Another shearing party, come and gone!

Yesterday’s super laid-back party may have been my favorite one yet (aside from the absence of several people that shearing just isn’t right without).

There was plenty of food, beautiful weather, a great new venue, and lots of friendly faces!  For us, not having too much going on to worry about made it easier to enjoy, and we were free to spend more time talking to the people that came out to see us.

Since we had fewer animals with us to shear, Emily was free to take it a little slower and entertained the crowd with anecdotes and explanations about the various fleece types and how the animals react to being sheared (hint: they really don’t).

Unfortunately, Susan was laid up in bed as-per doctor’s orders, but Mike brought her along via Skype and she got to see how we were doing at various points throughout the day. It was pretty strange not having her there, but we had some extra help in our good friend Trina, along with her daughter, Rachel, and Maddie brought her friend Hanna to help as well.

Paul, Trina, and Rachel.  I couldn’t have managed without these three.

Because we had rented a pole barn in the county park there were plenty of people out who just happened by either walking their dogs (always a bit dicey for us) and riding horses (the park has quite a lot of trails for horseback riding).   It made for a pretty varied group.

Susan sent samples of the newest Juniper Moon Farm yarn for everyone to try out.  (My favorite is Marlowe!)

The kids were very entertained by the animals.  Emily made sure they got to pet them before and after their “haircuts”.

Emily patiently answered questions, explaining that shearing doesn’t hurt the animals one bit, and that they are bred to relax when handled properly (key word: properly).  It’s something that those of us who see them every day know already, and forget that not everyone else is aware of it.

I hope everyone who came out had as much fun as we did, and that we were able to answer everyone’s questions.

Trina took a lot of fabulous pictures all day and they are posted on the Facebook Shearing Party page, HERE.

This morning I got a call from the post office that our order of ducklings and goslings had arrived!

We all very excitedly got out of bed, got dressed and headed into town to pick them up.  We could hear them peeping as soon as we walked in, and it was an awfully cute ride home, with Neve nearly dying from the adorable.

Yes, poultry comes in the mail like this!

We got 3 Khaki Campbell ducklings, 3 Rouen ducklings (all female), and 3 Pilgrim goslings (1 male and 2 female).

Female gosling.

Rouen duckling.

Male gosling.

Khaki Campbell duckling.

We set them up in the brooder and Agnes has been guarding them ever since.  Mostly she just stands and watches them; occasionally she’ll hiss if one of us tries to pass by, but she’s easily brushed aside.  All talk, that one. It will be fun to see how she handles them once they are grown!

The beginning of this week was just extraordinary in its loveliness. We had wonderfully mild temperatures for several days in a row, and we all felt the itch to get outside and stay there.

It seemed like the perfect time for worming the flock.

Since it’s been a wonderfully cold winter, we’re pretty optimistic that parasite levels will be lower over the warmer months this year.  Even still, with most of our ewes likely bred we want to make sure they are not carrying an overload of them in their gut, as the hormones and stresses of pregnancy and lambing tends to exacerbate the condition, and then things just get ugly.

Now, worming has always been a bit of a tricky chore; you want to make sure you catch it early enough to be effective, but you don’t want to overtreat them and build up resistance to the drug. However, to our great relief, a miracle seems to have been discovered in the use of copper.  You give one dose of copper to each sheep roughly every 6 months and the parasites (hopefully) never build a resistance to it.  It simply makes the sheeps’ guts too inhospitable to the critters.

In the past when Susan and I would use copper we had to break out the scales and empty capsules and very carefully measure out copper particles.  You can imagine how excited we were earlier this winter when we discovered THESE over at Jeffers.

Hello easy coppering!

The only drawback to this is that I can’t seem to get a solid answer on whether or not we can copper our ewes that are bred.  We decided, therefor, to err on the side of caution, and the ladies all get a dose of the chemical wormer we’ve always used until after lambing.  All the boys and goats get copper.

So, with copper and wormer in hand (along with hoof clippers just in case) Neve and I set out into the winter pen to get down to some serious work.

Neve’s a pretty big help for most of the flock; it gets a little more difficult with the big sheep like Alabama.  She is my shepherd-in-training though, and since she is responsible for evening feedings every day, they know her and trust her.

Wren!

We managed to get about half the flock taken care of, when Jerry and Alabama combined forces to knock the temporary fence panels over and everyone streamed out of the holding pen.  They knew better than to fall for coming into the worming pen again, so we had to knock off for the day.  We’ll finish the rest up on Saturday, and everyone who got copper should be satisfactorily protected until September.  If it works like it’s supposed to, Susan and I will be happy shepherds!