A few days after shearing, we notice a huge swelling on Mother’s shoulder. Mother is one of the retired ewes who lives in my back yard, and a very sweet girl with big brown soulful eyes and a love of corn treats. She was a good milk producer who had difficulty lambing last season, and […]
Mother Takes a Ride Read More »
Melinda weeded the garden today and put the fresh-pulled weeds along the fence, where the ewes enjoyed the salad.
A Salad for Valentine’s Day Read More »
The ewes are getting pretty tired of both the rain and of being pregnant! They are looking very large, and there is a lot of soft moaning going on in the shelters. Just two more weeks until the lambs start arriving. We are sincerely hoping for a dry March. Lambing in the rain really is
This Too Shall Pass Read More »
With all the rain we have been having lately, we were worried that it would rain over the weekend, and so made hurried preparations to bring the sheep into the barn, because there is nothing wetter than a wet sheep, and that makes for a difficult shearing. We were lucky and got a dry weekend,
With all the rain we have been having, it is going to be a great grass year. But right now, everything is saturated and we are swimming in mud, especially in the areas right around the shelters where the ewes are spending most of their time. Lisa comforts Marilyn and reminds her that all this
The Down Side of a Wet Winter Read More »
After getting 7.5 inches of rain in the past 5 days, everything is saturated here at the ranch and it was really nice to get up this morning to feed the sheep and be welcomed by beautiful clear skies!
Our first 11 chicks, hatched on election day, moved out to their new chicken house earlier this week. The chicken house will eventually be down below Lolo’s house, near our garden, where they will have a big, covered run, but for now we have it outside the barn, with a small run, so the chickens
Orbit is turning out to be a great guard dog, but he is also an avid hunter, and we have found him outside the ewes’ pasture a lot lately, waiting in the driveway to be let back in. We discovered he had found a tiny exit hole in the pasture fence where it crosses a
Uh-oh, They Found My Secret Door Read More »
My select group of retired ewes (the “pets”) live by my house and always gather at the fence when I walk by for chin-scratches or a treat of corn. Bebe (7 years old), Mother (5 years old), Shorty (6 years old) and Emy (7 years old).
Not such a Happy Halloween for our boys–we took the rams out today, a couple of weeks earlier than we usually do. They have been in with the ewes just 21 days, which is just a bit longer than a ewes’ 17-day cycle. We find that most of our ewes get bred in the first