on her feet, we returned her to her mother.  Way to go, Kimi, for taking her back!  This one is still called Tiny-- 2 lbs 12 oz at birth!

More pics to come, of course!  Happy Spring!



Shetland and Finn Lambs

It's spring, why am I surprised to be taking care of dozens of lambs and baby chicks?

Bluebell's twins are gray and white ewes, but the white one is a surprise:  polka dotted with what the sheep people would call phaeomelanin, I think.  I expect the spots to fade away, but stay tan stained on her legs and face.  NOT the best picture, but I have a new one with the entire family, soon!

Here we go:  I am so delighted to get a gray ewe-- both lambs are ewes.

Lassi's finn lambs #2 and 3? on their first day out, last week--note the huge

 size variation. I'm new with triplets/quads. I get the feeling this is common,

and can expect them to even out in size as they age.

Finn babies finding their wheels!



Sheep dads and Lambs' 1st day out of the barn 2011

Let's start with a love fest in the field between my four rams.  Osmo, the big guy, is my Finn ram, a darling.  He is snuggling Little Red Oak Forrest, a yearling polled Shetland.  Behind Osmo is White Pines Parker, who is slightly scurred but throws polled rams and spots;  on the right is the August-born Finn ram lamb I got
last Fall.  He hasn't been used yet.  All lambs born this year came from Osmo (Finns) and Parker (Shetlands), and a borrowed black gulmoget, Kimberwood Harrison, to use on half the Shetland ewes.  (Oops, update:  a few came from the Finn ram lamb, now called Paavo.)


These photos were taken last week.  Editing photos takes time, in between helping new lamb moms.  Here's poor Minwawe November, who STILL hasn't lambed.  Poor, poor dear.

Below are Lassi the Finn girl's quads, just as they leave the safe barnyard for the first time.  They are following Lassi closely.  Lassi can't get at the fresh grass fast enough.  Ample udder for these babes;  we haven't supplemented them at all. 

Below, the Finn moms and babies are relaxing a bit.  Black lambs are Kora's, of course, and the brown ones are Lassi's.  So skinny, aren't those Finn babies?

Here's Boston Lake Niav with her sturdy little Shetland lambs.  Her ewe lamb looks like her, her boy is all black. 

Finn lambs in a scuffle!  This made me laugh-- they are so young, but instincts are already there!  They are both ewe lambs.

More pictures when I have more time.  Taking deposits on lambs, by the way!

Easter's Quad Finn lambs

Oh my.

Out in the sunshine and pasture for the first time today. 

Lambs arriving daily

First lambs on Good Friday, triplets to finnsheep Kora (the cow, we say-- you'll see why:)

Two girls and a boy, nice odds!
Next came twins to two Shetland ewes, photos follow soon... and on Easter, just in time for company to witness and help, brown quads to a finn ewe named Lassi.  Tiny, long-legged babies, all doing fine.

I have to go pick up 50 chicks now and get them settled in, will post more pictures soon!

Spring 2011

I've not been blog posting, I've been Facebooking.  It's a fact -- but soon lambs will be coming, and I have started looking at sheep blogs again.

I lost my old Dad this month-- he was wintering in Texas, as usual, this year, but the cold he left MN with turned into pneumonia, and with the many old-guy chronic health issues he had, he wasn't able to pull through.  I was able to fly to Texas twice to spend time with him in his last few weeks, then hours-- and came back home with my mom, and Dad's ashes, a week ago.

We returned to MN on Thursday night, March 31st, and held the annual Shearing Day event on Saturday, April 2nd.  I am grateful it went so very well.  I am blessed to have friends from my local spinning group who spent the day skirting fleeces-- which they wanted half of after having their hands in it! 
A special gift this year were visitors I'd never met--- some new "city" neighbors who moved in nearby, Rolf and Julie; a midwife named Renee; a young Dr. Leung; all of whom wanted to learn more about sheep-- as well as handspinner Renee's son, who is a vet-tech in training.  Guess who gave most of the vaccine shots and trimmed most hooves?  Such great help, so welcome.

About 10 fleeces left here that day  and I want at least a half dozen for the fair, or the fiber mill-- so about
another 6 are available for sale.  I have 3-4 in fawn/oatmeal color-- very nice-- and the same in black or charcoal gray.  Some are Finn fleece, some are Shetland.

I'll post pictures soon.  Soon it will be lamb pictures posted here-- we love this time of year.

January 2011

 I think I told you that I traded registered ram lambs with Brian Stichter, a new WI Finnsheep breeder last fall.  One might think he got the better bargain;  he got a 6-month old brown lamb with white markings;  I got a three-month-old black spotted ram lamb who won't be ready to breed for a few more months.  This kindof messes up my breeding/lambing dates, as this little guy isn't mature enough to breed with my one, retained, finn ewe lamb. I don't care.  I am THRILLED to have new bloodlines, out of Washington State, actually-- Brian's sheep came from TripleL Finns in WA.  Anyway, the rammie is darned cute, and reminds us of what we have to look forward to in April.  Here, the older ewes check out the baby through the gate.  He's bunking with them all, now.   They butt him away from feed or whenever they feel like it.  Someday he'll be WAY bigger than them, and they'll be more respectful.
This boy needs a name.

