OK, it's time to be totally honest....  Writing this blog has changed my life - well, I guess to be really totally honest, it's not so much my life that has changed, but how I perceive my life.  You see, before I started writing this blog last October, I was pretty much like any one of you who is reading this....  I got up each morning, did what I do all day, and then went to sleep at night, never really looking at or thinking about what it was I did between getting up and going to sleep.  I just went about my life, doing my thing....

Now, I write a blog three days each week.  I need to have three different topics each week, and I don't want them to be so terribly boring that I am writing only for myself.  That fact, in itself, means that I now go through life really looking at what it is that I do.  Even the most routine or mundane occurrences take on a whole different look when you view your life through the eyes of people who don't live it with you!

Take, for example, yesterday evening....  Most people, by seven-thirty in the evening, are at least thinking about dinner, if they haven't already finished the dinner dishes.  We, on the other hand, were just getting started!  As I have mentioned before, we move our sheep to new pasture every few days - the lambs enter a pasture first, then a few days later, they are moved out and the ewes come into the same pasture to clean it up.  A few days after that, the ewes are moved out to follow the lambs, and the rams come in for the last few days to finish it off before I mow it down.  We do this with all of our eight pastures all summer long.  Summer, to me, looks like an endless string of sheep moving and pasture mowing.

When spring leaves us and summer arrives, Iowa gets hot and humid.  Moving sheep in the heat of the day - especially when it is hot and humid - is not a good idea.  Some of our sheep are already carrying nearly ten pounds of wool on their backs right now, and getting them running during a hot and humid Iowa summer day is not a particularly healthy idea.  That is why, at seven-thirty last night, we were just heading out to begin moving our sheep to new pasture, while looking forward to getting our own dinner sometime after that!

The interesting thing about moving sheep right now is that we have two relatively new llamas, too, and they must be moved with their own group of sheep.  Martin, who arrived in April, is still trying to understand why his pasture is only "his" for a few days before he must go somewhere else.  Summer, who arrived only a couple of weeks ago, still doesn't understand that she has to move at all!  She is totally against the idea and runs all over her pasture to let us know that she doesn't want to leave.  Chachi is the only llama who has been here for other summers and who knows that every move means tender, new pasture - fresh, new food!  Chachi is so happy to move that he runs ahead of us to each closed gate, scooping up fresh grass on his way and waiting for us at the gate as we come along behind at only human - not llama - speed.

So, days before this move, we prepared....  We knew what we would face, trying to convince all of the sheep and llamas to move.  Coda, my border collie, could convince the sheep to move fairly easily, but the two newer llamas would take some convincing.  We called for reinforcements: my friend, Deb, and her three girls came out to help us rotate the pastures, arriving right on time at a little after seven.  By the time we had explained the whole plan, it was seven-thirty, the sun was getting low in the sky and the warmth of the day was abating - we were ready to begin!

We never move a group into a pasture that adjoins the pasture they just left - the reason being that we don't want the trailing group to be so close that they could duck under the fence and mix groups.  That means that when we move a group, they go quite a ways across the acreage!  We also have to be careful because, like yesterday, the rams and the lambs had to move counter-clockwise around the property while the ewes were going clockwise.  We have to make sure that we don't end up settling one group in a pasture, only to find out that another group needs to move through that pasture to get to their new spot.  I know this all sounds very complicated to you, but I assure you it is much more complicated than it seems!  It is with military precision that I cook up the battle plans for the evening so that it all falls into place smoothly once we get going.  Oh, I should also mention that when it comes to battle plans, I am the general and, although there may be many general wannabes in attendance when we move, there can be only one general.... me!  This, however, is a fact that seems to be easily forgotten!

So, the total move last night took seventy-five minutes from start to finish, not including the necessary mowing of the pasture that the rams finally vacated.  It did include removing ten lambs from the ewe group (they had found their way to the ewes by traveling under fences over the previous days - most were ram lambs suddenly realizing that they are male in a world that now contains adult females!), changing Hailey's coat, which she was now wearing as a skirt around her waist, and chasing both Martin and Summer until they finally realized that there were too many of us chasing, and not enough of them to outrun us!

Moving sheep used to be a routine part of my day that I never really thought about.  Now that I write a blog, it suddenly came into my conscious mind and became a topic that I know is not the norm for most people who work nine to five in town.  So here I sit at five-thirty, ready to go out and mow that pasture that the rams left last night, but finishing my blog that was delayed by tasks earlier today.  It's really funny to think how oblivious I was to the many unique goings-on in our lives at Peeper Hollow Farm before I began writing my blog.  It's a difference in perspective that I now treasure - thank you!

This is the quiet time of year for our farm....  The sheep are pretty self-sufficient, grazing in our pastures and regaining the weight they lost while nursing their lambs.  Rather than a daily list of tasks to get through, this time of year is one of weekly tasks: moving the sheep to new pastures, filling water tanks when they are grazing away from the automatic waterers, and making sure the salt feeders stay full.  Every couple of days, I go out to each group of sheep and take a close look for possible injury, illness, or unusual behavior that could signal problems.  Other than that, things are pretty slow this time of year.

