The peace-keeper

 Maude ( the CVM ) apparently got up on the wrong side of her hay bale this morning.  She was a grouchy girl and started picking on Olive as soon as they went out into the big field.  That head-butting stuff is disturbing to watch ( and hear ), but they rarely carry on with it for any length of time.  Usually,  the instigator gets bored with it and wanders off.  That big white sheep is Buddy and he's the peace-maker, lamb baby-sitter and company keeper in the flock.  Buddy is a wether ( remember this post ? ),  so he's allowed to be in with the girls now that breeding season is over.  I love that he was trying to peacefully discourage this little dust-up.  I watched for quite a while this morning,  just to be sure I wasn't imagining it.  He kept stepping between the two and protecting little Olive from Maude.  How sweet is that ?  He didn't give up until Maude quit harassing Olive.

Maude is a Romeldale/California Variegated Mutant.  Romeldales originated in the early 1900's,  from breeding Romney rams to Rambouillet ewes,  for the purpose of getting finer, heavier fleeces and market lambs of good size.  CVMs came about in the 1960's when a breeder in California noticed the unique markings of a ewe in his flock and continued to breed for that.  So,  while it is somewhat confusing,  all CVMs are Romeldales,  but only Romeldales with the distinctive badger face markings are classified CVMs.  CVMs are on the American Livestock Conservancy's endangered list and are listed as critical.  Because I no longer have a purebred CVM ram,  I will not have any CVM lambs next spring,  though those distinctive markings often show up in crossbred lambs.  You can see a little of that in Olive's markings.  In all the years I have been raising sheep,  I've never had any with the personality traits that my CVMs display.  I don't know what it is.  Maybe I just bring out the weirdness in them !  They are the only ones in the flock who climb,  eat tree bark and generally stay completely to themselves.  I'd be interested in knowing if anyone else has CVMs that do those things.

Don't you just love that face?

 Anyway ....... peace has been restored,  thanks to Buddy.  He's such a good boy and truly the buddy-sheep around here !

So happy together

I keep coming up with these blog titles that are phases from songs....don't know where they are coming from. Then, I walk around for days with the song going on and on and on in my mind. Anyway, the title of that Beatles song (and later by the Turtles) is what I thought of when I saw these guys a few mornings ago. It wasn't that long ago that Mr. Lucky and Ollie were pushing, shoving, head butting and generally trying to dominate. On shearing day, I decided to put Buddy in with them and that changed the whole dynamic. It's not that Buddy is a more aggressive boy. He's been wethered and is really just a big baby. He is bigger than they are, but I think it's just his mellow attitude that has influenced them. Now they are all best buds! Don't they look sweet?

It's hot, hot, hot here, but so is the whole right side of the country, so I'm not telling you anything new. The combination of the heat and not having internet for three days (yes, again!) has made me not want to be outside at all. Of course, I have to be outside to take care of the animals, and, unfortunately for them, they have to be outside all the time. I went to Lowe's today and bought another huge barn fan to put on the alpacas and llamas. I'm worried about getting everyone through this week.

If you are out and about tomorrow (in the predicted 97 degree heat), come on by Henry Clay's home, on Richmond Road. They are having Ashland's Country Life Festival and Olive and I will be there. I'll be demonstrating spinning wool (I know!) and Olive will be wearing wool and, well, .............just being Olive. The hours are from 10 am to 2 pm. Please be sure to bring a cool breeze along with you!

Looking on the bright side

I'm making a conscious effort today to look on the bright side. It's been making me slightly crazy that the contractors have not been back since they poured the footers for the studio building at the beginning of last week! Is it any wonder contractors have such bad reputations? I can work myself into a really negative frame of mind, if I dwell on it, so I'm not. I decided when I woke up this morning, I was going to do some things I've been wanting to do. The sun is out, it's supposed to be in the upper 60's and I'm going to enjoy this day. So there!

I spent several hours hanging out around the barn after I finished the morning feeding routine. I set up a table in the barn aisle, got out my dye equipment and got two batches of roving started. I've done laundry and hung it outside in the sunshine (is there anything better than sun dried, sweet smelling laundry?) and have just now put my first ever CVM fleece in to soak. I've already decided we are having stir-fry for dinner and don't have to think about that anymore til it's time to prepare it. So, I think that's a pretty good start to my day!

one of the banty hens working on her tan

One of the fun things about just being around the barn is observing all the action and reaction taking place. When I feed the chickens in the morning, they usually stay inside until they have polished off their layer crumbles and cracked corn, but the last few days, as soon as I open their little door to the outside, they are lined up and jostling each other to get outside immediately. They head to the inside of the barn and start flinging bedding around in the sheep pens. When they've got it all rearranged to their own satisfaction, they work their way down to the garden (where nothing is planted yet) and spend most of the afternoon scratching around. I can tell they are really happy because they keep up a constant clucking and chattering. I love hearing that!

