2019, Waiting on lambs!

[Baymule]

Good job on making the coats. Is the wool soft and what items do you make from it?

 

[Ridgetop]

Are they Southdowns?

 

[secuono]

Good job on making the coats. Is the wool soft and what items do you make from it?

Some are softer than others. Since most breed them as pets and ignore wool quality, it can vary drastically.
I don't wear layers or hats, gloves, scarves much, so I mostly just make yarn so far. =/
Hope to be good enough to sell yarn or simple finished products one day.

Are they Southdowns?

Babydoll Southdown.

 

[Ridgetop]

Cute - do you ever have eye problems with the covered faces? DS1 had a couple Oxfords and had to keep the wool trimmed away from their eyes.

 

[secuono]

I have a few that get a little wool blind at the end of winter, rest have open space around the eyes. None have had physical issues like infection because of that, I did trim one once when she couldn't see me though.
Seems like their true face wool doesn't show until they are 2yrs old. And I've been trying to find a correlation between lamb face wool and how the adult face will look, but it seems pretty random. =/

I prefer this head. Short wedge shape, level fuzzy ears, wooly face down to lips, but not excessively shaggy and open eyes.

 

[Ridgetop]

They are awfully cute, but I am not really a wool person anymore. No market here for good Dorset wool which is excellent for combining with exotic fibers. Also very durable. I tried spinning and learned how, but was not good at it, and really didn't like it well enough to invest in a wheel. DH was much better than I was, but again not interested enough to warrant buying a wheel! LOL We did it more as an exercise in learning about the usefulness of sheep. I can knit, but am not that fond of it. My family sneers at my socks, and my crochet is terrible - no one seems to want crocheted bowls!

In the long run, I just give away all my fleeces in the grease but it is getting harder to do that since most people don't want to take the time to skirt and process. The processor I used has stop accepting raw fleeces from clients. I finally gave away all my processed fleece bats to a friend whose daughter wanted to learn to spin. She has enough for a year! LOL I used to do my own shearing but am not able to do it anymore. The cost of shearing here is $40 per ewe and $50 per ram. I am in the process of switching to Dorpers. I am careful to buy only those with a higher % of slick shedding. My sales are all for freezer lambs so whether they have fleece is immaterial.

But those faces are sure adorable!

 

[secuono]

Surry & Guinevere marked today. Seen both bred after I noticed the marks as well.

So then that is 11 ewes bred so far & 7 left to go!!

Will still swap crayon colors soon to see if any did not take and cycled/bred again.

If they all did take, that's a lot of late February, very early March lambs smooshed together!

I think I'll change breeding season to start on October 15th from next year onward.

 

[secuono]

Ewenique still holding out.

Happy Guinevere with her blue butt.

Going to change Michaelis' yellow crayon to another color, just can't see anything!

 

[Ridgetop]

That yellow crayon is almost useless. I use blue, orange or red, green. Unless you run your ewes into a small enclosure at night or morning, you can't see the yellow. Congratulations on getting so many marked to soon. I like having lambing season all coming at once. Get it over with. Unless you have an ongoing freezer lamb market, there is no reason to spread the work out. I have a smaller flock, but I have less space too and like to use a creep for our lambs. They reach 100 lbs by 4 months and go off to the butcher. Since I have no pasture, I cut the ewes grain a week ahead of that time and just keep the lambs on creep grain. Cuts the overall cost of feed, since the ewes are not getting grain for the last month, and the lambs go off to the butcher and are off expensive hay.

This year we have gotten rain 3 times! Last night it rained for 6 hours. Not raining now, but it looks like it moght rain again. Maybe we will really have El Nino this year after all. If we do, we will have plenty of green forage (not good pasture but green stuff).

 

[secuono]

Got Michaelis into a soft red crayon, then felt Sebastian's and decided to swap his out to a soft orange.
Thought the orange looked brighter online, in person, it is more of a weird brown...so...we will see how it does.