Yearly Archives 2011

Snow Llama

Woke up to a frosted farm today. Very pretty for morning chores. Sol, our new llama, and the lambs dined al fresco on clean snow. Sol studies everything. Nothing escapes his attention: the Belties (Belted Galloway cattle) next door, tractors, mail truck, UPS deliveries. Today he'll get to watch Mike shovel snow. He just takes it all in. The straw delivery truck earlier this week proved spooky. Sol stood in the paddock some distance from the barn and watched with his ears cocked forward while the bales were tossed off the truck. The lambs clustered around his legs. He is
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Scored Straw!

I buy straw in bulk for bedding critters. Clean, dry, chaff-free straw is a precious as gold mid-winter when we go through tons of it. We go through tons+ in lambing season. Fresh, dry bedding is a must for keeping clean and healthy sheep (and for raising good wool). The stuff has to be trucked in dry weather, since the trailer isn't airtight. Usually this happens in December but this year there were glitches. Holly and I were getting anxious, down to our last 30 bales. The semi pulled in yesterday morning and we took half the load, stashing some in
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New Sheep Suits!

Big Day! Our new sheep coats arrived. Check it out. I've been long searching for a well-made, good-fitting sheep suit to replace the some-what tattered sheep covers we've used for years. At this time of year, it's especially important to keep the fleece clean. Hay and bedding straw mess up fleece faster than you can say "VM". Our "husky" rams and large wethers have been especially tough to outfit. Even the largest of our old coats aren't big enough for our big guys in their super-sized fleeces. After poking around and talking to other sheep-people I found  the website for Rocky
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