BAAAAA! Good Morning!

Today, you’re getting two for the price of one!

Say hello to the glamorous and beautiful Willoughby and Bennett!

These ladies are two of the most unusual sheep on the farm. They, along with their half-brother Alabama, are Southdown / Cormo crosses. Their mama, Daisy, was a Babydoll Southdown and one of Susan’s very first sheep. Their father, Aldo, was fine Cormo ram and a transient romancer, just passing through for the few months of breeding season.

This is what you’re thinking, and it sounds like the beginning of a bad joke: What do you get when you cross a Southdown and a Cormo?

Answer: We’re callin’ ‘em MO-DOWNS.

You can tell from their looks that they’re different from the Cormo lambs. Their noses are stubbier, plus, brown. Their bodies are thicker, and more compact. They even– you can tell this the most in the picture above– look different from each other. They’re also constitutionally sturdier– blessed with heaping doses of hybrid vigor.

The story of our girls begins with Alabama, Daisy’s first lamb, who’s a fantastic guy with a fantastic fleece. He’s so wonderful, in fact, that we wanted to continue the Mo-Down experiment.

So, in the spring of 2010, Willoughby and Bennett were born, as is often the case with younger siblings.

Basically, the idea behind the Mo-Downs is this:

The fleece on the Southdowns is characterized by its density and springiness, while the fleece on the Cormos is characterized by its fineness. The Mo-Downs, then, will ideally have a lot of very fine and springy fleece.

So far, we just have Alabama, Willoughby, and Bennett, who don’t have fleeces as fine as the Cormos. So when we shear in the spring, we set their fleeces aside for our own handspinning fun Very Important Research.

However, as of this writing, both of our girls are back in the breeding pasture with Solomon. Their offspring will be 1/4 Southdown and 3/4 Cormo, and (we hope) will have fleeces both finer and denser than their parents’. I know I’m looking forward to at least two Mo-Mo-Down lambs this spring.

The other thing about these girls is that– as our shepherding campers learned last week– they’re wild. This is for a couple of reasons.

First of all, like their mom, they’re easy keepers– they easily put on weight (ie, strength)– and money makers– they’re the sheep you never get to know or touch, because they never ever have a problem.

Also, they’re yearlings. They’re Single Ladies, lambs at heart, and therefore pretty skittish. Most non-bottle-baby yearlings don’t start to like humans until after they’ve lambed for the first time. I think motherhood calms them down.

For now, though, they’re really just as happy to not have anything to do with us. After all, they are pretty special ladies.

 We woke up this morning to a beautiful sight.

Solomon, our rental ram, is wearing a marking harness harness so that we’ll know when he, um, gets the job done with the ladies.

Seeing a couple of green backsides is a relief, because it means that breeding season has officially begun.

Our Cormo yearlings will be lambing for the first time in the Spring, along with the colored this-year’s-lambs.

Meanwhile, in the other pasture, Ernie still hasn’t gotten the memo that he doesn’t have what it takes to breed the ladies. He’s in the pasture with all the gals we aren’t breeding this year and it’s like watching the Benny Hill Show over there.

Poor guy. He’s like the old Grandpa wearing a toupee, trying to pick up college girls at a nightclub.

But don’t tell him. It’s nice to see him happy.

If I told you what all I did this weekend, you wouldn’t believe me.

Just for an idea of the is-this-real-life flavor of the past few days, though, I’ll tell you that, yesterday, Amy and I drove up to Manassas, met Solomon, and walked him up a luggage ramp into the back of her Suburban. Instead of standing in a Goat Tote in the back of a pickup, or rattling around in a horse trailer, Solomon rode in utter style: a plywood ‘stall’, hay, water, and air conditioning.

Solomon’s just here for a month or two. He’s the talent. He’s got a job to do here. He’s our RAM.

He came with a pedigree that traces him back to one of the first Cormos imported to the US from Tasmania, the lab results from getting his fleece tested (avg = 21.6 microns), and a letter certifying as to his Cormo-ness (seriously!).

