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It’s lambing time

It’s lambing time

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Time has slipped past me again and I am not prepared for posting. So since I didn’t do a lambing post his spring I thought you might like to see one from a few years ago. How can you say no to cute lamb pictures.

It is lambing time and we are busy. This post is more pictures than anything else.

quad lambs These are the quadruplets I told you about last week. All of them ended up in he house as their mom didn’t have milk. This was the only shot I could get of all 4 of them. When I tried to get down and take a picture on their level all I could get was a nose shot of one of them.  They are fed with bottles 4 times a day. They went to a new home. A young couple that wanted to start a small flock.

Mom and tripletsThis is a nice set of triplets. One of the black ones is a girl so will probably stay as part of the flock.

mom and twins you looking at me   This lamb is one of 2. You can see the legs of the other one under mom.  He gave me a nice face shot. I love the speckles.

looking at my lambsThis mom was very interested in having her picture taken.

twins I know these look the same but they are not.

hi A future star!

This is the group pen of moms and babies.  They are in the individual pens for a couple of days so we can make sure they are bonded and mom has enough milk.  Then they go into a mixed pen of moms and babies.

group pen

We are about 1/3  of the way through lambing. Hope you enjoyed the pictures.

 

Some life on the farm.

Some life on the farm.

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Today the turkeys arrived, we ordered 3 kinds to see how they grow for us. Some white ones and some bronze ones and some called artisan. The whites and the bronze came as week olds.

whites and bronzes 1 whites and bronzes 2

 

There are some videos below. they do not seem to be loading up here while I am editing. I am hoping they work once published. If not I will try tomorrow using the video camera instead of my iPhone. They are quick time movies so I am not sure the problem. If you know please let me know.

The artisan where only available as day olds.  Here they are in there travel box. they do not give them much room when traveling as it is safer if they can’t move around to much. I like their marking.  They are in a bigger box under a heat lamp in my studio, right next to a box of day old chickens that one of our loose birds hatched yesterday.

in the travel box

 

I gave the laying hens some new shavings in their nesting boxes. then spread the rest of the shaving bale around. They all run outside while I am doing it. It is very scary it seems.  They are chicken chickens of course.  Then curiosity takes over and they have to come in a check it out.

egg layers  

 

 

Every children’s book I have ever read about farms says roosters crow in the morning. I am here to tell you that is true but they also crow mid morning and at lunch and in the afternoon and evening. The only time they do not cow is at night.  At least I have never heard them because I am sleeping.

IMG_4051

It seems one of the young roosters though he could be in charge and found out he couldn’t. The up side of bird politics is I got some really nice feathers donated by the looser. I think they will look very nice on a hat.  The rooster is fine just short a few feathers. I can’t eve tell witch of the to young red ones it was.

feathers

One last video this is Star(ving) getting her bottle at dinner time. She has grown into a sturdy little lamb since you first met her. http://feltandfiberstudio.proboards.com/thread/2818/daily-dose-fibre?page

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Welcome to the Family

Welcome to the Family

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I had a big surprise last week when my youngest sister Carol sent me pictures of the newest members of her family — three ewes and four lambs!

It was an even bigger surprise to her that I use wool for felting.  In her defense, she lives in central Wisconsin and has a farm and she, her husband and son run a real estate business.  They are a little busy themselves.

It should have been no shock since she’s been an animal lover since she was a toddler.  She’s managed a dairy farm, a pig farm and has had horses and cows of her own. Carol also has five Border Collies and felt they needed more exercise.  Sheep would be great for them to herd. When she saw the sheep it was love at first site.

None of the sheep are purebreds. She thinks they are Corriedale/Dorset mixes. The ewes were pregnant when she brought them home.  Since then the oldest Mom, Secret 7,  had twin boys.  Carol’s granddaughter Madison named them Salt and Pepper.

 

Jpeg

Jpeg

The black Mom, Dusty, had a dark black boy named Little Will.