The ewe on the right is the first one due to lamb and the one of the left won't be far behind. I'm so anxious to see the lamb crop that Ollie has produced. Color and crimp are what I'm hoping for.

By the way, if you're wondering what happened to Penny, here's the report. Penny ran off at the first opportunity and after weeks of searching and calling animal control, she turned up several miles away. I called her previous owners and met them there and it took them an hour to get their hands on her. We decided that Penny was not going to work for us, so she's back in her original home and much happier, I suspect. So, we are still looking for another guardian to join Holly and thinking we want to start with a puppy who will adapt better to a new home.

I hope you all have sunshine and happy days for your weekend!

No way to begin

The new year has not begun well here at sheep dreams. This morning one of the Romeldale ram lambs (the one on the left--the moorit) I purchased back in the summer died. We don't know the cause yet, but will be waiting anxiously for the necropsy report to come back. He seemed fine on Saturday evening when I moved the boys into their night-time lot, but Sunday morning was standing listlessly by the fence. We brought him inside the barn, and since he had no obvious symptoms, treated him with several all purpose medicines and hoped for the best. Since I first brought him home, my husband (the veterinarian) has consistently observed that he thought there was something just not right about this ram. We did have some real problems with him in the beginning. He had several episodes of scouring and seemed not as energetic as the other ram lambs. Lately though, he had been full of energy---even to the point of chasing the alpaca boys and romping with the other rams. So, hopefully we'll get some answers when the final report comes from the diagnostic laboratory.

And this...........this is what it looks like when a mouse decides to die inside the wall of our house. Part of our house is quite old, nearly 100 years old actually. The parts of the house that we added when we moved here have secure foundations and no easy way for mice to get into the walls, but the old part is apparently not quite so mouse proof. It took my husband that many attempts to find the little stinker (and I mean that quite literally!). Yuck, yuck and more yuck. So now, to start the new year off, the entrance hall will get a fresh coat of paint.

I hesitated to write this post because it is nothing but bad news, but in the interest of presenting an honest portrait of our life on the farm, I decided to tell it like it is. Lots of good things happen here every day, week in and week out. Sometimes sad things happen. To live our lives here, connected with nature and interacting with our animals, we need to have the good outweigh the bad...............and mostly it does.

It's official

Yesterday morning I loaded a bale of hay into my little cart, took it out into the field where the ewe lambs have been grazing and gave them their first taste of hay since last spring. Last year, because of the drought, I started feeding hay in September, which is much earlier than usual. Luckily for us, this past summer and fall have been unusually wet and the grass has continued to grow and stay green. In fact, the pasture where the alpaca boys and ram lambs are hanging out still has abundant grazing, but the little girls have been on "slim pickin's" land. As you can see by Teeny's expression, they were sooo happy to munch right into it.

Starting to feed hay basically doubles my barn chore time and is a sign that winter is officially here. There are plenty of mornings when it is cold or wet (or worse...cold and wet) and I don't want to leave the warmth of the house to go to the barn for morning chores. Nearly always a funny thing happens once I actually get there. I end up staying out much longer than I need to or even intend. I interact with the animals a lot more during the winter because I see them up close at least twice a day and that's a good thing for all of us. We all slow down and socialize a bit. You can see that Pippi is still her sweet, sociable self and is still coming to give sniffs and nuzzles when she sees me.

Tomorrow will officially mark the end of the breeding season here at Tanglewood Farm. Ollie has bred all but one of the ewes who have been pastured with him and none of them have recycled. One of the CVM ewe lambs has apparently not cycled in the three weeks since I put them into the breeding group and I've decided to give her a pass until next year. If she got bred at this point, she would be much later than the rest of the flock and would be lambing in early May, which I really don't want. Of course, taking Ollie away from the ewes means he will go back in with the other two rams and that can sometimes be traumatic. I'll write a post next week about how we handle putting the rams back together after breeding season.

I hope you all have just the kind of weekend you want and I'm hoping mine will be the right combination of productive and relaxing.

On the job

The boy has been put to work and, so far, he seems to know what he's doing. Ollie, the new CVM ram lamb who came home with me back in August is now doing what he was meant to do. I worked through the ewes on Wednesday, giving worm medication, trimming feet (and trimming a little off the backside there). When I finished with the ladies, I did the same for Ollie (except for the backside trimming), strapped the marking harness on him and turned him in with the group.

