Rams - the old and the new

Back to farm stuff with the blog, although I have a couple of other topics to throw in as well.

Breeding season usually starts October 1. There will be a 2-day delay this year because I’ll be at Lambtown October 1 and 2. I have already scheduled a Farm Day for Farm Club to come out on the 3rd to sort breeding groups and watch the action. My goal is to have all the extra sheep (2022 lambs I’m not keeping and a few cull ewes) gone by then. I don’t have enough room as it is to spread out the groups the way I’d like to.

I want to introduce the rams for this year.

Patchwork Townes is a 2-1/2 year old ram from Patchwork Farm in Georgia. He was purchased by a friend but had some kind of injury shortly after she got him last summer. We wonder if he gave himself a spinal injury by bashing trees. He was down and immobile for a period of time. My friend nursed Townes back to health but was then concerned about his temperament after he’d had all that attention. We don’t like rams to be pets and would rather that they be a bit standoffish. When I go into the ram pen I’d prefer to have the rams walk away rather than approach. My friend offered Townes to me in return for a lamb from him. I jumped at the chance to have the new genetics and a lilac (brown-gray color pattern) ram with great horns at that.

The other three rams with Townes are yearlings, born March, 2021. This is Meridian Silverado (Ruby Peak Tamarisk x Meridian Spice). He is the only 4-horn ram I kept from last year’s lambs. I’m not crazy about his lower horns now. I haven’t trimmed them but may have to at some point.

This shot of Silverado and Townes is a great comparison of the two Jacob color patterns—black and white, and lilac.

Meridian Axis is a 2-horn lilac yearling. (Meridian Axle x Meridian Vixen). Axis is related to most of the lilac ewes I have here and he is for sale. See info on this page.

Hillside Gabby’s Barrett came from Michigan last summer. He sired some of last years lambs, and some carried that distinctive facial pattern.

I have decided to keep more ram lambs than in the past. Its always discouraging when people ask about buying breeding rams and I have sold most of the rams for butcher. With a small property I can’t keep as many as I like, but I chose these to keep an eye on and watch how they grow. I have also submitted registration applications for them so I can sell them as registered rams. These rams were born this year, so they are just a year younger than the three rams above. Introducing the 2022 rams:

Meridian Rascal (Meridian Rambler x Meridian Hilda).

KJ Royalty Thorn. (Meridian Silverado x Meridian Belle). Thorn and his sister belong to my granddaughter who owns their dam, Belle. They live here, but Kirby can show when she is here in the summer.

Meridian Brady (above) and Meridian Bravo (below) are twins. (Hillside Gabby’s Barret x Meridian Roca.) Brady is black and white and Bravo is lilac. It may be hard to tell in the photo but Bravo’s face is a dark gray, not black. His wool looks different, but sometimes it’s hard to tell about the wool without looking at the whole staple length. Look at the fleece photo below.

That’s Bravo’s fleece on the left (lilac) and Brady’s on the right (black).

This is Meridian Turbo, who has the best horns of the two horn rams this year. (Ruby Peak Tamarisk x bide a wee Trista.) Of the ram lambs, Turbo is the least related to most of the sheep in the flock.

I wanted to keep another 4-horn ram and this is him. I haven’t chosen a name yet. (Meridian Silverado x Meridian Sylvia).

I almost forgot the last ram. Peyton is a BFL and I crossbreed a handful of the ewes each year. He sires larger lambs that are ready to sell earlier than the 100% Jacob lambs.

Shearing at Timm Ranch - part 1

Every year I get wool from the Timm Ranch, about five miles from here, and have it made into a really great yarn. I sell the yarn in skeins and on cones and I use a lot of it for my own woven products. I could probably substitute blog posts from previous years for this one and you wouldn’t know the difference. Same place. Same sheep. However some of the Farm Club people have changed. So here is the 2022 Shearing Day last week.

The Timm Ranch sheep are what I like to call a ranch blend of Polypay, Rambouillet, and Targhee. That means that those are the original breeds in the flock but over the years, as the Timms have raised their own replacements, the individual breeds aren’t so recognizable. The sheep have traits of all, but most of what we are happy to see is the fine wool traits of those original breeds.