Because a lot of my time isn't being taken up by the more lengthy fall/winter/spring chores, I have time now to focus on planning for our two flocks.  Although we run all of our ewes in one group, in my planning, I need to consider them as two flocks: the Romneys and the CVM/Romeldales. 

This is the time of year that I do a lot of paperwork and planning for the breeding season that is just around the corner in fall.  I finalize my plans for which ewes will be culled and sent to auction, and which of our ewe lambs will replace each departing one, leaving me with a flock of twenty breeding ewes of each breed, or forty ewes total.  I also try to keep as few rams as possible for each breed, but still retain enough so that I have sufficient genetic diversity in bloodlines and color pattern inheritance.

Once the final selections are made as to which rams and ewes will stay the winter - the stage that I have finally reached in the last few days - it's time to begin putting together our breeding groups for the fall on paper.  There would be no point in putting the sheep together yet. The ewes are only somewhat fertile, if at all, through the early summer months.  Because their fertility peaks in October, we will wait until then to put our planned breeding groups into action.

For the time being, the breeding groups begin to take form on paper, establishing the two or three rams of each breed who will have a group to breed this fall, and then placing each ewe with the correct ram to bring out the best traits in her lambs and improve the worst ones.  Putting the groups together involves calculating relationship coefficients so that the ewe and her ram are not too closely related, but realizing that sometimes the best lambs come from a matched pair that have a single strong individual who appears in both pedigrees.

I guess when you get down to it, putting together breeding groups is part science and part art, and your results are better if you acknowledge both parts.  For the first time at Peeper Hollow Farm, we will be running three rams for each breed this fall.  Within the next few days, I will finalize which of our rams will have his own group - based on a quick look at what I need in my flock for fleeces in the coming years, which patterns are in high demand as breeding animals, and which conformation traits best complement my newly determined ewe flock.  After that, I will begin the process of assigning each ram his ewes - something that I will continue to work on, on and off, for the entire summer.  I will find myself shuffling and re-shuffling the ewes to get the very best combination - until the time comes when there is no more time left for re-thinking the plan.

Eventually, the day comes when the plan, until then residing only on the computer, needs to be printed out and the sheep divided into their breeding groups.  Before I know it, that day will come, but right now it's only June; and since we don't separate the sheep until September, I have time....  Lots of time (or so it seems now!) to put together the ideal combinations for this fall....

I mentioned last week that we took a delivery of sheep from the West Coast on Thursday afternoon.  Five of the group will be continuing on their journey to their new home in Wisconsin tomorrow, but two were headed here, to our farm, to replace a couple of the ewes in our breeding flock this fall.  Since this is 2010, we are on the tenth letter of the alphabet in naming this year's lambs, so both of their names begin with the letter 'J': welcome to Juliet and Jada!

Juliet is a sweet, recessively colored lamb from Tawanda Farms in California.  We bought three rams from them last year and have been especially pleased with both their conformation and their fleece.  Juliet is a doll - well built and carrying a wonderfully soft, dark fleece - sure to be in high demand at shearing!  She is thought to carry two different pattern genes to add to our flock - both the English Blue pattern (note the white teardrops and white rimming to her ears that are typical of this pattern) and the recessive solid color gene that is so useful for producing dark fleeces.

Jada (Formerly known as Edna at her previous home) comes from North Valley Farm  in Oregon.  This is our first purchase from NVF, but we are thrilled with both Jada's conformation and fleece.  Her coloring is much lighter than Juliet's - her genetics, although colored, are on the brighter end of the spectrum.  Her fleece is already very high luster, and I am sure it will also be in high demand at her first shearing in January!

We usually quarantine our lambs for a couple of weeks or until we clear them of internal parasites - whichever is later.  Both of these ewe lambs were cleared of parasites on Wednesday of this week, and with the heat today, we decided to let them out into fresh pasture with the rest of the lamb flock where they could get a bit of shade.

It is always interesting to me to watch new lambs join our flock.  Lambs always integrate so much more easily than adults - within just a few minutes they had each already found new "buddies" to graze with, and who will eventually show them where the water and salt are kept.  Both Juliet and Jada are well on their way to becoming integral members of our flock!

It's been stormy for well over a week now, in our area.  Oh, we've had a few hours here or there without rain, but basically, we've been getting rain and storms every day.  For most people, that can be an inconvenience - they get wet running from the car to the store, or maybe they have a power outage occasionally.  For us, it is a real problem for more than one reason....

First of all, I work outside with the animals.  In order to continually improve our pastures, I rotate the sheep every few days, giving the lambs a fresh, new pasture, putting the ewes into the pasture that the lambs just left, and putting the rams into the pasture that the ewes just left.  Once they are all moved and all have water and salt available, I mow the pasture that the rams just vacated left so that all plants are down to the level of the most edible plants - the ones the sheep ate down.  This way, the weeds and other plants that the sheep don't eat won't have a head start on the good stuff and won't have the opportunity to crowd the good stuff out.  Over time, our pastures fill with more and more of the "good stuff" and the plants that the sheep don't eat end up dying off.