Oreo? No-- A Finn name-- we'll go looking at the Finn name website.  Of course there's one.

I've been spinning and knitting with great art-women, a lot--and on Saturday, sat on a Scott County Extension program's Sheep producers' panel-- to give a wool producers' perspective to a bunch of shepherds.  Half in the small audience didn't have flocks yet, so they had questions. 
The lamb meat breeders had some good tips, too-- we all took home new information. 

My house is being insulated, repaired, new doors installed-- it's looking prettier, but the weather's making the job progress slowly.  I am pretty happy about everything.

Also, for once, I got a shearing date well in advance, so I can announce it and you can plan to come out to help, if you'd like.  April 2nd, a Saturday, Mike Anderson will shear again. Everyone will help skirt and bag fleeces, catch the sheep for shearing, and have a little potluck lunch before heading home in the afternoon.  Mark your calendar!

Holiday week, the last of 2010

Ahhh, Christmas is done, celebrated, gifts exchanged, goodies made, and we still get to have pumpkin bread for breakfast every morning.  We decrease the sugar in the pumpkin bread recipe and then make up for it by drinking egg nog, mmmm.
I like this story in pictures:   How the finns looked after the first blizzard, holed up out in the pasture shed-- refusing to come out --

until Emily blazed them a trail by walking back and forth to the hay we'd set out:


Lassi

Kimi

We love these silly girls. 

Last week's sheep episode was about Aspen, the little polled musket ram whose amorous endeavors got him caught by one foot in a gate-- and it ended badly for him, I'm afraid.  My biggest concern was that the leg would have been frostbitten, with a slow and torturous end.  The vet, by phone, advised sending him to the butcher-- my Shetlands don't make big money, he was a polled ram lamb-- prized by some as rather rare, yet, but not by enough buyers that I would make the mortgage on him-- so diagnosing his injury was not worth paying a vet fee.  So, he will make my daughter's favorite-- lamburger.  His trip to the butcher was very quiet, very easy on him, too-- bedded down in a straw filled dog crate and left that way until the end.
We had his parents in a breeding group again this year, so we hope for another polled brother of Aspen's.  That's the way it goes.
At Christmas, my brother mentioned bad weather coming again next weekend-- so we broke up sheep breeding groups yesterday rather than wait a week.  Our choice is often Christmas weekend, since we have everone home to help herd animals here and there.   This year, more than half the work was shoveling a ton of snow so that 16' gates would  swing open (did you get a visual on that?) when sheep left an area-- and 2' wide paths for them to get from one barn to another as we shuffled them around.  Our barns are about 100 feet apart.   The snow is about 3' deep everywhere-- the sheep were in chasms as high as their backs, trotting down the alleys between our barns as we directed them.  All went well.
Today, frost has covered the trees and it is drifting down, sparkling like glitter in the sunshine.
Happy New Year to everyone.

Snowy sheep

You know we've gotten a few feet of snow in Minnesota, so far this fall/winter-- nearly two feet of it last week. Another six inches yesterday.  I am tired of shoveling now.

We made excellent, two-foot wide paths from building to pump house to hay barn to sheep fence, so that we could pull the beloved black hay sled from one feeding site to the next.  Several five-gallon water pails fit in it;  two bales of hay, stacked, also fit. So I haul the sled out with water in it, and bring it back with a bale or two, every day.
Yesterday I waited until late in the afternoon to do chores, and when I got to the far barns, I noticed a curious absence of a certain young ram lamb, LittleRedOak Aspen. A busy guy, he's usually right at the gate when I come near, looking for hay.  He and a little Finn roommate have been bunking in a small corral next to the old lean-to, which has the "maidens" in it-- ewe lambs we aren't breeding this year.  It frightened me to think that he might've done what we had decided he couldn't-- used a new, 4' snow drift to leap the fence into that pen of attractive maidens... but I found the ewe lambs blinking, alone, unaccosted.
I went around the back side of the ewes' shed and, yee gods!, found Aspen dangling from the gate, one leg hooked in its  metal mesh.  He'd been there awhile, judging by the snow on his coat (the snow had stopped falling hours earlier) and other signs.  Thankfully, his front feet were planted on snow on the this side of the fence.
Am I awful?  I worried a great deal about his pinned leg-- could the circulation have been cut off so long it was frostbitten?  Will I have to put him down?
But what I also thought was, "I'm glad he didn't breed those girls".

I'll head out there now to see how he's getting around.

Into winter

Here's the view looking west, corn still standing, in October:

and, mid-October, after harvesting and plowing, and rainfalls made the moss on the trees stand up, furry:

And this was the scene looking into those driveway trees, from the west, on Saturday.  Kitter the pet barn cat follows the photographer for some outdoor company.

