Whine Fest 2012

Well, hello there friends. It's been a long time. You probably have been wondering why I am giving you the 'silent treatment'. Where are the lamb photos? Where is the Chicken Math?

It's not you, it's me. I have not been carrying my weight in this relationship.

I have always tried to keep my blog somewhat light-hearted, and I have tried very hard not to post whiny drivel.  I know you all have problems of your own, and you're not reading this to hear about mine. Well, I didn't mean that like, "Boy, you reeeally have problems", I just meant....well, you know...we all have stuff.

I have found it difficult this summer to find much to blog about that didn't include a lot of complaining, so I have just not posted. My little cousin recently left me a comment about my lack of blog posts, and her father followed it up with a comment speculating that I would probably blog again when it rained....I am not sure if that comment was his empathetic understanding of how my ideas had dried up like the surrounding landscape, or if it was intended as a smart-arse remark synonymous with 'when hell freezes over', either way it was an accurate assessment. It hasn't rained, and I am pretty sure that Hell hasn't frozen over, but I feel like I need to purge this summer out of my system in order to move on to other, more positive things. So, my friends, this post will contain some whining and complaining...okay, A LOT of whining and complaining.

I know, you are all tired of hearing about the drought, and most of my US friends are in the same boat, so I shouldn't complain, but I'm gonna ( see above...I need to whine). Here in Northern Scott County Iowa we are in the Extreme drought category.

I can't even remember the last time we had any measurable precipitation...unless you count my neighbor Miss Effie's official total in her rain gauge after the last "rain"- One drop, a cobweb and a dead fly....not really what we were hoping for.

My pastures are toast.

For the first time ever, I have been feeding hay to the animals all summer long. 

I normally stop feeding hay in May, when the pastures have greened up, and start feeding hay again in October, when there is no longer fresh grass. The price of hay has sky-rocketed, adding to my frustration, and the extra months of hay debris is already showing up in the fleeces on the sheep. I don't jacket my sheep to protect the fleece, and can't even imagine doing that when we have consistently had temperatures in the upper 90's, and 100's all summer with heat indexes around 110 on many days.

The critters have been seeking relief from the heat wherever they can find it.....I am not sure how effective it is to just shade your head...but it is, after all, a chicken....I never claimed that they were the smartest creature in the barnyard.

I have no garden this year.......

Well, that is an exaggeration. I have a garden, I found this little guy yesterday and gave him a drink of water.

.... OH! And I have these.....

dried up blackberries.

And........dry, misshapen pears..

Oh, and I had AN apple! One, singular, apple on my tree earlier this month...it has since fallen off.

And who could forget my container garden? Okay, so it's a long-forgotten bag of seed potatoes that I just discovered in the garage....it counts, right?

The neighbor's corn looks green from a distance, but a closer inspection reveals pathetic, stunted corn stalks  

drying up and desperately pointing to the sky.

UGH!!!

So, in order to get over this funk that I am in, I am going to try to look on the bright side, and put a positive spin on this situation.....

Okay, so, on the plus side......

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Oh, yes! There are no mosquitoes this year. No standing water = no place for mosquito larva.

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 Hmmm

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The price of propane is going down! There will be fewer crops that need drying, so the demand is down........

??

AND, we haven't had to mow the grass all summer, so, there is that.

Okay, I've got nothing else. The next posts will be back to lambs, and chickens and all things of a  farmy nature.

After all, the forecasters say that we DO have a "good chance" of rain tomorrow night. HAHAHAHAHA!

Yeah, right.

Holly's ram lamb update

Good news! Since my last post Holly started making enough milk for both of her lambs, so her boy no longer needs any supplementation. 

I really didn't want to have to wether ( castrate) this guy!

For those of you who asked why I would not want to leave him intact if he was going to be a bottle baby- ram lambs that are bottle babies, or any ram lamb that is handled too much, can become very aggressive toward humans once they hit maturity. I know, they are adorable and cute right now, but someday they will be 100+ pounds with horns and hormones. I don't handle ram lambs a lot unless I know for certain that they are going to be wethered and will go to a pet home. That is not to say that ignore the little guys all together, I will give the boys scratches under the chin if they are invited to come to me, but I do not allow them to demand attention from me. It's hard to resist snuggling those fuzzy little guys, but I know that handling them too much is setting them up for trouble down the road. If you want more information on handling rams in general, this is a good link to check out. http://www.stonehavenfarm.com/page7/toughlove.html

I kind of left you hanging, didn't I?