When it's raining and storming each day, I just don't feel like going out to move sheep, and I really can't mow.  I have been keeping up with it all lately, but it is very hard to predict, and so it's hard to plan my days.  I pretty much end up hanging around the farm, just in case I get the chance to move the sheep and mow the needed section....

Storms also bring an additional problem that most people don't usually consider.  We keep three border collies to help us herd and move the sheep.  If we didn't have the dogs to help, we wouldn't be able to keep the flock we have - the dogs are a big enough help that they make the difference between our being able to continue as a functional farm and not.  The problem is that they are all, to varying degrees, afraid of storms!

Most, if not all, border collies are storm-phobic - at least in my experience.  With Lisa, our oldest, we didn't realize what was happening until it was well entrenched.  We tried all kinds of tactics and medicines in an attempt to keep her semi-sane during a storm.  We eventually settled on Xanax for her when we know a storm is coming.  Before the Xanax, she would hide behind the toilet, shivering, salivating all over the floor, and then when the thunder came, so would the urine.  By the time the storm passed, Lisa would be lying in the powder room in a huge puddle - it was not nice, and neither was clean-up.

Now, if we get the Xanax into her before the thunder starts, well, she still doesn't like the storm, but she will lie in a dark corner of that powder room and wait it out - no salivating, no shivering, and no urine.  She is not so calm that she will go outside or work sheep, but at least we can avoid the mess and she is reasonably comfortable.

 

With Coda, we caught it much earlier and started him on Xanax at the first signs of trouble.  As long as he is near me, he is fine in a storm.  In fact, he will even work in a storm, if need be, to move the sheep to shelter - as long as he works with me.  For whatever reason, he needs to see me to know he will be OK - he becomes my shadow, and as long as I allow that, he is fine.

Chance, our youngest dog, has his own way of dealing with thunder, and his tactic is probably the worst of the three.  Chance also gets Xanax before the thunder begins, and he gets a double dose even though he is the smallest of the three.  Even with that dose, however, as soon as the thunder starts to roll, he frantically looks for "high ground."  Now, you and I know that is counterintuitive: high ground just takes you closer to the lightening!  Chance isn't being logical, though - he is being panicked; his instinctual reaction is to head for high ground - the higher the better. 

If we are sitting in our parlor, watching TV when the storm hits, he will immediately jump onto the sofa with us and begin to climb.  His goal is the ceiling fan, and his way of getting there defies rationality and gravity....  He jumps onto the sofa, then tries to climb onto one of our heads - whoever is closer to the lamp on the end table - because his next landing place is the top of that lamp!  If he gets near the lamp, his eyes turn to the door frame behind it as he begins to try to scramble up the wall to the top of the door - which is only a ten foot jump to the ceiling fan!

If Chance can't get to the fan that way (as you can imagine, we don't often cooperate with his initial plan!), the next attempt is to climb the floor-to-ceiling built-in bookcase in the same room.  While he is climbing, he is crazed - totally unable to listen to commands or see the obvious.  With the Xanax, he is a bit more relaxed and can be distracted from his goal.  He still wants to climb to a high point, but is willing to accept someone's lap as "high enough" if he gets enough attention - although he will still try to climb with each clap of thunder.

We had storms during the night last night, and all three dogs were medicated...  Lisa hid under the bed and was fine.  Coda jumped up on the bed and as long as he was touching me (he curled up behind me on the bed), he was fine, too.  Chance, on the other hand, was convinced that the only way to be safe was to jump on the bed, climb onto the headboard (we have a brass bed with a tall headboard), and then try for the ceiling fan!  Of course the best boost up to the headboard of the bed was my head, and I was not very cooperative with his plan!  We spent much of the night wrestling over whose plan would win out....

So, to be honest, I've really had enough of spring storms!  The calendar now says summer, and it seems to me that it is time to move away from the seasonal spring storms.  Unfortunately, the local meteorologist doesn't agree with me because we are supposed to continue getting storms rolling through today.  There is hope for tomorrow, though!  The current forecast has both Thursday and Friday clear of rain and storms!  You know where I'll be - out moving sheep and mowing - my usual summer pastime.

This past weekend on our farm could in no way be considered quiet or routine....  First off, our area was hit by fierce storms on Friday evening that brought sixty-mile-an-hour straight-line winds, hail, lots of rain and lightening.  Thank goodness all of the animals had some sort of shelter, and we were tucked away in our house, but it was definitely scary at times!  Rick ran outside just before it hit to take a picture of some of the cloud formations as we waited for the rain to begin (I've included one of them to the left) while I, on the other hand, went out for photos only after it was over - my photo of the brightening western sky is below Rick's.

