At McTavish Farm

12:30pm-4pm (3.5hrs)

Because Tracy sheers her own sheep, there are a lot of small sheering days at McTavish Farm. Today, Tracy and I did touch-ups and sheering on a whole line of sheep, some more cooperative than others.

I love the way the fleece peels off the sheep, and suddenly we go from having a big fluffy monster, to a skinny naked sheep and a big thick fleece blanket. It reminds me of taking off armor or peeling a banana. 

Today was a nice hot and sunny day for sheering, which was very welcome. After getting through all the ewes, we spent some quality time in the barn re-socializing one of the ewes and her very shy daughter. The ewes who had triplets were incredibly thin under their fleece, and the ones who only had one baby were a healthy weight or even overly plump. 

Some ewes are just more highly food motivated than others, and when they are, sheering is easier both because they are more egger to jump on the stand for a hand full of grain, and because when they are plump, they are a smoother shape to sheer. 

We also checked the ewes for anemia by looking at the color on the inside of their bottom eye lid and administered worm medicine to the ones that were looking a little pale and anemic. Only giving worming medicine when it looks like it's needed helps prevent drug resistant worms. 

In the middle of our sheering, baby Rikki started to get terribly hungry and made us take a break to give her her eight-hour bottle which she gulped down in record time. She looks twice as big as she was last week, and although she is still shorter than her siblings, she looks fatter than the rest after a nice big bottle. Rikki wasn't very good at keeping the other babies company while there mamas were getting sheered, and preferred to get in to trouble and nibble on plastic.

After all the ladies were nice and cool with their short hair, we spent some time out with the napping babies in the field. Tracy has sixteen babies this year, and has sold six so far. It's hard to give up such cuties.