Missing man parts

Yesterday I took Oliver and Dillon in to be wethered. Oliver, as I mentioned before, is going to a home where he will be a fiber pet. The boys, at 7 1/2 weeks, are just too big to band (in my opinion). So I drove them into town to see Dr. Sullivan, baaaing in the back of the truck all the way there (the lambs, not me)....they were strangely silent on the way home though.

Since Oliver (below) was purchased as a fiber pet, I had no qualms about having him castrated.I had a lot of hesitation about having Dillon "done" though. Dillon has wonderful square conformation, gorgeous fleece ( like his brother and his dam), and his dam's perfect little fluke tail. But as he has grown, It looks like he is a half poll and will have small scurs. His dam, Willow, carries some polled genetics. She had a beautiful polled ram lamb last year that I had a hard time placing and ended up selling as a fiber pet.

The problem is that it is hard to sell a solid black ram, no matter how nice he is. There are not enough Shetland breeders in my area breeding for polled genetics....heck, there are not enough Shetland breeders in my area period! So, Dillon loses his manhood to hopefully become someone's new fiber friend.
For those of you who wonder what we Shetland people are talking about when we say "fluke tail", here is a pretty darn good example of one. This is Willow.....errrr...Willow's hind end.

The tail is wider at the top with a wool covering and tapers down to a hair covered tip. This is an important characteristic of the Shetland breed.

The only intact ram lamb that I have left to sell in Duncan. He has really nice conformation, fleece and tail. His horns look like they are going to be wide set at this point. He carries spotting genetics....and obviously moorit.

Other stuff.

I guess that I have been neglectful by not showing pictures of my newest chicks. Actually, I think I got them around the beginning of June, but I have been distracted by too many other things going on...monsoon like weather...flooding basement..whatever. So, here are some not so recent photos... just to introduce you.

This is one of my Barnevelder chicks. All of the breeds in this last batch ( last batch for this year)will lay the dark chocolate colored eggs. Here is my criteria for picking chickens;

1) They have to be pretty, or at the very least unusual....weird is good too, I just don't want anything that would be considered normal (notice I have exactly zero white sheep).

2) My chickens cannot lay white eggs. None. Ever. Blue, green, brown, light brown, dark brown, all acceptable. White? No.

3) Chickens must be friendly. What's that you say? Chickens aren't friendly? Clearly you have never been to my farm, or in my chicken coop where they all fly up to land on your head.

No it's not anything like that Alfred Hitchcock movie!

Welsummer chick.

Cuckoo Maran

I never did get a chance to post about all of the cats, but tonight Justin is picking up the Iowa City cats and taking them home (yeah), so we will be down to the usual 4 cats......hmmm..that always looks so much worse when I see it in print. Who has 4 cats in their house?