The sheep moved into the lane on the north side of the barn.

Last year there we tried to keep up with two shearers. This year there was only one and we were able to keep pace with him.

The shearer is known as Junior and this logo is a new one.

Several Farm Club members came to help evaluate and skirt fleeces.

We worked at two skirting tables.

The goal was to check the fleece for soundness (most were fine in that respect) and then skirt. Skirting is to remove the parts of the fleece that are of lesser quality—wool at the edge of the belly and that with excess VM (vegetable matter). The timing was just right for shearing and there was very little VM in the fleeces. All waste was bagged for a friend with a project in which she will make a product from wool that will otherwise be discarded. That will be a blog topic later on.

We kept a running tally of the weight so that I could make sure I reached my 200 pound minimum and I could figure out how much to pay for the wool. The skirted fleeces varied from 4.5 lb to 9.5 lb. and I ended up with 222 pounds in one pile and 50 pounds in the other.The wool will go to two different mills.

Some of the sheep after shearing.

The sheep were in two groups. The largest group had fall lambs, but there was one group with lambs born more recently—including the previous night (although that pair was still in a lambing pen). At one point Susan and I walked over to the group with young lambs and they followed her to the barn.

These are locks from some of the fleeces we chose. The yellow paper is 5” wide so you get an idea of the fleece length. There were a handful of extra long fleeces. One was from a sheep that was missed last year so that was a two year fleece—too long to combine with this batch. Some of the other long ones were from replacement ewes born in the fall of 2020 and not shorn last spring. We tried to sort by length and most of the 200+ pound batch is about 3 to 4 inches. The longer ones are mostly in the other batch of wool.

Stay tuned for another post with more photos.

Getting Ready to Shear

It feels like the night before Christmas! …All through the barn the sheep are waiting…The barn is organized. The tools are hung (where is that strike-out thing when you need it—I wanted to say stockings but cross it out) . The rams have been moved to the barn. The water is turned off (empty stomachs are better for shearing). ETC.

Dan did this job earlier in the week. The gate we used to have here didn’t fit the space and I had a panel wired up to stick out into the doorway a couple of feet. The reason is that when the gate swings open (towards me when taking this photo) it would stick out into the south doorway to go in and out of the barn. That is not very pracrtical. So Dan designed and made a folding gate.

Here is is in use. Clever, isn’t it?

Yesterday we went to a friend’s place just up the road to pick up her Jacob sheep and bring them here for shearing. There are 16 or 17 ewes and one ram. This is the ram, born in 2021.

The next few photos are some of her ewes. They weren’t crazy about getting their photos taken—or maybe it was about me being in the pen with them.

A couple of pretty ewe lambs.

It will be fun to get hands-on these sheep and see their fleeces. We sheared them last year as well and they were a lot cleaner than mine as far as the vegetable matter goes—probably because they have winter pasture and are not being fed as much hay.

Tonight I brought my rams over to the barn so that I don’t have to deal with them in the morning. This is Rambler. He’s still a yearling—coming up on 2 years old in March.

Rambler’s fleece

Silverado (Ruby Peak Tamarisk x Meridian Spice), born almost a year ago in 2021.

Meridian Axis, a lilac ram also born in 2021. (Meridian Axle x Meridian Vixen)

Hillside Gabby’s Barrett, the ram lamb I got from the Hillside Farm in Michigan last summer. He is maturing nicely.

Barrett’s fleece.

Remember what I said about the Night Before Christmas? I’d better get to bed and read for awhile to turn my mind off so I can sleep. What’s that? Do I hear little hooves on the roof? Did I shut all the gates in the barn?

Breeding Season Begins

We live by seasons…and this one is breeding season.

On Sunday Farm Club members came to help. We started by sorting ewes. We also replaced old smaller ear tags with some that are a little larger and more legible. We colored coded the 2018 and 2019 ear tags. I had already tagged the 2020 ewes with blue tags. I can identify many of the sheep by their markings but I don’t remember all 60+ of them. The larger ear tags make it easier to read the tag and to find a particular sheep when you can narrow down the year by the ear tag color.