We were lucky in that even though the storm was noisy and fierce, we suffered little damage - it could have been much worse.  The creep building must be rebuilt - it could not take the terrible winds - and we lost one young but good-sized ash tree near the barn.  The worst part about the tree is that it is strategically positioned to be used as a hand rail for the stairs that lead up to the barn.  Losing that tree will mean that we either need to build a handrail, or we need to replant the tree.  We decided to cut it off just below the break and wait until fall to see if the tree will send up sprouts near the top of the old trunk, essentially growing into a new tree.  If not, we will have to dig it out and replant - a job I'm not looking forward to doing!

After cleaning up a bit of the storm debris on Saturday morning, we left to pick up our new llama, Summer!  Because of Vinnie's recent death, we were once again looking for a guardian llama, and it sounded like Brenda and Dan Harting of Wolf Creek Farm had just the llama for us.  After a brief visit to their farm in LaPorte, IA, we were on our way home with Summer, a five-year-old female llama.  As soon as Summer arrived, she was eager to meet the sheep and get out in the pasture to work.  We sure hope that Summer will have a long, happy life on our farm!  And, what better weekend to pick up a llama named Summer than the weekend before the official start of summer!  Happy Summer, everyone!

Yesterday was a big day for us - there was a lot of excitement in the air!  First of all, one of the local TV stations came out to film on our farm, and then shortly after that, we took delivery of two recessively colored Romney ewe lambs that came from Oregon and California.  The fact that both of these big events took place within hours of each other made for one big ball of excitement for us yesterday!

Our local TV news on  KCRG does a summer feature called "Farmer Josh" where their meteorologist, Josh Baynes, takes on various farm jobs in the region to highlight some of the different types of farms in the viewing area (see some of the past clips at http://www.kcrg.com/features/farmerjosh).  We thought it might be fun to have Farmer Josh come out to help with something 'sheep-related' since there are so few sheep farms in this area, and even fewer that consider wool/fiber a product.  Shortly after contacting the station, we were communicating with Josh himself and arranged for his visit to help change coats on our lambs.

We have been stuck in hot, muggy, stormy weather for a while now; yet thankfully, we were relatively lucky with the weather in that it didn't rain for the filming yesterday morning.  Let me be clear, though - it was hot, and it was quite humid, so after a few coats, both Farmer Josh and I were pretty hot and sweaty.  Coda did his job in rounding up Zoe and the lambs - the group we needed - so at least we didn't overheat trying to get them up to the barn!  In the end, we changed a total of fifteen coats - the rest seemed to fit well enough to let them go until next time.  Josh got a chance to learn how to catch the lambs in the pen, how to hold a sheep so that it doesn't take off running, how to both remove and put on the coats, and some of the differences in fiber, etc.  It was a fun experience, and it will be interesting to see how our two hours of talking and working will be pared down to a few minutes of air time....

Shortly after Farmer Josh left our farm, we got a call from JoAnn Mast of Southern Oregon Romneys - she had left Oregon on Monday with a trailer full of sheep headed east.  We had arranged for a couple of those spots on her trailer to bring out two recessively colored Romney ewe lambs that we had purchased; one from Christiane Payton of North Valley Farm, OR, and the other from Maggie Howard and Carol Pasheilich of Tawanda Farms, CA. 

It turned out that, shortly after we had made our transport arrangements, we were contacted by another Romney breeder, Maureen, in Wisconsin who also wanted to bring several animals on the same transport, but would not be home to take delivery - she asked whether we would mind taking them to our place until she could pick them up.  Normally, we would not bring animals onto our farm from unknown farms because of the biosecurity issues, but since these sheep were all coming from Tawanda Farms, we knew they wouldn't bring anything in that we weren't already getting with our lamb from the same farm.  We agreed that keeping them here for a few days would not be a problem.

In the end, JoAnn and her travel companion parked on the road in front of our farm (photo on left) to tranfer the sheep.  We first tranferred the ram going to Maureen's into the small section of our trailer.  After that, our two ewe lambs took a ride in the bed of the pick-up, and Maureen's four ewes and ewe lambs took the bigger section of our trailer.  Once the transfer was done, JoAnn and her crew left for Springfield, IL, while we took our delivery around the corner to home.

All of the new sheep are now in quarantine in our barn.  Maureen will be here before long to pick up her sheep, and we will focus on getting our two ewe lambs ready to release into the flock.  We always quarantine for at least three weeks to prevent any newcomers from unknowingly releasing a disease into our flock.  During that time, we work with our vet to eliminate the internal parasites that all sheep carry in their digestive systems.  Over the years, many farms have developed parasites that are resistant to the available dewormers, and we want to make sure that we don't bring those parasites into our fields!  Working with parasites that are susceptible to the available dewormers is complicated enough without adding resistance to the mix!  So, we have at least three weeks - or as long as it takes - to rid these two ewe lambs (seen in photo on right) of their internal parasites, and then they can join our flock....

