McTavish and baby Rikki

9am-1pm (4hrs)

I headed over for a morning on McTavish farm, having talked to Tracy about putting ear tags in the new lambs, pruning lama hooves, cleaning the barn, and a couple more sheep to shear. When I arrived, the sheep and guard lama were out in the field, so doing invasive things to them would have to wait for another day. Instead, we got baby Rikki's bottle ready. The feeding nipple screws on to the end of any regular bottle, which I thought was really cool. Filling Tracy's fridge are tubs and tubs of fresh goat milk from a friend who sells the milk that tastes a little funny and people won't drink to Tracy a little cheaper so she can feed the littlest lamb. Goat milk is pretty close to sheep milk, and seems much better than cow or formula. We microwaved the milk a bit to take the chill off and warm the milk, then headed out to the field, turning off the electric fence as we went by. 

 Down in the field, all the sheep continued grazing or sleeping except one. As soon as baby Rikki saw us coming over the hill, she came running towards us. Having a different person holding the bottle didn't seem to matter as Rikki eagerly gulped down the bottle in under a minute. Rikki's food has  been increasing with her weight for the last couple weeks, but now the food has peaked as she is supposed to be learning to eat grass. Rikki was born almost half the size of her sisters and brothers, but has quickly caught up. When she was first being bottle fed, Tracy was letting Rikki eat until she was full, but little Rikki started to get dangerously overfilled, so her feeding was cut back and regulated. Naturally this happens by the Ewes walking off after letting the lambs feed for a minute. The moms won't stand still, so the babies get fed a little bit at a time. For Rikki, feeding has been cut back to every four hours during the day and eight at night (no two-am feeding for this lamb), as well as plateauing in amount. The other babies should also be learning to eat grass now, and the ewes milk production has hit its peak.

(Baby Rikki drinking her Mountain Dew goat milk)

After feeding Rikki, we sat down in the grass to babysit as all the other lambs came running for attention. As the girls climbed over us and cuddled, we had to keep the little boys off and only pet them under their chin with their heads up to try to discourage them from attacking humans when they get older. All the baby lambs have now been sold, except for a few like Rikki who are on the farm to stay.

This little girl below was being very shy when a woman came to look at her, but it seems to have been a momentary problem as she was happy to cuddle today. Spending time with the lambs so that they are well socialized and comfortable with humans from a young age is one of the bigger selling points for these little guys.

After the fun of playing with the babies was over, a neighborhood high school boy came over to do some work, so we eagerly handed over the barn to be cleaned and instead took out a very large mesh table to skirt show fleeces. Evidently the cleanliness of the fleece is one of the biggest things a judge will look for and can make the difference between a blue ribbon and last place. Credit for clean fleeces is either given to the woman who tediously sits for hours with tweezers, going over every inch of the fleece, or to the well trained husband who listens to his wife and is careful to get all the hay in the feeder and none of it on the sheep's heads when he is taking a turn at that chore. (No spinning, skirting woman would ever get hay on the back of a sheep.) The first fleece was very fine and had lots of vegetable matter in it. We removed the worst parts, and spent some time with the tweezers before giving up and rolling up the fleece. The rest of the fleeces to be shown were much better and hardly required any picking and cleaning at all. The large mesh of the table and light breeze helped to get the vegetable matter off. Though Shetland sheep are very small, their fleeces are huge from being so dense and fine. this table is probably four feet by eight feet. Before skirting fleeces, we had taken an already skirted fleece that is not going to be shown, divided it into mesh laundry bags, and put them in water to soak. According to Judith, Goddess-queen of all things spinning, the best way to wash your fleece is to start with a cold soak in a bucked of water that is saved and reused over and over again. The bucket is like a composting sludge, breeding microorganisms that eat things like lanolin and clean the fleece. This is the "like cleans like" theory. I can't say I'd want to clean anything else in that water, but it seemed to be working for Tracy's fleeces.

Before leaving for the day, we took a tour of the spinning wheel workshop to see the progress. The wheels are beautiful and in their final steps to completion. Tracy's husband, Tom, is currently building three wheels. He is taking one up to his mentor every week to learn the next steps, then comes home and practices it over and over again on the next two wheels. The three wheels are each at different stages of completion, and as soon as the first is finished, Tom will begin a third to keep the steps fresh in his mind until he is sure he has learned all the steps and skills.