All the lambs who’ll be born this spring– just in time for Shepherding Camp 102– will be his children. We haven’t put any of our ewes in with him yet, because we want him to get used to the farm, but also because we want the ladies to be as ready for him as possible (this is also the idea behind a teaser ram). Our Shepherding Camp 101 students– Who arrive tomorrow! Hi, guys!– will be helping us get the girls we want to breed into the breeding pasture.

I tried to take pictures in the dusk last night as Amy and Zac led him into the boys’ pasture, and you can see how interested all the ewes are in him. They immediately started hanging out along the fence, mooning.

He’s wearing a raddling harness, also called a breeding harness, or a marking harness, that holds a green crayon at the center of his chest, between his front legs. It’ll leave a mark on any animal he tries to breed, so, soon, we’ll be able to go out in the mornings and say, “You got bred, and you got bred, and you got bred!”

There’s a lot of interest.

He’s also wearing a jacket, to keep hay out of his fleece. Here’s a peek at what it looks like underneath:

LUSCIOUS.

We are so happy to have him here. Everyone, say hi to our rented ram Solomon, and his not-quite 700 wives and 300 concubines!

NEXT WEEK on SotW: Who would you like to hear more about? Let me know!

Believe it or not, I am still sick! I’m pretty convinced that I’ve got the flu, although some people- some uninformed people- keep insisting that it’s just a virus. Let me tell you, there is nothing JUST about this thing, whatever it is!

In other news, my heart is just about bursting with pride because we have received nearly 60 scarves for the Red Scarf Project. Yup, you lovely, thoughtful people have hand knit and crochet almost 60 gorgeous red scarves that will become nearly 60 Valentine’s Day sussies for nearly 60 college-aged orphans!

I know I say it a lot, but you people never cease to amaze me! Thank you for embracing this project and knitting your little hearts out. You should be awfully proud of yourselves.

In other news, we big a fond farewell to Sweet Aldo, the beautiful Cormo Ram we’ve used for breeding for the last two years.

I’m happy breeding season is over and that all the ewes and yearlings appear to be covered, but I’m going to miss Aldo. He is such a gentle ram. I probably won’t be able to use him again, at least not for a while, because his daughters will be ready for breeding next year, and keeping more than one ram on the farm might just make my head explode.

More news, including my gift guide tomorrow. I have to feel better by tomorrow, right?

XO

Breeding season is in full swing at Juniper Moon Farm. This morning Suzy and a couple of awesome helpers sorted all the lambs from the rest of the flock (we didn’t want any of this year’s lambs to get bred by accident) and turned Aldo and Jack- our ram and buck, respectively- out with the ewes and does.

We also built a little pen for Feenat and her new beau, Cyo, to honeymoon in. Why? Because we want to keep the Icelandics separate from the Cormos during breeding season. We don’t need any Icelando lambs in the Spring!

Feenat isn’t entirely sure about this whole operation.

I think she’ll come around. I mean, look at this little cutie. Who could resist his charms?

She was certainly able to overcome her revulsion long enough to eat next to him.

You’re probably asking yourself why this sheep’s butt is orange.

In an effort to pinpoint when we will be lambing in the Spring, we are using a marking harness on Aldo this year. Basically, the harness holds a crayon and when the ram attempts to…um…romance a ewe, it marks their backside with the crayon. Since sheep will only stand for breeding when they are in heat (which only lasts about 13 hours during each 17-day cycle) we know that a mark on the backside means that the ewe is probably bred.

We will keep a chart and every morning check to see if there are any new marks that we need to keep track of. In 17 days, I will swap out the crayon in the harness for a blue one. 17 days later, we’ll switch back to orange.

Using a marking harness is a bit more work for us but it should make lambing time a lot easier. Only Aldo is wearing one though, so the Angora goat kids and Feenat’s lambs will still be a surprise.

We only put Aldo in with the girls this morning and it looks like Dakota, one of our yearling twins, will be the first bred this year.

Everyone on the farm is waiting.

The nanny goats.

And Jack, our buck.

The ewes.

And Aldo, our hired ram.

They are all waiting for breeding season to begin. And the aren’t being very patient about it.

We will be putting everyone into their proper breeding pens on Sunday but in the meantime there is lots of flirting going on through the fences. Lots of flirting and lots of moaning about the unfairness of having to wait. “But I’m in rut NOW!”