By the time the storms began at the end of the day yesterday, we were ready for them: all of the new sheep were settled in the barn, our own flocks were in pastures with shelter from the storms, and the dogs were in with us for the night.  Looking back on it, yesterday contained a lot more exitement in one day than we normally have in a week, but it was fun while it lasted.  What a big day!

I mentioned in one of last week's postings that Zoe, one of our older Romney ewes, would eventually become our "forty-first ewe," having earned that slot as a pampered retiree on our farm.  Don't get me wrong; at this point, at the wise old age of eleven-and-a-half, Zoe is still a productive member of our ewe flock!  We just know that eventually, age will catch even Zoe, and at that time, she will be allowed to stay on the farm and finish her days in peace on pasture and grass.

We bought Zoe in 2006 when a friend of ours dispersed her small flock of Romney and Romney-cross sheep.  At that time, we purchased three of the friend's ewes: Zoe, who was already fairly old at seven; her daughter Belle, who was in prime breeding age at the age of four; and crossbred Brit, who was a good friend of Belle's and the same age.  Within a couple of years, Brit was sold, but Zoe and Belle have been here since their purchase.

Seven years old is considered pretty old for a ewe. Many flocks will sell off their ewes at that age because the ewes may stop producing lambs, or the lambs may be small and not grow well.  We thought we'd give Zoe a chance - she had (and still has!) lovely fiber, so we hoped she would give us a daughter to carry her legacy in our flock - even just one daughter would be enough, I thought!  So, that fall of 2006, we bred Zoe to a big recessively colored ram named Duncan and hoped for a ewe lamb in the spring....

As Zoe's due date drew near, I began to watch her closely so that if, because of her age, she had problems, I would be there to help deliver her lamb(s).  One day in February, 2007, it became obvious that her time was near.  I locked her into the barn to make sure the lambs were not born outside, and checked on her just before I went to bed at about 10:00, planning to come back every couple of hours until she delivered.  Since there was absolutely no sign of labor by my bedtime, I rushed down to the house to get a bit of sleep before my next check at midnight.

My next check in the barn was horrific!  I peeked into the stall to find Zoe lying in the straw, stretched out on her side with one lamb lying behind her, fully encased in its sac, and the other lamb half-way out - all three looked dead!  I rushed to Zoe's side, feeling her ribcage for breathing, but there was no movement.  I put my hand in front of her nostrils, but I felt no warmth - no breath.  She was gone in so short a time!  I couldn't believe it!

Then, my attention shifted to the lambs....  The one that was fully out and encased was obviously cold and dead - it had suffocated in its sac since Zoe had lacked the strength to get up and tear open the membrane for the lamb.  It was a perfectly formed ewe lamb - what a shame.  Dead lambs always leave me feeling sad and hopeless even though I know that I did what I could.  The other lamb was still warm, though, from Zoe's body, and its face was not covered.  There was a chance that this lamb still had some life in it, so I began to work.  I finished pulling the lamb from Zoe's womb and began to rub and dry its lifeless body....

Ever so slowly, I began to feel a bit of resistance in its limbs and then, suddenly, she took a big, ragged breath!  I knew that, at this point, I had a good chance of keeping this little ewe lamb alive. Zoe had traded her life for this daughter that I had so wanted; and sitting in that barn with Zoe and her dead firstborn daughter at my side was incredibly bittersweet.

Slowly, the little lamb - now named Grace - began to cry for her mother.  She was weak from her ordeal, so her cries were barely above a whisper at first, but as time went on, they grew in strength - this was a little fighter!  It was terribly sad, though, because there was no mother to answer her calls.  My plan was to try to milk Zoe and also several other ewes who had just delivered to get the colostrum, or first milk, that this lamb would need to survive.  As I was making a mental list of what I would need to milk the ewes, I realized that one of the ewes in the next stall was answering Grace's cries!  It was very soft - hardly an answer at all - but it was there.  Ewes don't normally answer another lamb's cries, so I was not surprised that the sound was so soft.  It seemed that this ewe just couldn't ignore a lamb calling for her mother - she had to reply.  I went to the door of the next stall to see who was answering....

But when I looked into the next stall, all of the ewes were sleeping peacefully - none of them were answering the desperate lamb, who was now trying to stand.  Yet, every time Grace called, there was a definite reply - it was very soft and weak, but it was there. Where was that reply coming from?!  Then, suddenly, I realized that it was coming from Zoe!  She had heard her lamb's cries and those cries had brought her back from wherever she was!  I put Grace in front of Zoe's nose so that she could smell her lamb.  Within seconds, Zoe took a big, shuddering breath and began to slightly open and close her mouth, trying to coordinate licking movements in order to clean her lamb! 

