Winter Woes

Winter is almost over, which means lambing is just around the corner. I was hoping this would be a post-shearing post, but unfortunately our shearer was badly injured last week and will be unable to take off the girls' coats prior to lambing. This has left us scrambling for an alternative, and a quick one, as lambs could be on the ground in 2 weeks from today! The nine (potentially) pregnant girls and the ten open ewes have been in the barn since Saturday, drying off and getting ready for shearing. When we finally got word of where the shearer was...well, let's just say I've been busy. I've been emailing and calling people all over the place to try to find someone who will clip our girls, and we're still keeping our fingers crossed that someone will come by the end of the weekend. We decided to kick the ten open girls out to open up more space in the barn for the bred girls, but things are still tighter than is ideal for ewes in their last trimester.

So, here are the non-bred ewes. This group includes the seven ewe lambs from last year, Clover, Mocha, and Lwaxana. These girls were hesitant to leave their mothers, but once they got out to the big field, the sight of the round bale was too much for them to resist. Haylage has been a great addition to our feeding program this winter, as it minimizes our chores and the girls get free-choice of feed. Our only challenge has been keeping the ewe lambs off of the top of the bale. I think they like to play Queen of the Mountain!

The bred girls seem to be enjoying their new indoor pen. Aside from the slight bulging here and there, it is really hard for me to see who is pregnant. Half of these girls are too leery of me for a tail lift and udder investigation, so until we get the sheared I really don't know who is expecting or when to expect.

Both Madeliene and Kira look rounded and pregnant to me. This makes sense, as I'm pretty sure I saw Cedar mount one or both of them. I'm particularly excited about their lambs, as Kira's girls are so friendly and have beautiful fleece and colorings.

Crystal does not look particularly pregnant to me. She is no where near last year's size, which is probably good since she had difficulty lambing triplets successfully.

Wynona and Poa, the old girls, look pregnant. I'd say they each have twins, or perhaps Wynona has triplets again. It's just so hard to see under all that wool!

Margaret looks like she did last year before shearing, so she probably has a few weeks to a month to go.

Then there are the newbies: Claire, Edna, and Annie. I have no idea if any of them got bred. Annie was only exposed to a ram for two days, so chances are she's not, but that ram did try awful hard! Claire has such LONG wool that I can't see anything. Maybe she has a single or twins that are a month or so out. Edna is also a big fat question mark.

If only they could get sheared I could see both their bellies and their udders! I would know! As I've said in the past, shearing day really is better than Christmas to me. Imagine if Christmas were postponed by a week, or even two! I don't know how long I can handle the suspense.

In other news, our chicken flock was rapidly decreased when a weasel, or rather three weasels, made their way into our coop this winter. Apparently we had a weasel nest out back of the barn. Our neighbor killed one, and our other neighbor's cat killed one. We lost 11 birds before Thanksgiving and exterminated two weasels. In January another weasel came back and took 14 more in one weekend! We're now down to 11 birds, including Spot, our rooster, and we're down to four eggs a day. So we've put in an order for more layers, and we should get 15 new birds in mid-May. I'm really excited about these new girls, as we are getting 11 different breeds!

As far as the weasel is concerned, he still seems to be around. Here's a picture of fresh tracks I found this morning in the driveway. At least we seem to have weasel-proofed the coop!

 And the goats are doing well...for now.