We could have started breeding earlier but I decided to wait until October 31st because sheep and goats have a gestation period of approximately 156 days. That means that the earliest our lambs and kids are likely to arrive is March 27th, although in my experience, no one  is every born exactly 156 days from the first possible date of conception. Either way, I choose March 27th because lambing and kidding means many, many trips to the barn to looks for signs of labor in the wee small hours of the morning, and I prefer not to risk frostbite when traipsing out the barn at 3:00 a.m. in my pajamas.

Some farms like to breed for early lambs and kids, particularly those that raise animals for the Easter table (not an issue for us since we are a no kill farm). I like to have my lambs and kids when the pastures are starting to turn green again, so that Mama and baby can be turned out on to fresh, green grass after they spend a couple of days together bonding on a lambing pen.

Since we don’t want any of this year’s ewe lambs (or this year’s single doe kid) to be breed, we will have to sort the little ones from the flock on Sunday before turning out the boys. We will also be constructing a special pen for Feenat and her new beau, Cyo, since we don’t want Cormos breeding with Icelandics or vice versa.

I’ll take lots of pics for you; it’s sure to be a complete circus.

photo courtesy of Joeleagle.com

Erin bought a new Icelandic ram last week to breed with Feenat and he is a handsome devil! His name is Ceo (pronounced Kyo with a long o) and it’s Irish for fog or mist. Erin chose it because he kind of looks like a low hanging cloud. (Feenat rhymes with peanut and is Irish for woodland creature.) Ceo and Feenat will be isolated in their own small pasture starting November 1st and we’ll have Icelandic lambs to look forward to in 2011.

Can you believe how quickly this year has gone? I swear, I feel like I just got finished putting the Christmas ornaments away and vacuuming up the pine needle and here it is, already Fall. Well, technically it’s still summer for a couple of days, but near enough.

September is when I have to start putting my breeding plan together for the sheep and goats, figuring out who I’ll be breeding and when I want the lambs and kids to start arriving. It seems strange to be planning now for the all-nighters I’ll be pulling in March, April or May when lambing season comes, but it’s all part of the seasonal flow of the farm. Sheep and goats are pregnant for five months, and breeding too early or too late can set off a chain reaction that leads to all kinds of difficulties down the line, so I really have to think it through every year and figure out what my goals are for the next Spring before even the first leaf has turned in the Fall.

It is also the time of year when we send the the Juniper Moon Farm Calendar off to the printer. Actually, that’s a fib. It’s the time of the year when we SHOULD send the Juniper Moon Farm Calendar off to the printer, but most years, I’m lucky to get it in by November. This year, however, I am organized. That’s because this year I knew that things were going to be incredibly busy later in the season and that the calendar had to go to the printer in September or it possibly wouldn’t go at all. [This acting like a grown-up stuff takes a lot of work, but it's incredibly satisfying!]

The other difference between this year’s calendar and last year’s is that we will only be doing one print run, rather than the ten or eleven we did last year. Frankly, shipping 700 calendars is just a whole lot of work! This year, we are pre-selling a print run of 200 calendars and will get them all shipped out in plenty of time for the holidays and the start of 2011.

If you’d like a calendar- or to order one for the yarn and animals lovers on your holiday gift list- please order soon. I hate it when we sell out of shares or popular colorways and y’all are disappointed! Part of the reason I’m putting in the shop now is that we have a pretty high-profile article coming out very soon and I want to make sure y’all get yours before we are swamped.

XO

I watched a new lamb come into the world today. It was exhausting, amazing, and miraculous.

Isn’t he lovely?

Welcome to the world Peregrine.

Ethel spends most of the day sitting around looking all casual like this.

Then a little head will pop out from underneath her.

And then another little head.

Sometimes a little fluff ball will run around the back of mama,

and sneak back underneath her tail feathers.

Then Ethel goes back to looking all nonchalant.

“What are you looking at? I don’t know anything about any baby chickens.”

So it shouldn’t come as a huge surprise that we’ve had a difficult time getting a decent head count.

Turns out we have 9 baby chicks, not 8.