Zoe's recovery from the brink of death was slow - it took her about ten minutes to even be able to lift her head.   I dosed her with a high-energy supplement, which helped once it took effect.  I must admit that it was nothing that I did that really brought Zoe back - it was her lamb.  I am convinced that it was the sound of newborn Grace crying for her mother that brought Zoe back.  By the time I returned to the house after 3:00 a.m., Zoe had been up on her feet, feeding Grace her first meal of colostrum, and then both had bedded down for some sleep in their freshly cleaned pen.  Zoe had given me that daughter I had wanted so badly for my flock, and had survived the process.

Both Zoe and Grace are still producing parts of our flock, and we have several of their daughters and granddaughters as well.  Zoe not only mothers her own lambs, but also cares for all of the lambs of our flock as their adult leader after weaning.  Sheep don't normally care much about lambs that are not their own.  In fact, it's not uncommon for them to butt away other lambs.  Zoe, on the other hand, will step in to defend a stray lamb from our working dogs, or will reply to a lamb calling for its mother after weaning.  She has worked her way not only into our flock, but into our hearts, and it is for this reason that one day, Zoe will be our forty-first ewe.

Well, the Iowa Sheep and Wool Festival is once again finished for the year, and we're already planning for next year's festival!  Even though it was not originally our plan, Rick and I were able to attend both days - Saturday and Sunday.  The festival was held in Adel, IA, so it was more than a two-and-a-half hour drive for us - we left Saturday at 6:00 a.m. in order to make it there in time for the fleece competition.

Because all of our ewe fleeces sold out so quickly after shearing last February, the only fleeces we had to show were our ram fleeces that we sheared the weekend before the festival.  I haven't yet finished skirting them, but I made sure to finish at least a couple last week so that I had something to take!  I knew that our chances of placing well would go down a bit with ram fleeces (because of the testosterone, they tend to be coarser than ewe fleeces), but that was all we had!

We also loaded three rams into the bed of the pickup the night before the show.  The plan was to take them along with us in the morning and see if we could sell them there.  Ink, Jumanji, and Jubal all came along and spent the day in the truck munching hay.  We brought along a sign to post on their pen in the truck, giving basic information and pricing for each.  We could only hope that they would find good breeding homes - they are all impressive rams!

We arrived at the festival just in time to find a good parking place for the truck where the rams would be seen, and then register our two fleeces - both in the Colored Handspinning Division: one a Romeldale fleece in the Finewool Class, and the other a Romney fleece in the Coarse/Longwool Class.  I ended up helping out during the judging by writing the judge's comments on the entry cards as feedback for the participants (that's me, head-down, on the right of the photo) - I've done this many times and it is an ideal way to learn about fleeces and fleece management.  In the end, our Romeldale fleece came in first place in its class and second overall, but it was the Romney fleece that was really interesting!  Although it measured 35.8 microns in average fiber diameter and had six inches of staple length (both of which should have put it well into the Coarse/Longwool Class where it was entered), it got recategorized into the Medium Class by the judge because it was "too soft" for the Coarse/Longwool Class!  Even though it was now competing with Corriedales, etc., it still ended up coming in at third place!  I don't usually get too excited about third place, but under the circumstances, I was pleased!

After the fleece competition, Rick and I had some lunch, then went to a producer session about parasites.  After reconnecting with some friends and showing off our rams in the truck a couple of times, we decided it was time to take the long drive home - we planned on staying home on Sunday to catch up on some things around the house....

It didn't happen, though.  As soon as we arrived home, we got a call from one of our customers telling us that she had decided to purchase Jumanji for her flock if we could deliver him to the festival on Sunday.  Well, I have to admit that I was originally disappointed in the fact that I would be missing the Sunday talk about ewe nutrition.  After talking it over with Rick, our plans changed to include another trip to the festival around mid-day on Sunday - just in time to get there for the talk I wanted to hear and then drop off Jumanji before heading back home!

It was a weekend with a lot of driving, but in the end, we came back with a lot of good information, two ribbons from the fleece competition, and the joy of having sold a really impressive ram lamb into a breeding situation - it doesn't get much better than that!

Last week, I discussed the difficult decisions we have to make in culling our flock, and also how we select replacement lambs to fill the openings.  When we bought our first three sheep, I had no idea how many sheep our acreage could support, nor how many sheep we could manage time-wise.  Over the past ten years, we have developed a "feel" for our flock and can pretty well answer both of those questions now.... 

We've come to the conclusion that our optimum flock has about forty ewes, four to ten rams, and the associated guard llamas.  We expect all of those animals to earn their keep - they each have a job to do: the llamas protect the flock, the ewes each produce award-winning fiber plus a couple of lambs every spring, and the rams help in producing those lambs as well as giving us wonderful fleece.  Any animal that doesn't produce ends up being replaced by another who will.  This is a business, and the only way to protect the bottom line is to keep up production - a harsh reality of life.

Now, having said that, we acknowledged long ago that, although this is a business, I do get attached to the sheep and llamas.  I don't think you can really be a good shepherd(ess) without some sense of attachment.  It is that attachment that pushes me to do my best for each as an individual, and to worry about them when things go wrong.  I know all of my sheep by name, and they know me.  I know their likes and dislikes, their personalities and their traits.  When I walk into the pasture alone, they all crowd around to see what I have brought them.  When I walk in with a stranger, they are much more wary - they trust me, but not this new person!