I was so happy to finish lambing and to be able to catch up on my sleep, that I forgot to update you on the rest of the story!
So, when we chatted last, I think we were up to 11 lambs? Up until that point we were staying pretty even with rams and ewes, but somewhere along the way we got a little ram-heavy. The final tally is 16 lambs-10 rams, 6 ewes.

So here's what you've missed.

Mira, a gulmoget ewe who has virtually no spots in her pedigree, and has only had single lambs of either solid or gulmoget pattern, surprised me by not only having twins for the first time, but really astonished me with these spotted, gulmoget boys.

I don't normally keep a bunch of rams, but......I really got some nice rammy lambies this year. We'll have to see what fleece and horns look like in a few months. The boys really stole the show this year.

Edrea had these two stunners. 

This is her fawn katmoget ram. FLEEEECE!

Even his head is crimpy!

This is her moorit ram (below). At first glance I was a bit disappointed in his fleece, but upon closer inspection, I discovered that he is super-crimpy under his birth coat....and yes, for those of you that giggled about the 'purse' mentioned in the last post, his purse is very crimpy...thanks for asking!

So far this guy doesn't have much of anything as far as horns, just little flat patches. Both boys are likely half polls. The moorit may be fully polled.

The last lamb born was a ram lamb out of Lilly.

Lilly has always had twins, until last year when she had triplets. She was very large again and I fully expected at least twins from her. But this year, poor girl, she gave birth to a full grown Angus bull. This picture was taken when he was only hours old. He. Is. Huge!

Here he is at two days of age.

Here are more random lambie pictures.

This is Holly's ewe lamb...that will be living here...forever.

Halley's girls

 Edrea's boy again.

Below is Holly's gorgeous ram lamb. Sadly, he is teetering on the edge of losing his manhood and becoming a wether. Holly is still not making quite enough milk for both lambs, consequently, I have had to supplement him with a bottle a couple of times a day.  He is now quite friendly - not something I want to encourage in a potential breeding ram. His twin sister will not take the bottle and she was bigger to start with, so he became the bottle boy. He stays with the flock and he does still nurse from his mom, so I am hoping that her milk will catch up. It's kind of disappointing to think that a ram this nice might not get to pass on his genes, but if he can't be used for breeding he will be a lovely fiber pet.

 Races!

Menemsha's ram lamb.

Laurel's boy.

Ashumet's boy.

Bella's boy.

Luna's girls.

Menemsha's twins...I'm not sure why they always look angry. These are really nice lambs too. The ewe refuses to let the flashy spots of the rest of the lamb flock outshine her, so she compensates by being obnoxiously friendly.

Now comes the hard part - waiting and watching them grow. I won't know for a while which lambs will be registerable, especially among the rams. I will watch to see how horns grow, what fleece looks like under those birth-coats, how bites are looking and whether the boys have all the appropriate equipment before deciding.  

Gratuitous lamb photos

I don't have time for an update, so I thought I would just unload a bunch of cuteness here.

Halley's twin ewes.

Halley's gul/kat ewe.

Halley's katmoget ewe.

Holly's twins. Ram (on right) ewe (on left).

Holly's ram.

Holly's ewe.

One of Luna's twin girls.

Ashumet's ram lamb.

More later....of course.

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And this is why my neighbors wonder about me....

No new lambs yet today, but the night is still young.

One of the new moms has been slow to produce a full udder, she is making milk, just not enough for both lambs. I have been watching her lambs carefully right from the start and could see that they weren't getting what they needed from her. I gave them a colostrum supplement the first day, and switched to milk replacer after that. 

I try to keep every possible emergency supply on hand for lambing....because that's how I roll.

I keep a stash of Pritchard  nipples in my lambing supplies, just in case, then all that I need is a 2 liter soda bottle to screw them onto- they work great- if you have a 2 liter bottle.

I had the Pritchard, I had the milk replacer, but I was lacking one important component. 

When I looked for a soda bottle to attach the nipple to, I had none. We typically don't drink soda, so there were no 2 liter bottles to be found -anywhere. I searched through our recycling bin trying to find something of a comparable size that I could sterilize and save myself a trip into town to buy a bottle.

I finally found something!!

Okay, so I look a little foolish walking back and forth to the barn in the middle of the night holding a plastic Vodka bottle with a nipple on it.....especially since I don't even drink....no, really. I don't. I make vanilla extract, and cheap vodka works the best for that. REALLY. True story.

So my neighbors have yet another reason to raise an eyebrow as they drive past my house. As if there weren't enough reasons already.  Sigh...