Then we put the markers in the ram harnesses.

It was time to get the rams. Farm Club members went to get the ram lambs. I had worked with Axis (left) and Silverado (right) a bit…

…but Barrett is the new one and he thought dragging was the way to go rather than walking…

…or maybe giving up was best.

We had planned a break at 10:00 to watch the Lambtown Sheep-to-Shawl judging. We missed the first part so didn’t hear what most of what they said about ours—we can watch the recording when it’s posted.

The judging presentation was good, but unfortunately our shawl was among the four that were disqualified based on size. We were short of the desired 72” by only about 2”. I guess we were in good company. Back to work.

The lamb, Axis, got down to business right away.

The youngest one, Barrett, was interested but the ewes wanted nothing to do with him. In cases you’re wondering, it’s not that he’s too little, it’s just that they aren’t in heat right now.

Dan and I caught the big rams.

Tamarisk’s face has been looking a little rough, but he seems OK other than something under his jaw. (Thanks for the photos Susan.)

I caught him about a week ago to check out his swollen face. He has something going on with his jaw but I think that whatever it is has healed—it’s hard like bone, not soft like an abscess. He still eats and is in good flesh.

If there is something with his jaw it’s not on his mind right now.

I had to chase this group out to the pasture because they got distracted by each other and were just hanging around the lane.

Peyton was happy to have some female company.

Ram lamb, Silverado, seemed more interested in the smells in the ram pen where the older rams had been.

Rambler’s group also has a pasture that is separate from Tamarisk but they can also go into the corral near the barn.

Everybody’s favorite ewe, Jade, was the first to be marked.

Rambler, Tamarisk, and Peyton all wore themselves out on Sunday afternoon. Among them 10 ewes were already marked.

I have two extra ram lambs, Dylan with 4 horns and Orion with 2 horns. They are both for sale as registered breeding rams.

This is the third day the rams have been with the ewes. Tamarisk has bred 10 of his group of 21 so far.

Peyton has bred 4 of his 5 ewes.

Axis is a lilac ram with some of the lilac ewes and ewes that carry lilac in their pedigrees.

He has marked Zora, left, and Foxy, right and 2 other ewes so far.

I’m still waiting for Barrett (in this photo) and Silverado to mark someone. Maybe tonight.

Thursday Morning Farm Photos

I was talking about the pasture and someone asked me what birdsfoot trefoil looks like.

The sheep love it. From PennStateExtension: “Birdsfoot trefoil is a perennial that adapts well to production on poorly drained, low-pH soils (Table 1). It can reseed itself, is resistant to Phytophthora root rot and numerous alfalfa insects, responds well to fertilization, and does not cause bloat in animals.” What a great plant! We have some in the pasture and I’d like more. This photo was taken in an area that the sheep can’t access.

One of my chickens wandered by while I was admiring the trefoil.

The sheep have been in this section a few days now and have eaten it down quite a bit. There is still a lot of grass left and some clover hidden in the grass clumps. I noticed that last few days that the sheep weren’t out when I expected them to be in the morning. I didn’t know if it was because they had eaten the plants they like (clover and trefoil) and were turning their noses up at the dallisgrass that is getting coarser or if there was another reason. I wanted to see what they were eating and if the mosquitoes were as thick as they had been earlier in the morning.

I took this photo of my leg a few days ago. The mosquitoes were worse this morning when I walked the pasture about 7:30. The sheep didn’t want to go out until about 9:00 and I took my camera out a little later. That’s when I took the most of these photos. By that time the mosquitoes were not nearly as thick, although I’m sure I’d have had bites if I wasn’t completely covered (overalls over my shorts and a long sleeve shirt with the collar up).

The Western Kingbird is happy out here because there are plenty of bugs to eat, mosquitoes included. I see them flitting around while the sheep graze.

I spent some time watching the sheep eat to see what plants they chose.

This ewe is named Dimitri.