We have known all along that we would eventually become so attached to one or more sheep that we wouldn't be able to let them go to auction.  Keeping an unproductive sheep runs against business sense.  On the other hand, some sheep produce so well throughout their lifetimes that I feel they have earned the right to a decent, well-fed retirement.  We made the decision years ago that we would keep one spot on our flock - the forty-first ewe - as an honorary retirement spot.

The decision was to keep only that one spot for an unproductive ewe who we felt had earned her right to remain with the flock until her natural death.  If we eventually had two ewes who fit the bill, we would have to choose - we still have a business to run!  The forty-first ewe would take on the role of "granny" to the lambs, giving them a leader once they were separated from their mothers at weaning, and just generally offer the leadership that comes from experience.

The fact that this granny would be housed with the lambs will provide her with a higher level of nutrition, and generally a better situation in life. Since our lambs are exceptionally well cared for - in hopes that they will gain well and quickly - sharing space with the lambs is perfect for an old, retired ewe!

We don't currently have a forty-first ewe in our flock, since we currently have no unproductive sheep and most of the ewes have not earned that special spot in our hearts.  I say most because there is one particular ewe who will be the first in our flock to eventually take that forty-first spot: Zoe.  She did not spend her entire life on our farm....  Born in 1999, she spent the first seven years at another farm before coming to us.  We bought her in 2006 with her daughter, Belle, and her life with us over the past four years has earned her the right to an on-the-farm retirement.  Next week, I will explain some of the reasons why Zoe will retire here....

Choosing from among this year's lambs to find our replacement lambs is a bit of a project.  Usually I have some idea of which ewes will likely be culled as we come into the end of the lambing season.  My job then is to choose an assortment of ewe lambs to take the place of those ewes removed from our flock.  Many people assume that we select our best lambs as replacements, but actually, that isn't really how we do it....

The first thing you need to know about our selection process is that, for the last few years, we have  had a waiting list for our spring lambs.  The people at the top of the waiting list have usually been there since the summer before the lambs were born, and they are eager to hear what we have available as soon as we have any information.  I like to have the lambs for our own flock selected before we send out information to others, so that means many of our replacement lambs are chosen even before they are weaned.  Sometimes that works, and sometimes it doesn't!

As our lambs are born each spring, I keep an eye on them as they grow.  Every month, beginning at the age of about 30 days, we weigh and evaluate each of the lambs.  At thirty days, that first evaluation checks for teeth alignment, good conformation (build), a cursory fleece evaluation, and good weight gain.  They are still so young at this age, that it is hard to get an accurate idea of what they will turn into as adults.  But we do find some - even at only 30 days - that are not meant to be breeding stock.  They may have an under- or over-bite.  Perhaps their legs or their topline is not correct.  At this age, we don't evaluate which animals will be breeding stock - we evaluate which ones we already know will not be used for breeding.

Thirty days later, the lambs are usually already weaned, and we evaluate them again.  This time, they are a bit older and we can see a bit more what they may be like as adults....  We look for eight specific conformation traits and four fleece traits, scoring each lamb on a scale of 0-5 in each trait, with 5 being exceptional.  By this time, we have also done genetic testing for inherited resistance to scrapie, a sheep disease that the U.S. is trying to eradicate with voluntary and mandatory programs. It is now that I begin to select our replacement lambs, both ewe and ram.

We select each sex on different criteria.  For the ewe lambs, I choose one of the cull ewes and determine which of our ewe lambs will replace her.  I take a number of factors into consideration: conformation, fleece quality, genetic testing, and the family line they come from.  I try to select a ewe lamb who is equal or better to the cull ewe in every one of these areas - which isn't difficult to do because the cull ewe, you will remember, is the weakest link of our breeding ewe flock, and our average lamb will be better than our average ewe (we breed for yearly improvement). 

Let me give you an example....  Aimee is being culled this year because she lost half of her bag to mastitis a couple of years ago and cannot fully feed her lambs on her own.  In addition, her fleece is relatively coarse in comparison to the current Romeldale/CVM average in our flock. As far as pluses, she is white,  has a great build with lots of room for lambs, and passes on the resistance to scrapie to every one of her offspring.  I knew that I would want a white lamb to replace Aimee because our Romeldale/CVM flock has few white ewes - only three.  We had two white lambs this year, either of whom could have been chosen to replace Aimee: January, and Juniper.  January was one of our bottle lambs and, because I was already somewhat attached to her, I evaluated her first: January is genetically RR in scrapie resistance, so she, too, would pass that resistance to every one of her lambs.  In this trait, she is equal to Aimee.  She is a daughter of Genoa, and should have similar fleece - a big improvement over Aimee's coarser fiber!  Her conformation evaluations were as good as Aimee's, or better, and her fiber evaluations were nearly all fives, with one four.  Substituting January into our flock in Aimee's place will raise the flock average because January is an improvement over Aimee in several areas - we have filled one spot in our new fall flock!

