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Spring Lambing and my waterproof notebook

4/11/2014

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It is finally starting to feel like spring in the mountains!  Daffodils are blooming, and we have a few lambs on the ground.  There are always those amazing ewes who are the first to be bred, never have lambing problems and always have consistently good-looking set of twins, such as one of my white Romeldales #1070 (pictured here talkin' to her babies).  Gotta' love her!  In the past she has usually had two white lambs, but this year she threw a white and a dark!  Yes, she loves them just the same :)
  Lambing season always reminds me why I keep some ewes around, and question others!  It doesn't matter how nice a fleece a ewe has if she is a basket case mother.  This makes taking lambing notes very worth while, and is imperative if you are keeping breeding records for registering livestock.  To accomplish this, I love my rite in the rain pocket book, shown below. If your record with a pencil it is waterproof (or lamb-goo-proof)!  They have a line of notebooks specifically for livestock.  Sadly enough, they are geared more for the Beef/Dairy industry, but they suite my purposes just fine!  At home I back it up to my excel records just in case I put my put my pocket book somewhere extra safe (which is code for I can't find it).  You can check the notebooks out via the link below. 

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Another cute little lambie!

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Wet sheep

4/4/2014

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As lambing season approaches, ewes in various leased/rented pastures around the north state have to come home to lamb under our watchful eyes. With the window of opportunity to bring this trailer load of gals home quickly closing, we observed the weather for this week as "rain" and "snow showers!" Driving down the mountain with a livestock trailer pushing you around is always daunting, even when not faced with the possibility of snow; and when it comes to moving sheep, there are always those nightmare days where nothing goes right. Luckily today went fairly well despite the constant rain. Some thank-yous are in order:
  • Husband (Who was reminded yet again why he likes cows better than sheep)
  • Infant son (hung out in baby backpack without squawking despite the rain and cold)
  • The brilliant herding dogs Philo and Lady
  • Guard llama for not attacking the herding dogs
  • Lovely well trained sheep for jumping right up in that trailer to come home! You can see in the photo that those wet girls know the drill, and it was just another day on the job for them.

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    Leah Saltzman of Shepherdess Wool talks about sheep, farming and fiber.

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