This is Beauty, the March daughter of Belle, the sheep I gave my granddaughter to show in 2019 when she was here for the State Fair. Kirby has chosen names with a Disney Princess theme. If it wasn’t for the pandemic Kirby would be here to show Beauty at this year’s State Fair. The fair is cancelled but Kirby will be here and she and I will spend time befriending and halter-breaking Beauty and other lambs.

This is Juniper, another lamb I am keeping. I’m not crazy about the quilting—that’s what you call the unequal lengths of wool fibers in this fleece. But it is likely to even up after her first shearing.

This is not a pasture plant, but a dahlia. Its one of the few things growing in my dye garden right now. After a rough start my dahlias have finally taken off. Some are almost my height and some of the flowers are massive.

This flower is as big as my hand.

This is 8 ounces of flowers that are going in a dyepot tomorrow. Stay tuned.

Sheep Photos--Lambs Growing Up

I don’t have a plan for updating my lamb photos. I need to take photos as they grow so that I can keep the lamb pages on the website updated. Ewe lambs. Ram lambs. I wander around with the camera and try to get photos of the lambs in which you can see their legs and feet. I also need to see at least one ear tag clearly enough to read the number. Needless to say, not all of the lamb listings have current photos.

Here are some of the latest photos along with some photos to show how the lambs have changed. When people want to buy lambs to start a breeding flock I explain that it’s hard to predict how the ram lambs horns will turn out and I don’t want to sell them until we have a better idea of horn growth. Why is that important? The rams can’t be registered until they are 6 months old because the inspectors need to be assured that the horns aren’t growing in a way that will impact the health of the sheep. Every sheep is inspected by two inspectors (and I am one, but don’t inspect my own sheep) who look at photos submitted by the owner. There is a Breed Standard that shows Desirable, Acceptable, and Not Acceptable for registration. The goal with inspection is to make sure that animals do not fall into the Not Acceptable category. Most of the traits that would put them in that category indicate potential crossbreeding or health risk. The goal of JSBS (Jacob Sheep Breeders Association) is to register as many as possible—we do not like to fail a sheep.

This is what you see if you click on Breed Standard at the top of the JSBA website. All of those menu choices have information on those different aspects of describing Jacob sheep. It’s worth spending some time there if you want to learn more about any of these traits.

This is Ruby Peak Tamarisk. I got him last year as a yearling (blog post about that road trip during fire season) because I needed new genetics here. I have spent so much time focusing on good fleece that I haven’t paid that much attention to horns and I wanted a ram that might help with my flock’s horns (in addition to maintaining the fleece traits of which I am proud). He was bred to almost 2/3 of the flock.

Ram #2130 is Ruby Peak Tamarisk x Meridian Jingle. His horns look very promising. At one point I wondered if he was that less common lilac color. See the photo below.

The lilac coloring would have to come from as far back as lilac great-grandmothers on the sire and dam sides. If this is lilac coloring it would have come from as far back as lilac great-grandmothers on the sire and dam sides. I think I want to take a closer look at him now.

Lamb #2126 is Ruby Peak Tamarisk x Meridian Terri. He was born March 1 so he is 3-1/2 months old. This is why we wait until 6 months of age to evaluate rams. Those horns are tipping forward and we want to see how much they tip as the ram grows.

Lamb #2156 looks good. Ruby Peak Tamarisk x Meridian Lavendar. Lavendar is a lilac ewes so this ram will carry that trait.

Lamb 2175 doesn’t look promising. Ruby Peak Tamarisk x Meridian Ruth 2, born 3/10/21. It’s not a problem that he broke off a top horn because it will grow, but the lower horns are curving right into his face.

At 12 days he looks like he could be the perfect flock sire (albeit not a lot of spots but still passable).

At just over 2 months you might think that his horns were OK, but compare this photo to the first one of this ram, taken when he is a week over 3 months old. (That’s his twin on the right. I don’t have a current photo of him.)

This is Meridian Rambler, a yearling (about 15 months now) that I kept from the 2020 lamb crop. He probably deserves a blog post all by himself to show the progression of horn growth and discuss why I kept him. You can see how much horn growth to expect in those lambs by this time next year and think about the horn shape and position.

