Shearing 2014

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As always, pictures will follow!  (This year, HannaMae took most of them so be sure to check out who took them: you may be surprised!)

Shearing!  Our annual time to catch up with our favorite shearer: Martin, and let our sheep turn on the AC!  And laugh at how silly the alpacas look without any fur anymore!  I actually mistook one for a deer yesterday…

            This year presented even more challenges than usual.  First, we had no barn.  That means, I had no way to guarantee that the sheep would be dry come shearing day.  One very good reason to wait until June to shear.  The second large challenge to having no barn is that now, we had no partially set up facilities for collecting, holding and feeding sheep into the pen with Martin to be shorn: We had to build something.  Luckily, we already have a stash of cattle panels and t-posts around for building various catch pens and loading chutes for sheep and pigs.  It took us a little while to decide on a good place that was flat, close to the house for electricity and big enough to hold everyone but once we did building something proved relatively easy.

            The fun part came when it was time in the morning to collect everyone in the chute.  While the majority of the sheep have been collected and shorn before, this particular setup was new (which equals extra skittishness) and there is always at least one extra skitter individual anyhow.  Add in younger lambs who scatter when herded like an ant nest when you stab it with a large stick as well as the alpacas who simply despise shearing day and never go the way you want anyhow and you have a recipe for sheep anywhere but where you need them to be.  Mix in one panel that wasn’t tied quite tightly enough and you get escaped unshorn sheep too.

            Stir it all together and you get lots of frustration, lots of laughs, luckily a good natured shearer, a great deal of learning and about 60 new fleeces that need new homes soon!  

Keep an eye out: we’ll post pictures soon! (Photos mostly taken by HannaMae!)

Lambs are HERE!

We'd like to welcome our first two little lambs!

Born just about noon, the two little guys are our of Eira and weighed about 6 and 7 lbs.

Everyone was up and about and nursing well and Mama was doing her job well. (Kashme, our dog, could tell you that!)

Little Shepherdess

A few weeks ago, The sheep were fenced into an area between our garden sections.  There are about 7 lambs that simply do not respect our four-strand electric fencing in part because of their full wool coats (insulating against shocks).  Thus, we were constantly having several lambs out and eating grass by the old grain elevator, eating weeds in the squash and corn, luckily leaving the crops themselves alone.  Not a huge deal but a nuisance.  Jason was working on a small wier in the creek to allow us to pump water for the garden even during the dryest parts of summer.  Up to his elbows in creek muck, literally, HannaMae came down and informed him that there were sheep out of the fence.  Jason told her he would have to handle it in a few minutes.  "I'll take care of it" she said and marched off.  A few minutes later, Jason started thinking about what HannaMae had said and went to see what she and Alethea were up to.

HannaMae was directing Alethea to walk this way and that and was using her as a blockade to collect and drive the lambs back inside the fence.

They did it all by themselves, a nearly 4 year old and nearly 2 year old.  no help or direction from Papa, on their own initiative, smartly and safely.

Little shepherdesses with a knack for the art.

Lambs can be so.... challenging.

It's a good thing that they're edible.

Now maybe that's mean.  We definately do not do enough handling of our sheep, especially the lambs for them to learn that people really are okay.  The adults have lost their edginess around us and the yearling mamas have begun to lose their edge too, although they are still at the back of the pack and a few tend to get left behind with the lambs sometimes.  Jacob sheep are known for their flightiness and difficulty in handling.  I don't knwo if it's just us or our particular group but they don't seem much flightier than any other group of sheep I've worked with.  Smarter, certainly but not any flightier, really.

Tomorrow morning, we were going to move our ewes and lambs into the next pasture over from where they were the past week.  There were several things that weren't quite right. 

1.  Somehow, last week while in the previous pasture that was next to the rams, one ewe and her two lambs (both males) got themselves into the ram pasture and couldn't get themselves back.  I'll have to be watching that one in mid-december for lambs.  Our rams have never been fertile this time of year before, too hot, but it's been much cooler lately... hmm. 

2. Goats weren't really supposed to be mixed with the ewes yet, but there they were.  Stubborn goats!

3. a couple of lambs had been making adventures somehow into another pasture in the old orchard. 

This time, when I went to check on sheep after market before going home for the evening, the lamb escapees couldn't figure out how to get back into the correct pasture with mum.  I'd have to convince them through a gate, relatively easy.  There were also some lambs already in the next pasture.  Well, I guess it'll be tonight while I've got light rather than tomorrow when I should be building the next fence for the next pasture.  While I'm at it, I might as well get the ewe out of the rams.  Because she has to males for lambs, I don't care if they stay or come with.  They stayed, this particular ewe is particularly un-flighty and loves people because people always bring grain.  I got her through the fence with little problem.  Getting her away from her lambs (still nursing some even though they are 5 1/2 months old!) was more challenging but grain solved the issue, the first time.  Second problem was getting her into the ewe group.

For some reason, in hoping that ALL the ewes and lambs would follow me and my grain bucket, I left the gate open enough to admit Sweetpea, my errant ewe, but most of the lambs and the alpacas and the goats decided the last pasture would be better.  The adult ewes went with me and I got them into the correct pasture.

Next step was retrieving everyone else.  Not too challenging except that SweetPea wanted to go back to her lambs, and the lambs and yearlings were confused because they could see their mothers on the other side of the fence of the old pasture.  I had to go all the way back across the pasture and start over and herd everyone back to the gate to their most recent pasture.  convincing the alpacas has so far been the most difficult but thye actually led the lambs through.  The goats had a mind of their own so I let them stay behind.  The alpacas impressed me by leading the lambs around and through a gate to get to the opening in the fence for the next pasture.  The lambs piled past them once they realized which pasture they were in since they'd been there before.  The poor alpacas nearly fell into the creekbed but quickly figured it out.

All I had left was the three individual goats.  Once I got them headed in the right direction and through the gate, all I had left to do was tie up the gate again and amost every difficulty had been fixed, about an hour after I began.  All I'll have to fix later is getting the two lambs out of the ram group but we'll be into breeding season before the first ones go to slaughter and I'll have to sort the rams then. 

I do love my sheep.