Healing can be an ugly process

Sokka looks pretty torn up, but it’s all signs of healthy skin regrowth and wound closure.

It looks burnt because the medicinal sprays and healed scabs are flaking off.

Yes, I am looking at your flank.

Badgerface, his momma, is all blue on one side because he’s been rubbing up against her for comfort despite being weaned.

He gets in and scraps for hay and grazes out in the pasture now, he’s gaining weight.  Probably can’t expect any fleece, but he is likely to be in good shape by October if his healing continues to progress.  This is rapid recovery, normally it would be another week or even longer to see this level of improvement.

How the lamb fleeces for the rest of the flock are coming along.

Here’s some lamb pics from earlier this week.

Clockwise from center, Dottie, Grey, Azula, Clovis and Brunhilde. Ripley is on the edge of the frame.

Better shot of both Dottie and Brunhilde.

In this picture are Dottie, Badgerface, Black N Tan, Zuko II, Brunhilde, Clovis and Katara. Goldie’s head is just out of the frame.

This picture is here because Lisa is. Usually hard to get shots of her.

Better angle to see the ram lambs.

Azula and Sokka before we got him separated out. His fleece was recovering well enough to throw us off.

One of the few shots I could get of Ripley’s amazing frosted fleece. She is hiding behind her momma Grey as she often do.

Sokka and his sister Toph.

This one is here because it’s another view of Ripley. That coloration is combined with a fluffy softness.

One of the rare head on shots of Ripley. She is massive. If I wanted to take a chance on a one winter breeding, she’s definitely the one.

Sokka is eating hearty and full of energy

I am not going to make any predictions, I’ve learnt at least that much with sheep the last few years, but he is going in the right direction and we’re going to let him spend the day hanging out with his flock tomorrow and see how that goes.

He’s got enough energy that he’s no longer easy to grab for checking his healing progress.  Which is good news.

The rest of the flock is doing ok, but we’ll try to check them later this week to see if they have anything going on.  Nobody looks to have the telltale matted wet wool when I’m giving hay though, which is good.  Apparently this time of year even in this climate is when flystrike is likeliest to occur, not high summer.  We should be out of risk season by the next of September though.  It’s getting cooler, the 50 degree nights are definitely speeding his recovery even if the 85 degree days are not exactly helping it.

Vaccinating little lambs and not-so-temporary fencing

We managed to get all the lambs vaccinated with their initial shots today.  As is the case with many folks who do not farm full-time, we have been trying to change our electronet over to other types of fencing, but we aren’t done yet, so it’s still up.  Our solution to the entanglement issue is boosting the charge with a plug-in charger instead of a solar one. And it’s only on one side instead of two, so that’s a sort of progress.

We also got the shearing for spring done, I may offer some of that in July, it looks much nicer than I thought it would.  I hope to have some more pictures up Monday of the sheared sheep. In the meantime, here is a picture of some ferns.

Pretty cute ferns!

Pasture improvement is slow and steady

This used to be a massive blackberry thicket.

Grey and Ripley love hanging out up here in the shade. I wouldn’t enjoy sticks under me, but I’m no sheep.

You can really see the slope and how they tore into the blackberry here.

This was much more brownish-yellow before the sheep got to it.

Now that’s the start of some soil fertility.

Not a golf course yet, but maybe someday? Hehe.

Miracle or mundane?

The sheep are doing a pretty decent job.  As much as we fret about how terrible and sparse our pasture is, right now the sheep cannot eat as fast as new growth comes in, and that’s from all their stompyfoot and grazing and pooping.  So it is getting better, but the process is years-long no matter how hungry the little sheeps are.  (The older kids call them “sheeps”).

 

Just lambing around

The new lambs Sokka (boy) and Toph (girl)

They are very leggy and fawn-colored and look more like small deer than lambs.  But Badgerface’s twins Scottie and Dottie were very leggy last year, so that seems to be her thing.

Sokka is the paler one on the right and Toph is the darker one right up against Badgerface.

Toph nursing, Sokka jumping in to get his share of the milks.

 

Goldie lambed between 9 and 10am today, with boy/girl moorit twins

We haven’t had a chance to weigh them, but they are on the smaller side.  She went over on her side with the girl after delivering the boy easily, but rallied and now both are walking and nursing properly.

ETA 1:30pm: The girl is named Katara and weighs 6lbs, and the boy is Zuko II and weighs 8lbs.

The boy

boy’s on the left, girl’s on the right

 

Quick updates

• Updated the pictures of our flock.
• Updated fleece sales page for the current year.
• Ewes are looking on track for late April through mid-May delivery.  Grey, our biggest, fattest ewe is favoring a back leg, but is not off her feed or showing any other signs of weight or health trouble.  She’s always a little overconditioned, and the whole flock is about a month off from when we wanted to get hoof trims done, so we will take a look at her this weekend and try to tackle that maintenance with the others as well.
• I’m back to working with the fleeces again, but I need a (cheap) camera to do closeups, the old cameraphone isn’t able to do that.  So I’ll pick up a little point and shoot so there can be more and better pictures of all those different processes.  A record as I go would be really useful these days.
• The kids are coming out of sick season and our latest arrival is struggling to learn walking as soon as possible.  Hopefully this tires him out enough to start sleeping more than an hour at a time.  We are still awaiting the arrival of his first tooth, he has three buds right now, so it could be any day.

 

Breeding by halves

We’re breeding Shaft to the four adult ewes.  This is him trying to persuade Goldie that now is the time for all good ewes to get bred and bear a pair of wonderfully fleecy twins next spring.

She’s not a fan.

Badgerface is in there too, those were the two ewes we managed to move over to the breeding pen.  We are going to get our two largest ewes, Black N Tan and Grey, moved over sometime this week, as weather and ability permit.