Lamb # 2137 is Rambler’s offspring. Meridian Rambler x Meridian Patsy.

Ewe horns don’t grow nearly as large so aren’t as critical when evaluating young lambs. Ewe lamb #2187 is one I have chosen to keep. Ruby Peak Tamarisk x Meridian Cashew. I have named her Meridian Columbine. Doesn’t she have a pretty face?

Meridian Lupine, # 2159, is another that I’ve decided to keep. Meridian Axle x Meridian Vixen. It’s hard to tell in this photo but she is lilac, like her dam and her grandsire on her dad’s side. Notice the different position and shape of the horns on a 2-horn ewe. Ewe lambs can be registered at 3 months old as long as you can see enough horn growth.

Random Farm Photos and Decisions

When you see the title, Random Farm Photos, you know that I’ve either been too busy or too distracted to spend time working with my photos and putting together a cohesive story. Busy and distracted go hand-in-hand. Sometimes the hardest thing to get past is the decision making. Where to start?

I finally finished weaving off a 27 yard warp that was on my big loom. The decisions here are all about where to post the finished pieces. These blankets are woven with locally grown Timm Ranch wool yarn in the warp and weft yarn of various sources. The green is my new favorite non-local yarn that I sell here. The others are leftover yarns that I used to carry—U.S. grown yarn dyed by Sincere Sheep. I can sell these on my website or at the Artery in Davis, or on the Artery’s new shopping website. I finally got the photos taken, but haven’t had time to post them anywhere yet. That’s on the list for next week.

These are more of the blankets from that warp. These can be posted on my website or on the N.CA Fibershed Marketplace website. I listed a few of them on that site tonight, but didn’t finish, and I haven’t decided where to post them all.

This blanket was on that same warp. This is one of my newest ideas and you’ll be seeing more about this as I go further. The colors in this blanket indicate the temperatures throughout the year in my area, progressing from wintertime 40’s and 50’s (gray and blue) all the way to over 100 (red) and back to winter. I’m planning to offer this as a kit for weavers and as a blanket that can be customized for a specific year and/or location.

Next up on the loom is this 50 yard warp. It’s on the warp beam but not threaded yet and there is a deadline. So what am I doing sitting at the computer right now?

More distractions and more decisions. I sorted lambs last week and tried to start making decisions about which I really wanted to keep. That’s hard when you like them all. These are some that may be on my list.

This ewe lamb doesn’t have a great spotting pattern, but she is one of the very few lilac lambs born this year and I want to keep a lilac. (Lilac refers to the color on her face that is not black—her fleece will also be a gray/brown color other than the black and white sheep.)

One of the things that I really needed to do was to finish skirting and sorting fleeces. Lots of decisions there. Which fleeces to put on the website? How much VM (vegetable matter) is too much to go in the barrels for processing at the mill? Do I save back a couple of fleeces for potential Sheep to Shawl contests later in the year?

I’m glad to say that I finally finished with the 2021 fleeces and they are ready for the mill. I had already sold most of the wool I had on the website, but now I have added a few more 1-pound lots of the best parts of the fleeces—those with minimal VM.

I had to make a decision about what to do with this ewe named Alice. It’s a long enough story for a blog post all by itself. I’ll just say that over a week ago I found her by herself and obviously in not very good shape. I am convinced that she had some kind of neurological problem and was blind in one eye. That was in addition to her poor body condition. I brought her to the barn. First decision—vet or necropsy lab or watch until Monday? (It was Sunday and everything would be twice as expensive for maybe not much return.) The rest of the week I kept pondering the pros and cons of all those options. She seemed to be better, but not normal and I wanted help with the decision about the final outcome. So I took her to the VMTH on Friday. There really wasn’t a diagnosis but ideas of what could have been wrong. I came home with medications to be administered twice/day for five days. During this time I had removed the lambs because they are plenty big enough to wean and Alice had no interest in them. After the five days of treatment when I put Alice back with the flock her lambs found her and decided that they were NOT weaned. She welcomed them back and right now you can’t tell that she very had a problem except that she is still skinny—but her behavior seems back to normal.