I go through this process for each of the ewes leaving our flock, looking for a ewe lamb who is an improvement over the ewe who is leaving.  After having lived with our flock, there are certain bloodlines I look at first because I like them, or certain lambs that I might evaluate first because I like their color pattern.  If I find a good replacement among that group, I don't even look further - I go with one of these, leaving a possibly "better" lamb in the group for sale.  I cannot allow a ewe lamb to replace a cull ewe if she is less in any trait - she must be equal or better in each trait that we look at.  If I cannot find a lamb that equals the cull ewe in all traits, then that ewe is not culled - we wait to cull her until next year when we may have a lamb to meet our standards.

In the end, I have between four and eight lambs replacing the same number of ewes.  If someone comes along and falls in love with one of our replacement lambs, we will sell her if we can find another remaining lamb who can replace that same cull ewe.  The lambs we choose are not necessarily "the best" of what we have - they are merely an improvement over the ewe that is leaving.

For ram lambs, our standards are very high.  I will usually keep two or three ram lambs that, again, are an improvement over their sires, and see how they grow out.  As yearlings, I will select one or two to keep in my flock.  I don't have a particular formula for choosing a ram lamb except that he must be exceptional in every way - fleece, average daily gain (ADG), and conformation better than our lamb flock average, and better than the ram I intend to replace.  I will sometimes use a ram lamb to breed a number of ewes in the fall, to see how he works, and how his lambs turn out.  Then I really know whether I like him well enough to keep him!

Choosing replacement lambs is an important decision that cannot be done in a hurry.  If all goes well, these lambs will be a producing part of our flock for ten or twelve years.  If not, they may be the weakest link next year and will be culled at only eighteen months of age.  Our replacement ewe lambs this year are January, Jenna, Jypsi, Joy, Jareau, Juliet, and Jaidyn.  This group includes four Romeldale and three Romneys, giving us a flock of twenty of each breed going into the fall breeding season.  As for the ram lambs, we will be keeping Jagger, Josiah, Jebb and Jotham (two Romeldale/CVM and two white Romneys), who will replace Ignatius, Iverson, Ink, and Hodgins.  We will be somewhat heavy in rams, having eight or nine for the year, but at least I know I will have the rams I need when breeding season comes!

I know that I promised to write today about choosing replacement lambs for our flock, but something came up yesterday that was so interesting that I want to write about that and leave the replacement lambs for Friday.  I apologize to those of you who were looking forward to that topic....

Yesterday was one of those days when I had so many little things to do that I was not sure what to start on first - I spent much of the day in and out of the house and barn, taking care of details.  Occasionally, when I came into the house, I'd notice that there was an unknown long-distance number trying to contact us, but I figured that it was somebody selling something and ignored the calls - they could leave a message if it was important.

By late in the afternoon, I had finished my outdoor work and had come inside.  Once again, the phone rang, and caller ID showed this same long-distance number.  I decided to pick it up and turn them away personally to prevent further calls from interrupting our evening.

As I answered the phone, the man on the other end said to me, "I'm sorry to bother you, but I have a strange question to ask...."

Always up for strange questions, I asked him to go ahead.  He asked, "Are you Peeper Hollow Farm, and are you missing some sheep?"  Well, I had just come in from taking photos of our lambs, and I knew for a fact that all of our sheep were in our pastures.  I told him that all of our sheep were accounted for.  Then, it occurred to me that he was not calling from Iowa - the caller ID area code was for another state.  I asked him why he thought we were missing sheep.

"Well, I'm at my parents' place, and they have four of your sheep in their front yard!" he answered.

I immediately realized what had happened: whenever people buy their first sheep, they never know for sure if their fences are sheep-proof until they try enclosing their new additions.  Sheep, and especially lambs, are uncanny in their ability to find the smallest openings to squeeze through - the grass always does seem greener on the other side of the fence, you know!  So, it made sense that these four might be some of the sheep that had just recently been sold to new owners.  I quickly explained what I thought had happened and asked him where he was located.

As I had thought, his parents lived very near one of our recent sales.  When I called the new shepherdess and asked if they were missing some sheep, you could hear the relief in her voice as she admitted that, yes, they had been searching for them for some time!   I put the caller in touch with the new shepherdess, and before long, the sheep were on their way back to their new home.

So, how did the man who called know that they were Peeper Hollow sheep?  Well, I would love to say that he could tell simply by looking at their fabulous conformation and amazing fleece, but I would be pulling your leg....  The fact of the matter is that our farm name is on the ear tag, and it was just a matter of getting close enough to one of the lambs to read the name and then finding contact information for us on the Internet.  This is the first time such a thing has happened, and it's been pretty entertaining!  And Friday, we'll talk about choosing those replacement lambs....I promise.