Jpeg

The youngest Mom, Amira,  had a teeny little brown lamb with tan on her face Madison named Rosie.  She was very weak and they had to milk Amira and bottle feed Rosie because she couldn’t get up and walk. But an hour later she was on her feet.  They will let Rosie and Amira out of the lambing pen as long as Rosie is doing well.  She is very tiny.

Rosie

The sheep have only been introduced to the two older Border Collies, Belle who is 2 and a half and Misty who is 1 and a half.  They just visit and fuss over the baby lambs.  Misty thinks all the babies belong to her.  She loves them.

The three pups are only 10 months old and will get introduced to the lambs when the lambs are at least half grown.  They want the sheep to feel safe and comfortable in their own space.  They  are going to build a special round pen for that so it will be easier to control both the dogs and sheep.

Carol is already planning on buying a Corriedale ram this fall. So, the excitement will continue.

I wish we weren’t so far apart, but I’ve been promised fleece next year. so, I’m sure a trip is in order.  Another new adventure!  In the mean time, I’m enjoying the pictures and updates.

Thanks to my nephew Bill and his daughter Madison for the pictures and to Carol for sharing this exciting experience with us.

Birdhouse Class and Lambs.

Birdhouse Class and Lambs.

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It is spring! Saturday I taught a Birdhouse Class.

Everyone had fun decorating their birdhouses.

Bernadette bird house 2

birdhouse 3 birdhouse 4

Of course there was rubbing and rolling and throwing

rubbing rolling

throwing

and everyone ended up with great looking birdhouses. Bernadette (second from the left) wanted a feeder so she made her opening much bigger.

birdhouses finishedThe other way I know that spring is here I we had our first lambs . We started with a bang, quadruplets. They are less than an hour old here, so not even cleaned up properly yet.

quad lams

and the reason my post is late this morning is because I have a visitor.

Fynn

 

 

Happenings at the Farm.

Happenings at the Farm.

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This week we’ve had some new arrivals. first was this lovely red Dexter heifer. born just before dark so the picture is of my son in the dark with my husband holding the flashlight.

Colin and Rosalee

Then we had some lambs.

lamb 1 lamb 3 lamb 2

This morning it was Chrissy’s turn. My hubby was going to feed the bottle lambs when he fount them. Lamb was up and dry. No problem bringing them in till Chrissy saw the bottles lying on the ground and was more interested in trying to get a drink then going in the pen with her lamb.  Once a bottle lamb always a bottle lamb. she was to busy nibbling my coat to get in the picture herself.

lamb 4 chrissy

 

I also washed some wool mostly it is still yucky with to much chaff in it. The brown looks ok and some of the white I can cut the curls from the felted base.   The rest will end up as mulch. Free fleece is seldom usable fleece.

Farm Supplies

Farm Supplies

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This morning we went of to out farms supplier, Canadian Cooperative Wool Growers this is where you sell your wool clip.

wool growers

We had to pick up some milk replacer for our bottle lambs and the new radio frequency ear tags that all sheep have to have when they leave your farm.

eartags

I took some pictures of the wool  baled and ready to be shipped out.

small bags woolThese are the small ones they are compressed and weigh about 500 pounds

large bales 2  big wool bales 2These are the larger ones. I don’t know how much they weigh. That is my husband standing beside the bales so you can see how big they are. I think he is taking a picture for Facebook.

And lastly this is one of the reasons we where there.

lamb drinking 2 I will try to get more pictures of lambs but they like to show you their tails when you try to take a picture.

Getting Organised.

Getting Organised.

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Like just about everyone getting organised is one of my goals for the new year. As you can see nothing stacks and it’s a mess. I can’t get to the selves to get anything or put anything away.

the problem

To that end I bought some storage bins. I got 2 large ones with the attached lids the open down the middle. These are for white and black merino. I always have larger quantities of them. I got some small ones for yarn and shoe box size for smaller quantities.

bins

I took my yarn out of the cardboard box and bags in a bin and now they are sorted and easy to see.

yarn sorted

Some Yarn to ply and to dye.

to ply and to dye

I also did my thread. Here it all is on the new shelves I got for Christmas. It’s a start but there is much more to do.

shelved

The other things that’s happened over the Christmas holidays.

triplets These 3 are on bottles, 2 moms but one had no  milk and one that wasn’t in the least bit interested. They are in a bigger pen in my basement. they get bottles 4 times a day.