I’ll end this post with a goat picture. These are two of the triplets and they have decided that this feeder is their personal sleeping platform.

It's Time for The Lambing Game

This post will be a little different. I haven’t chosen what I think are my best photos but instead it’s a bunch of photos of sheep rear ends. If you are a Farm Club member you will understand. It’s at this time before lambing that I offer the Lambing Game—a way to test your sheep knowledge and observation skills (really, it’s mostly luck). Farm Club members have a list of breeding dates and potential lambing dates. Based on those dates and these photos I ask people to tell me which of the ewes pictured will lamb first. Tie-breaker 1: The exact date. Tie-breaker 2: How many lambs? Tie-breaker 3: What time on your chosen date? There will be a prize—I just don’t know what yet. I chose to post these photos here so that I don’t fill up the FC members’ emails with lots of photos. Besides maybe the rest of you will be interested to find out what happens. Remember that lambing isn’t due to start until 2/26, but as in people, due dates aren’t exact.

I took photos for this game a couple of days ago and before I could get them posted, this ewe, Zinnia lambed—6 days early. So these lambs are 2 days old already. The rest of the photos in this post were taken this morning.

Anise. I’ll also say here that I just wandered around taking photos of sheep that seem to be bagging up. I did not find all the 15 ewes that are due by March 1 and some of these have dates for after that. Hey, it’s just a game!

Fandango

Alice.

Dimitri

Ginger.

Dilly.

Hilda.

Ears.

Jade

Raquel.

So that’s it for this first game of the season. Now you know what I do when I go out looking at sheep…like I’m going to do now for the 11 p.m. check.

Just Like Old Times...and Sheep Photos

It’s been a year since Farm Club members came to the farm for shearing. The pandemic hit not long after and we have had no Farm Club activities. Shearing is this week and we had our annual Fleece Preview when Farm Club members could select their fleeces. It was small—only 3 members plus me—but we did the jobs that were necessary. We checked all the ear tags against my flock list, cleaned up those that were too dirty to read, and gave BOSE injections. We also clipped fleece samples from all the 2019 sheep (now with their full yearling fleece) for micron testing.

I’m way off my game here. I have only one photo of us working. However I have a few photos of gorgeous wool.

Pecan is a 2020 ewe lamb with a beautiful lilac fleece.

Rambler is a 2020 ram lamb.

I like to take photos of as many sheep as possible before shearing day to update my flock list. I wandered around with the camera a couple of days ago and was surprised that I got pictures of almost the whole flock. There are now 58 ewes, 3 wethers, and 6 rams.

I don’t want to overwhelm this post with all those photos but I’ll share a few. You can see all the ewes here and the rams here. This is Sonata, the oldest sheep here, born in 2012. I just checked my records and she has had 15 lambs—that’s 7 sets of twins with a single lamb her first time.

These three are the youngest sheep, Pistachio, Sandie, and Pecan, so named after a Farm Club member suggested “nut” names for what I thought might be my nuttiest crop of lambs. Due to Covid, we didn’t have people coming to the farm and it took a lot longer to socialize the lambs and get them used to being handled. I eventually sorted out those that I planned to keep and worked on halter breaking and handling them a bit. Isn’t this a nice group of 4-horned ewes?

The most prolific ewe here is Ears, a BFL and Jacob cross. She was born in 2013 and has had 16 lambs.

Jade, everyone’s favorite sheep because she is so friendly. Jade was born in 2015 and I have two daughters and a granddaughter in the flock.

Jasper is Jade’s son, born in 2019.

Quora is Jade’s granddaughter from 2020.

Stay tuned for shearing photos on Friday!

Hug A Sheep

For the last few years we have celebrated Hug a Sheep Day on the last Saturday of October along with our virtual friends in Kentucky at Equinox Farm who started the tradition. The pandemic has changed that and I just realized that we missed last year too because I was in the hospital following a severe injury. To recognize this tradition I thought that I’d share some sheep hugging memories. The first few photos were taken at Hug A Sheep Day during some of the previous years.