Photographic Saturday

Little Red Oak Miia (oops, I thought she was Matilda, Miia's white twin)  is a Finnsheep ewe who looks surprisingly like her aunt,--Lassi, shown in the next photo with the flock.
Miia's mom is pure white, so under her white coat, we have no idea if mom Mari has any spots goin' on...
and Miia and Matilda's dad is Osmo, who is solidly light brown -- though he had a tiny forehead spot as a baby.












Still, check out auntie Lassi, below.  See the resemblance?:

 Emily wants to show off Shetland lamb, Little Red Oak Annie's nice, crimpy brown wool.  I couldn't help bu notice the wall behind Emily-- our reason for getting rid of horned rams!

 Annie is the biggest, in-your-face pet of 2010 in the lamb pasture.  She's Emily's favorite.

Here, Em shows us the distinct line where this Finn ewe lamb's fleece went from black to steely gray.  I know it looks like a brown sheep, but she's truly a sunbleached black lamb... However, if I may ask the Finn breeders to weigh in-- is she a gray lamb, then?  Looks like.

Here's a Shetland lamb, LittleRedOak Candy, wearing her straw bedding.  She's getting cuter as she gets older.  Her mom is LRO Snap, a mostly black ewe, and WhitePine Parker, a musket, scurred ram.  Candy's wild spottedness surprised us, as neither parent's spot gene is expressed very strongly.

Finally, a flock shot-- we think it is LRO Willow front and center--one of my Maple's twin ewe lambs.  We have to check ear tags-- the lambs have all changed a lot in two months while we've been too busy to stay acquainted.  Behind her is a black Finnsheep ewe lamb, another black going gray.  Sweet girls, all.

A new sheep blog, a long Hello

MN breeder Pam Davis just sent me a link to her new blog.  I'm adding it to my list at the right--thesheepcote.blogspot.com-- go check it out!
Pam doesn't live too far from me, as country driving goes-- I can't recall-- 25, 50 miles? Near Cokato, MN.   I went there once for a wonderful dyeing class.  See my post lin September 2008.  Pam was a great hostess and has a nice flock of Shetlands and Icelandics.  Last fall she bought one of my ram lambs to get more color or genetic lines in her flock.
I think we'll be seeing how that turned out.
My whole year, it seems, has been taking care of the seniors in my life-- mostly getting them out of places they've lived a long time-- helping downsize all that STUFF--and into new apartments or senior care facilities.  I've really enjoyed that work, but have had little time for my sheep.
Good thing my daughter's here to keep them tame and keep an eye on them.
I'll put some photos in here soon.
We have a half dozen lambs here who need homes this winter-- although I have a lot of hay this year, so if they winter over here (unbred, please! I can't bear to lamb out 40 lambs!) we'll be okay, and I'll get more lovely fleece in springtime.

I'm especially excited about my Finnsheep fleece, which sells very quickly.  I have a few black lambs whose fleece has taken a dramatic turn to dark gray- which is a color I just love.  Ooh, and a new Finn breeder in WI is bringing me a black spottie ram lamb soon, to trade for a nice little brown one I have here.  Can't wait to see him.

More later, really!

End of Summer garden and lambs

Sometimes we think the garden vegetables are so lovely we ask Howard to get the camera out....we are so proud of them.

And other times we are impressed with the volume of garden produce.  I saw a good idea on another blogger's page-- I think it was Antiquity Oaks':  to weigh and keep track of how much this little farm puts out each year.  We think we'll do it next year.

Lexi the ewe lamb coming to see the photographer.  So many colorful ewe lambs still for sale.  Tell your friends!

More ewe lambs feasting on ash tree leaves.  Happy End of Labor Day weekend-- and the beginning of the school year, for some of you!

The summer's flown by

I know, I just haven't written here for a long time!  I've been meaning to catch up, but so much Life has been happening.  We had a big wedding weekend in July (my stepson, Jeremy's) .

and a little camping trip to the Black Hills right afterward (with CA friends, the Scharf family).

Then it was time for the Carver County (MN) fair, where we all enter dozens of exhibits.  Here's Em with her little cousins for a general visit to the fair:

and now Emily's school sports and marching band have begun. Oh, and did I mention that the garden is overflowing with produce demanding attention? Not to whine...

But I have a lot of little lambs to sell before winter-- so I had better get on it.

Here's how my ram lambs are this summer, only eight! born out of 28 lambs; since I bred again for no-horns, thank you,  two Shetlands are scurred, two fully polled , two with strong horns.   I was happy with the outcome.  Most are shown here.  One brown Finn ram lamb (on the far right) is still available, most Shetland lambs are, too.

Ah, my ewe lambs.  If I just keep them all this winter, I simply won't breed for a year.  I can't sell that much fleece to pay for their feed, and I don't want to work that hard to keep them all well-tended.  Lambing more than 15 ewes about kills me in April.  I don't have many photos of the ewes yet.

Here is my model daughter surrounded by friendly Finns.  The black lamb could live somewhere else.  In fact, we have two.

 Mari the white Finn ewe with her twin girls, a brown and a white. Both need new homes.

And here is  last year's bottle baby, Poppy, with HER baby, Pansy-- who both can only go to the best of homes:

I will post more pictures soon, thanks for checking!