The New Girls

Two new additions to my flock.  I know I said I was done, but I've decided that size does matter.  One of our goals is to produce market lambs.  I however am not willing to do that without having nice fleeces for my spinning and to blend with my angora for sale to other spinners.  I already had a cormo wether and so we have decided to add a small cormo breeding flock.  To start this adventure I purchased the two ewe lambs above from Westfield Woolies.  Two very wonderful ladies, Ruth and Alison, I recommend them highly if you are interested in this breed.  On the left is China who is pure Cormo and on the right is Arielle who is 3/4 Cormo and 1/4 BL.  They've got another year to grow and then I should have some nice Cormo lambs the following spring.

Germany

Boy has this fall been busy.  First I traveled to Germany for work.  Most of the trip was dedicated to my work elements, but I did get to travel a bit over the weekend since I was there for two weeks.  I went with a couple of co-workers to Neushwanstein castle.  It is very beautiful and in the foot hills for the Alps.  This made for quite a hike up to the castle and it was pouring rain.  It still was worth the walk and I'd do it again.

Guardians

Finally the guardians have arrived.  Meet Nuella and Noel.  I adopted these two llama girls from SELR.  I had to wait a while for transport to be arranged, but they are worth the wait.  Nuella is really friendly and likes to be petted.  It was almost hard to get a good picture of her.  I turned them out with the sheep yesterday.  The sheep are not quite sure what to make of these big things roaming their pasture but I'm sure they will adjust soon.  Noel is Nuella's daughter and a bit shy, I'm trying to win her trust with hand feeding.  Noel did decide to wade through the yucky scummy pond that is slowly drying up in the drought.  She got a bit muddy and had some green ornamentation for a while yesterday.  I hope she stays out of it now.  I guess I need to buy her a wading pool.

I also made a trip to Under The Son Shetlands and brought home two new girls.  Opal is a white shetland ewe and Aluetian is an emsket ewe lamb with a spotted face.  I think my flock is now complete.  I plan to use my two shetland ram lambs for breeding this fall on all of my ewes.

Here is a whole flock photo.  They still have some green in the pasture but you can see it is getting thin.



Flock Update

Lambing is over for this year.  The ewes all did a great job, no issues with any of the arrivals.  Shetlands are excellent mothers!  My husband was home on duty for the last two and loved it.  So much so that we are now building a ram enclosure and planning to keep at least one of the ram lambs in tact as a future sire.  All of the ewes are in great condition and very milky.  Finally tally: 1 white ram, 1 black ram, 2 moorit ewes, 1 black ewe.  I really wanted to add some moorit ewes and I got them!  I think they will all be retained.  I'm also adding an emsket ewe that I've reserved from Theresa at Under the Son.  She has a nice list of shetlands available this year so if you are looking for additions you should email her.  Above is a pic of the flock eating from the new feeder my husband built.  Also a group photo of the new additions.  Now I'm on the hunt for a guard llama so I can let the sheep out at night to graze on my abundant pasture.  My husband would like to do less mowing!

Sable German Angoras

As far as I know I'm the only one in the country working on a sable german angora.  Lots of folks love the fawn/tort color and they are working on those.  I however love the color of a rich sable.  For years I've had siamese cats and love the rich sepia brown of their coats.  The most striking rabbit I ever saw was a sable with white boots, much like my snow shoe siamese.  So far I've not had a booted rabbit, but I'm am now on SWF generation 2 of some really nice sable germans.  I've been working on coat texture and color first.  My best buck has a white toe nail, but I think I can breed that out over time.  I don't breed often anymore.  My real day job takes up too much of my time to have a large rabbit herd so I try to keep it down to around 20 animals.  Here are pics of gen 1 of the sables.  I now have gen 2 in the nest box.  The nice thing about sables is that color is easy.  Because the sable gene in on the "c" locus you can breed sable "c chl" to a REW "cc" and you always get just REW and sable.  The babies in the nest I have two REW and two sables.  One of each sex in each color.  The father is my sable buck above and the mother is my 500 gram producing pure german doe.  These babies are now 99% pure german and should have very heavy production and excellent texture.  Not sure yet about toe nails.

First two lambs!

So far we have two new lambs.  Calico and Dolly had their lambs this week.  Calico on the 15th, a moorit ewe, just what I asked for.  Dolly our BFL/Shetland ewe had her lamb this morning, a black ewe lamb.  We have two shetlands left to go Clara and Brocade.  Wonder if I can get lucky and get more ewes?

Shearing

I did not take the time to take pics this weekend. But I did manage to get 6 of my sheep sheared. Yunan rooed so I had previously harvested her fleece and it is already washed and partially carded. The others I did across two days. After taking off the fleeces I can tell I have at least 3 ewes who are bred. UTS Brocade and UTS Clara are both registered shetlands and are bred to UTS Gunpowder a very nice ram that I leased from Theresa in December. Also obviously bred is my shetland/BFL mule ewe Dolly. I really like Dolly's fleece so I'm hoping she has a least one ewe lamb that I can keep. Next weekend I need to catch up on the bunny shearing!