Miss Bossy tried to push him around some, but he mainly ignored her and checked everyone out. Yesterday morning, when I went to the barn, I noticed he had marked one of the ewes during the night. (And, see what a gentleman he is, still keeping her company. Look closely and you'll see a little of the yellow crayon mark on her rump.) So assuming all goes as planned, we should have our first lambs appearing around March 23rd!

I have really been enjoying the temperament of the CVM's. They went through a bit of a shy stage for a while, but have all turned into calm, friendly boys and girls. I can hardly wait to see what kind of fleeces will come from the combination of BFL/Romney ewes crossed with a CVM ram. It just has to be good!

It's the anticipation and optimism that keeps us shepherds going year after year (even though many of us vow at the end of lambing that we are never, ever, ever going through it again!).

Getting along

The new CVM girls have joined the "home girls" (the ones who were born here this past spring). I like to keep new arrivals in a sort of quarantine for a few weeks, just to make sure they have adjusted to the routine and are suffering no ill effects from being transported. Usually, when new sheep join the flock, there can be some pushing and shoving, a little jockeying around to show them who's the boss. There was none of that this time. The group took them right in and they all are acting as though they've been together always. It's so nice when everyone just gets along! The boys are still being kept separate, mainly because the little moorit ram has had some health issues. (He seems to be doing fine now.) I'm not planning on dividing everyone up and putting the rams to work until the end of October. It finally occurred to me that because I'm not showing my lambs in competition anymore, I don't have to put myself (or the ewes) through lambing in really cold weather. By the last of March or early April, when the ewes will be due to lamb, we'll have green grass and much more pleasant temperatures.

The CVM boys usually have company in the back barnyard, where they've been hanging out. The chickens can hardly contain themselves in the mornings. When I open their little door to the outside they bail out like parachuters jumping out of a plane! They love digging around in the barn and hunting through the grass for bugs. Frankly, they stay a lot happier and don't squabble amongst themselves as much when they can get out and expend some energy running around (sort of like little children!).

Do you have catalpa trees where you live? As children we called them cigar trees, just because of the way the seed pods look. (We thought we were particularly clever when we pretended to be smoking them!) Catalpa is an Indian word and the tree is sometimes called an Indian Bean tree. Why Jilly was doing this (whatever "this" is), I surely don't know. I've never seen any of the sheep pay attention to the catalpa tree before. They are messy, but interesting trees. They grow rather free form and in the early summer the blooms smell wonderful and the bees go crazy for them.

We are having the most glorious weather this week. It makes me worry a little that there will be some sort of retribution later!

What the heck is a CVM?

Good question! CVM stands for California Variegated Mutant and it's a sheep. No, really! CVM's are Romeldale sheep with certain markings and fleece characteristics. All CVM's are Romeldales, but not all Romeldales are CVM's. You can read all about it here.

I have been on a mission to improve the fineness and softness of my fleeces for some time. I had Romney sheep for many, many years and loved their personalities and fleeces. I have noticed that more and more spinners are looking for really soft fleeces and so, a few years ago, I added Bluefaced Leicesters to my flock. After getting fleeces that weighed 10-12 pounds or more from my Romneys, it was a shock to see how small the BFL fleeces were. For the last several years, I have been cross-breeding the two to produce the fleece type I wanted. I now have a group of ewes I'm really happy with in terms of personalities and fleece characteristics. After doing much research, I decided that using a CVM/Romeldale ram on those ewes should produce more color and compliment the fleece type I already had. The CVM/Romeldale breed is classified as a critically rare breed and, to do my part in promoting the breed, I also bought two ewe lambs in order to have purebred CVM/Romeldale lambs born here. I am so excited about this adventure, I can hardly wait for lambing to start! (I'm sure someone will remind me I said this, when I start complaining about how tired I am, come spring!)

I began corresponding with Chris Spitzer of Yellow Creek Cottage Farm months ago and finally settled on a small starter flock to bring to Kentucky. We now have two ewe lambs and one CVM/Romeldale ram lamb and one moorit Romeldale ram lamb. Chris did a terrific job of putting together a combination of genetics that should give me what I am hoping to produce.

The lambs made the trip just fine, even though it was about 90 degrees for most of the 5 hour drive. I am so impressed with the calm, sweet personality of these boys and girls. Mike was not home yet, so I had no help getting them out of the back of the truck. I backed the truck up to their pen, stacked a few hay bales by the tailgate and opened the back of the pen in the truck. They hopped down and went into the pen, as if they had been trained! Their first night here, when I went to check on them at bedtime, I sat down in the middle of their pen and they all came right up to me and ate a little snack right out of my hands. I love these little guys already!

I haven't come up with any names for these babies yet. Anyone have any suggestions?