Busy Times

Sorry its been so long, I need to get in to the habit of blogging and with all that is going on here on the farm at the moment it is very hard, there is always another job waiting to be done.

We sheared the sheep in early May so it has been a round of endless shirting(cleaning) the fleeces and then washing and I am still washing and will be washing till the fall I expect, as I hand wash every fleece. This practice may have to stop as it is time consuming and it is not good for my hands been in water for so long.

The 18 acre field that we seeded grass this spring is growing, but very slowly as we are suffering from a lack of rain, we where hoping to get a hay cutting off it and then graze part of it but at the moment the only animals on grass are our weaned lambs. All the ewes are on hay and are sheltering from the heat in the tree line, which is good as they are keeping all the weeds down in the trees.

Finally today I would like to tell you about the wonderful day we had last Sunday 24th June, at the Schultz's farm we were asked if we would attend their farm day that they put on for the international student services They asked us to bring our stall that we set up at the farmers market and some of our sheep, so we took Lambie our Tunis ewe and her two lambs and two weaned Romney Lambs. We had a great time talking to the students and professors from other countries and seeing other displays and and talks that they put on from a bee farmer to a cheese making demonstration, quilting displays and lessons to spinning and fiber prep and finally square dancing. The students had a good time and so did we even our sheep looked like they enjoyed the attention most of the time.

Last Lamb of the season

Lots of thing going on around here but I think the main thing for both me and David is that I think this little guy is the last lamb of the spring season, I say think as the very last possible date from the Rams being taken away form the girls is actually  May 4th. We have some girls that have not lambed this year. Most of them are the ewe lambs and they will be kept till next breeding season and if they don't lamb they will be culled from the flock. The arrival of this little guy means that we are able to sleep through the night with no 2am trips to the barn.

 

This is proud mum Frostie and the little guy.

We now have the hens in the field with their mobile hen house, they have settled down to the new location and get on with the sheep well, the first couple of night when we went to check on everyone we found some of the hens had roosted on the backs of some of the sheep. The sheep didn't look bothered by it and the hens would be nice and warm, unfortunately neither of us had our phones with us so we didn't get any pics, we scooped them up and put them back in their hen houses and now they all find there way back at night.

 My last pic is of may SAD Sam , yesterday was annual injection day at the vets and Sam had a wart on his leg and he kept chewing it so I asked the vet to take a look and he sad he could take it of with a local injection so Sam has no wart but stitches and he is not going to chew them.

Spring time

The lovely spring weather is here and the daffodils are flowering, I have a lot of lovely lambs that are running and skipping down the field.

On the nice afternoons I let the ewes out onto some pasture and it is great to see the lambs running and playing. We have about 10 more left to lamb, they are mostly last years ewe lambs so a have to watch them closely as they are unsure of what is happening to them, so cope really well and other need a little coxing to let there lamb nurse.


 

We have had a local farmer come and work on the 18 acre field, he has got it ready for sewing the grass seed, but we have had some rain and it is too wet for David to seed it. We have managed to re seed the top pasture and we can see the seeds starting to grow.

We are looking forward to seeing a green field.




















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lambing time

Its lambing time and we have got about half of the adult ewes lambed, we have had a few early mornings like this morning 4am, but we are doing quite well. We have one set of triplets 8 twins and 5 singles, we have lost 2 lambs one had a navel hernia and the other was born dead, so we feel that we are doing well. At the moment we have a problem one of the yearling ewe has a vaginal prolapes we have put the prolapes back in side her and put a prolapes harness on and given her an injection to endues her in to labor, this could take anything up to 48 hours so we are spending quite a lot of time with her, making her as comfortable as possible and watching for any signs of distress. So keep your fingers crossed for her and enjoy a couple of the photos I have posted, I will put up more when time allows

Wternaby

Wternaby, a photo by Shepherd_Carole on Flickr.

This is one of last years ewe lambs and she decided to come and play in the water will I filled their water trough, she nearly got all of her head wet by putting it under the stream of water and it was a cold frosty morning.

Trott2

Trott2, a photo by Shepherd_Carole on Flickr.

This is Trotter with her little girl, she is a real good mother and her baby is never far away from her, she's also a cutie.

Kingcastle

Kingcastle, a photo by Shepherd_Carole on Flickr.

Little lamb playing on mums back
This is Teddy and she had twins on the 5th of March, as you can see her little girl is full of mischief, her baby brother is not very well, he was the weaker of the two twins and mums milk did not flow very well at the beginning so the little guy has had a rocky start but is getting stronger by the day.