These two were born last Friday morning when it was -39.

pink lamb gray lamb

They are both boys even though one is in a pink coat. Their mommy loves them very much. They had a heat lamp for the first couple of days.  The weather has warmed up so they don’t have coats anymore. There have been a few more (10 at last count) that are still with their mothers. Hopefully not to many more in this cold. The ram was breeding some later in the fall so fingers crossed. The young fellow we thought was a wether ( neutered) and is infact a ram has been penned up separately for possible use next year.

This week on the farm

This week on the farm

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Sorry for the late post everyone, It will probably show up as tomorrow for those in the UK. I have been busy with more mitts and getting ready for a sale tomorrow.

The other thing I made this week was some felted soap. This the soap all wrapped up in nylons ready to go. I sit in front of the TV with a bucket to do these.

soap before

soap finished and packedand this is them all packed and ready to go

This week we had some surprises. First the snow flurries seems more like a dump. This is the entrance to the building my studio is in.

Studio door tuesday

And on the same day we had unexpected triplets. Here is the coldest one getting warmed up by my daughter.

cold lamb getting warm

And to top it off Mom had no milk so in came her brothers.

triplets

It was snowing hard today again. But we do not want to be all doom and gloom it makes for some very pretty scenes. This is out my front door tonight.

outside tonight

If you where here yesterday there where no pictures because of a snow storm making for a bad internet connecting.  This morning it has stopped snowing for a while in favour of freezing rain but it does mean a better internet connection so I guess that’s the silver lining in the clouds. Wish me luck as I drive to my show this morning.

Future Felting

Future Felting

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Future felting comes from lambs. Here are some of this years lambs outside enjoying the spring sunshine. Most of our lambs were born in the winter so they are not tiny anymore but they are very cute non the less.

lamb 1 lamb 2 lamb with face markings 2 lamb with face markings

I love the face markings on the two above.

Here is the bottle lamb that was born Christmas day, Chrisy. she thought you would like to she her woolly head close up.

chrissy close up

Here is Chrisy with a last years lamb.

lamb and last years lamb

This week we had a non fiber animal born. We had a little Dexter calf.

calf and mom calf

Despite appearances she is a little girl.  I had a really hard tome getting any pictures. Her mom is very protective and seem to think having her picture taken is a dangerous thing.

Also hanging out with the sheep is Geoffrey the goose and some chickens with their very fancy rooster.

chickens geofery

Soon it will be shearing time I have plans along with a willing friend to make some coats. I hope to get some usable wool. Right now they get so many burs and so much hay in their wool it really isn’t usable. I would also like to get a few black fleeces that aren’t bleached out by the sun.

That’s a snapshot of what going on in the barn yard this week. I hope you enjoyed the pictures.

 

 

Two Tongues Made

Two Tongues Made

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This week I feel like the worlds slowest felter. I managed to get the two tongues for my boots made and that it. They look huge when you start but when your done they are the right sized. The final shrinking does take some work but these are boots so they need to be sturdy.

tongue before and after

One of the reasons I haven’t had time is the lambs. This little guy is called Mr Boots. He is one of a set of quadruplets. He was the first born and got cold while his 3 sisters were born. He was 4 pounds when he was born and looked like a lamb shaped chicken wing, all skin and bone and no substance. He ended up in the house in a dog cage in my living room. It’s a good thing I am not house proud. He is filling out and has a really good set of lungs.

boots

These are his 3 sisters under the heat lamp staying warm. They are doing well and no longer need the lamp.

Mr Boots sisters

We are heading in to some warmer weather this week so things should be a little easier all round. I hope that I have more to show you about boots in my next post.