Hug a Sheep Day in October is well after lambs are grown up, but during lambing season there area lot of opportunities to Hug a Lamb too. This is my friend, Claire, hugging a lamb, and she is also the sheep hugger in the photo above this one.

Farm Club members get plenty of chances to hug lambs. I hope that next year we will be able to offer FC members the same opportunities as in the past to be here at lambing time. We will probably still have to think about safe procedures of distance and masks, but I hope that we’ll be able to make it work. The photos below are all of Farm Club members who spend time here during lambing season .

These are photos (above and below) of Jade, our most huggable sheep.

I get a chance to hug lambs occasionally too.

The photos above and below are Jade again, this time with my granddaughter visiting from Texas.

Sheep

The other day as I walked to the barn I took photos of some of the sheep.

These first few are the non-breeding group. I chose to keep a few of the March lambs out of breeding groups. If we have an opportunity to show at Black Sheep Gathering next year in June it’s good to have some yearling ewes that don’t have lambs to wean.

This is Roca (Meridian Jasper x Meridian Raquel), a nice looking 4-horn ewe.

Pecan is another nice looking 4-horn ewe who has a twin here. (Meridian Axle x Meridian Ginger)

Hazel is a tame lamb who likes forehead scratches. (Meridian Axle x Meridian Jade)

Pistachio (Unzicker Shenandoah x Windy Acres Zeus) is unrelated to any of the rest of the sheep (except for her half sibling sisters from the last couple of years) and maybe I should have put her out with the new ram, Ruby Peak Tamarisk, because her offspring would be unrelated. Next year.

The rest of these are just photos of random sheep. This is Skye who is in with Axle right now.

This is Quartz, in the pasture with Tamarisk. Notice how she wears her breakfast caught in her horns. People like to say that Jacob sheep can have six horns. Yes, they can, but there isn’t room on their heads for six really nice big horns. Here are photos of Quartz when she was younger.

Here she is at two months old.

This was taken at 10 months of age. You can see how two of the horns are starting to fuse and there isn’t much space between the others at the base.

This is a wether who is kept around as a buddy to a ram or other sheep that needs to be separated for some reason. Notice how funky his 6 horns (two fused on each side) look. As a wether the horn growth slowed dramatically but you can imagine how those horns would look if he had not been castrated and they grew as fast as intact ram horns grow. There is a lot of leeway in registration for ewes’ horns, but the Breed Standard fails rams with “undifferentiated and unbalanced set tp four-horned rams , i.e., fused in an irregular pattern on one or both sides” .

The Lambing Game

Every year about this time I send photos to Farm Club members so that they can play the Lambing Game—guessing which ewe will lamb first and on what date. The Farm Club members have a list of ewes and their predicted lambing dates based on breeding date. (I am doing this as a blog post so I don’t fill up members’ email boxes with lots of photos. )We are still a couple of days away from the first official due date of February 24 but here we go.

This contests will be open to non-farm club members too. The prize is a set of three farm-scene photo notecards . To enter email me he following info:

Whcih sheep, of these in the photos will lamb first?

What Date?

Tie breaker (in case more than one person gets the first two questions correct): Time of birth.

If a woman told you her due date was March 1 you know that you could expect the baby at least a few days on either side of that. Same thing here. My due dates are based on when I noticed that the sheep was marked by the ram but that is not fool proof either.

This is a 5 year old ewe, bide a wee Bea. Official due date is 2/29. Due date:2/29.

This is 5 year old Meridian Ruth. Due date 2/29.

This is 8 year old Meridian Fandango. Due date: 3/4

Meridian Marilla. She is 4 years olf and her due date is 3/2.

Meridian Vixen, 4 years old; due 2/29.

This is 5 year old bide a wee Hallie, due 3/2

Meridian Sumac, 3 years old; due 2/29.

Meridian Estelle, 6 years old, due 2/24.

So there is the line-up for Game #1. We have many more in the barn than this but these are the onesfor which e could get decent photos. Thanks so much to FC member Mary and her daughter, Maggie who came today to take the photos and ID sheep. I’m can go to the barn but I’m still not allowed to walk around the sheep area. Good luck!!