Our sheep shearer came by today. We've been trying for nearly a month to schedule a shearing for all our grown sheep, with no luck because of the rain.Wool can't be put up wet, or it molds.
Yesterday it poured, but by the afternoon it was dry and sunny. Another few hours of sunny breezes and body heat and the sheep were dry enough to shear.
The shearer is Rob Manner of Gentle Manner Farm. He is as good as his name. He does a fine job with few second cuts and nicks. His partner Michelle came too. They work as a team. Rob works too fast for the camera in the low light of the barn, so the pictures are blurred. It looks like he's going really fast indeed but it is only the low light.
We also gave tetanus shots to the ewe labs we mean to keep. The four remaining ram lambs will be lamb chops by October/November. We didn't knacker them or dock tails, so no need for a shot.
Finally, all the grown sheep got a hoof trim.
Now they are all walking around fairly gingerly on their new short hoofs with their new shorn fleece, wondering what happened to them. Here is Tillie taking it all in stride. One time we were dung-tagging her out on the grassy terrace with students in this position and she started eating grass.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Welcome to our Farm Blog.
The purpose of this blog is for Aimee and I to communicate with friends and family, with those of our students, and other folks in general who are interested in homesteading and farming activities.
The earliest posts, at the very end of the blog, tell the story of the Great Farm, our purchase of a fragment of that farm, the renovation of the homestead and its populating with people and animals. Go all the way to the last post in the archive and read backwards from there to get it in chronological order.
After getting tired of spam comments (up to a dozen or more per day), I required commentators to be Google "registered users". You can write me at mwomersley@unity.edu if you have a serious comment or question and are not a registered user.
Spammers -- don't bother writing -- there's no way I will post your spam to my blog. Just go away.