Feelin' a bit sheepish...

[Beekissed]

I can’t wait to see the pictures of your lambs. But I guess I have to wait.

We'll BOTH have lamby pics this year, BAY!!!! Isn't that just amazing???

Got some GREAT hay for $35 a bale today....barn kept, horse quality. Smells like summer!!!! Couldn't stop burying my nose in it while he was loading it....looks and smells good, was put up right and stored properly.

 

[Baymule]

Hay is wealth. Funny the things that make us "rich" that 99.9% of people just wouldn't understand. Hugging a newborn lamb goes into the priceless category.

 

[Sheepshape]

I had bought the best hay around for them that year and they were feeding underneath a tarp that I had over some moldy, dusty 20 yr old square bales I had got to put on the garden.

Don't allow your sheep access to mouldy hay/silage etc.....it can carry Listeria and listeriosis is a horrible, usually fatal disease. Also, watch yourself if there's much mould about......Aspergillus mould may lead to Farmer's lung. Now haven't I been a bundle of joy with regards to a bit of mould? As a fair bit of our silage was mouldy last year I wore a mould mask throughout the feeding season when handling the silage as I developed a chronic cough. I looked like some deranged over-sized fly....but it did the trick. A third wrapping on the silage this year has all but eliminated mould.

Hugging a newborn lamb goes into the priceless category.

Oh, i couldn't agree more with that. My avatar is one of the sweetest lambs I've ever needed to be 'mum' to. Weighing in at under a pound, she was the tiny 'twin' of a bruising 14lb ram lamb, too weak to stand for feeding from mum. That's a chihuahua coat she's wearing. LLella is now a HUGE 3 year old ewe who has the sweetest disposition.

2 years back I ended up with 13 bottle lambs.....too much of a good thing!

 

[Beekissed]

Hay is wealth. Funny the things that make us "rich" that 99.9% of people just wouldn't understand. Hugging a newborn lamb goes into the priceless category.

Oh, yeah, it does. A new calf is similar....such sweetness and they smell so fresh and new!

I DO feel wealthy with all this good quality hay today! Worked all morning getting it into the feeding stations, up on pallets, covered in tarp, etc. I feel RICH!!!!

Even stole some of the fresher hay to place in the nest boxes and in Blue's dog house and his lounging spot. We are having a cold and sunny day, so the ground is frozen enough for good working and the sunshine is making all creatures feel warmed despite the colder temps. We've had cold rain for a few weeks now, steady and without let up, so the sun is like a huge blessing!

Sat down on the DL under the hoop shelter and leaned up against the new bale while the sheep nibbled the hay around me. The DL is dry and cushy, no bad smells and the new hay smells like early summer and flowers. I sang to the sheep a little and they seemed to like it.

It's a beautiful day and I praise the Lord for it!!!

 

[Beekissed]

CP protection for the hay....these pics show the sheep eating hay through the squares. I feel this cuts down on waste tremendously, both in how much they can pull out and keeping them from tearing down the bale with their feet as they climb.

 

[Baymule]

That is exactly how I do my round bales, thanks to your inspiration years ago, the first time you had Sheep. They eat the leafy parts, leaving the stemmy parts. I pull the stemmy parts and put them in a tub where the sheep go through the reject hay again. Then I dump out the twice rejected stems to become deep litter and bedding. I also put it in the chicken coops and dog beds. Waste not want not!

 

[Beekissed]

They definitely waste a lot less than just eating the bales unprotected by that wire. What little they waste acts as bedding and adds a thin, dry layer to the DL each day where they poop and pee the most. It's kind of self maintaining in the areas around the hay.

Spent some time with Blue today after a pack walk with both dogs. He's coming along on alpha training and has such better recall now....most often I don't even have to call him back, if I stop walking and he notices I've stopped, he comes back immediately if he's ranged out in front.

Mostly he doesn't range out any longer but stays by my leg, pacing with me, even if Ben is ranging out in front. He's still a puppy, so still requires correction on where he's allowed to put his paws since I didn't get to do early training with him on that.

He's a sweet dog, reasonably smart but doesn't sound as smart as Bay's Sentry...likely due to breeding differences. Of course, after having a dog like Jake, most dogs seem on the dim side of life. He was incredibly swift to learn things, even up into his old age.

 

[Baymule]

A dog like Jake is a hard act to follow.

 

[Beekissed]

A dog like Jake is a hard act to follow.

Some dogs leave a permanent mark on your life...I've had two of those. They have gone down in family lore as almost legendary. They both wrote incredibly great stories in their time on Earth. Jake was one of them.

 

[Beekissed]

Was out moving hay around and evening out the DL, so took a few pics of the girls. I swear I'm not overfeeding these monsters and they aren't due until mid April, but you can certainly see some huge bellies on these sheep.

They are getting hay and a large scoop or so of alfalfa pellets mixed with a little oats and BOSS per day to share among them. Not much but enough to supplement any nutritional shortages in the hay....if they weren't penned right now I'd not be supplementing, as they would supplement themselves out in the woods and such.

Shine, 3, on the left and Rose, 7, on the right....can't imagine how Rose will look once those lambs are actually ready to come out. She'll be dragging bottom.

Juniper in front, May in the back...both 9 mo. old now.

Poor Rose! She's got 3 more months to go!

Good shot of a Type B Katahdin and a Type A body style difference....I prefer Shine, with her type A body style and hope to be culling for that down through the years.

New round bale, all laced into its CP corset!

Which keeps climbers from scraping down the sides of the bales and wasting hay.

Can't wait to get sheep out on the land where they belong. Got a fencing guy coming this weekend to give us an estimate on running high tensile around the property~18 acres~ and separating paddocks.

When they are finally out there, all this DL can be moved out to areas that need it most and it should produce some fine graze this year.