McTavish day

9am-11:30am (2.5hrs)
 
Sorry, no pictures today.

Being at Tracy's farm, or any of the farms, is always so relaxing; especially when the weather is decent and we can lay in the grassy fields (avoiding the poop piles) and spend some time with the animals. Tracy had a to-do list when I arrived. The first task of the day was to catch the only one-year-old lamb and bring her up to join the little babies now that they are a little bigger and before weening. At Tracy's farm, the new babies and mamas are separated for the first couple weeks so the babies have less big sheep to worry about, and the barn is less crowded. Also, some of the adult sheep could get through the lamb creep (pvc tubes in vertical slats to make the opening wide enough for lambs only so they can get away and get some extra food - baby Rikki lives in the lamb pen). It's better for most of the sheep to only be bred every other year so they can get some weight on before having to share their nutrition with another again - they can get pretty thin with triplets nursing. So Tracy and I went down to the field where the guard llama keeps watch over the non-bred half of the flock while the babies are little. Evidently guard llamas defend their flock with their feet, which is why they don't like their hooves trimmed. (Alpacas in contrast have "fighting teeth" and one alpaca will go after another male alpacas reproductive organs... but not much good against predators.)

The little sheep we were looking for thought it would be fun to come right up to us with all the others but not let our hands touch her. One of the ewes was almost 100lbs, which is quite big for a Shetland, and decided to crawl in my lap to let me better pet her all over. She was exceptionally friendly and I could see Rikki becoming like this - but worse - as she gets bigger. Finally the little girl we wanted let us pet her and we got a harness on, then she was easy to lead back up to the barn where her mother was, having escaped the non-bred pen somehow.

The yearling lamb immediately started going head-to-head with the baby rams who were as big as her. The mama ewes also decided they needed to test their place against this little one. Her mum would get between the yearling and the other adult ewe and defend and protect her daughter for a while, then turn on her to butt herself, then give up and go back to eating for a while, and repeat. Sheep have a strong sense of pecking order. After sheering, the rams often have to duke it out all over again, and the ewes do it too, but with less backing up and charging, and less fatalities or serious injuries.

While the mamas, babies, and yearling were duking it out, we had a barn to clean and they were in it. We let the sheep out to pasture, and I walked behind Rikki, nudging her on, so she would go with the flock instead of curling up in the hay in the barn to watch us clean. Most sheep don't like to be separated from the flock, but little Rikki is perfectly happy with the humans. So we cleaned the barn, then fixed a fence by adding some rubber to the hinge.

Next to the composting wool by the fence we were fixing was a ram skull. Tracy buries the bones and guts in the large dung-pile to keep from attracting predators and compost-clean the skull, then picks out the skull while spreading the manure on the gardens and fields. This one was needing a little more cleaning so she left it out a little longer. From the skull, I could see that the rams had horn bones extending quite a ways off their heads. Tracy told me when you grab the base of the horns on the animal, you can feel where the bone ends by the warmth of the horn - and if you are trimming the horns for some reason, trimming them too short will make them bleed. Inside, Tracy showed me a vest she had just felted and was picking what buttons to use. Tracy uses the ram horns to make buttons, though the bottom part is hollow to fit over the bone, so only the ends of the horns work well. Tracy made some sets of buttons one year and gave them out as Christmas presents.

The last chore for the day was to mix baby feed. I weighed out different amounts of corn, sunflower seeds, oats, and something else, mix it together in a big bin, and add a little feed molasses (what's left over after making human molasses - more bitter of an aftertaste...) to help keep the dust down.

I wish I had pictures for you but oh well.