Underhill Bach

Here's a picture of Bach after we brought him home from attending MFF last year.

My Bach is no more. He crossed over the rainbow bridge yesterday evening. It's a long story, so let's start at the beginning.

This year for breeding, we put him where he was next to the non-breeding ewes (we've done that before with other rams without problems) and he kept trying to break into the non-breeders even though he hadn't settled (that I'm aware of) all his girls. After a few attempts and us having to fix and reinforce the fence twice, we decided to put him in a hog panel pen on the lawn exactly where he was last year. Nice and far away from the non-breeders. Well, this year, there was no getting his hormones in line and Monday night around 10pm we heard some bashing and found he had escaped his ewe pen and was smacking the hog panel pen where Gulliver was with a few girls. Bach's girls were luckily still in the pen as he got out from a side area that was baling twined together (multiple times) and was able to squeeze his tiny frame under the fence. I know this as there was some of his wool left behind. Naughty bugger. I'm not aware that he has still settled all the four ewes he was given (only saw him breed Mulan the first day and this past weekend he was breeding Viveka). He was still looking interested in Sabrina and Rakel, but they were having nothing to do with him.

After running around trying to catch him and putting up electronet to grab him, we were able to get him back in our control after one hour. Can you say greased lightning? Once we caught him, we placed him back in with the bachelors and had them all "squeezed". They started clonking heads like usual and I thought it will be no problem. I worked on reinforcing their pen Tuesday to make sure "houdini" didn't get out again and they were starting to become more civilized, I thought. There wasn't a whole lot of bonking going on that day.

Wednesday came with still no terrible problems in the morning, but as evening fell, Tim called me at work to say that when he peeked into the ram pen, Bach was down and he wasn't sure he was still breathing. A half-hour more of work to go and then I came home to him still down and breathing raspily. The vet was coming out to put him down if nothing else could be done. When she got here, she examined him to find his pupils not reacting, a broken jaw, and figures he also had massive brain trauma. While Tim was waiting for her (before I got home) Bach went into a seizure. Needless to say, the right choice was euthanasia.

I will miss my standoffish ram with the beautiful fleece. I now have to hope that he settled enough girls to give me a nice ram lamb to keep.

May you be bounding around verdant fields with no fencing and lots of fertile ewes to breed!

Breeding Groups Together

Every Veterans' Day Tim and I put the breeding groups together. It always seems like a good date for us. Firstly, because we have the day off and secondly, it gives us lambs in April when the grass is starting to appear and the dreaded snow is disappearing.

This year we opted to use two rams with 7 ewes total. Last lambing was a blast with 11 ewes pregnant, but we really didn't need the extra work and there are a few lambs left over that didn't get purchased.

First group is SheltrgPines Gulliver's girls. Gulliver is a black smirslet gulmoget (At/Aa BB/Bb Ss/SS M?/M?).

Gulliver's ladies are Sabbath Farm Sylph, a light grey ewe (Ag/A? BB/B? Ss/S? M?/M?). Sylph is our oldest ewe, but is still going strong! In this picture you can see her chowing on a pumpkin. We've bred her twice and each time she singled. This year we're hoping for twins.

Contented Brisingamen is the black ewe chowing down on some hay. Her genetics are Aa/Aa BB/Bb S?/S? M?/M?. Brisingamen is a first timer with a ram and it will be nice to see what she throws.

Contented Arwen is a gentle moorit (Aa/Aa Bb/Bb S?/S? M?/M?). This will be her first time lambing as well.

Our second breeding group is with Underhill Bach. Bach is a mioget (Aa/Aa Bb/Bb S?/S? Mm/Mm). This photo shows Bach with his four girls.

Bach's first ewe is the one in the middle with the black face. It is none other than Underhill Mulan, our grey ewe (Ag/Aa BB/Bb Ss/S? M?/M?). This breeding will be very interesting. Bach threw a horned ewe lamb and a scurred ram lamb this past lambing and Mulan has thrown a scurred ram lamb in the past. Needless to say, I'm looking forward to seeing their get. They'll hopefully make it so that I don't have to wait too long. There was a bit of "activity" yesterday after they were put together.

The next two are Islandfleece Viveka (Ab/Aa Bb/Bb SS/S? M?/M?)and Islandfleece Rakel (Ab/Aa Bb/Bb S?/S? M?/M?), our two moorit katmoget twins. We weren't going to breed Rakel, but the twins have never been separated, so we said "what the heck" and kept them together.

The last ewe Bach is getting is Maybelle Sabrina, our white ewe (Awt/Aa Bb/B? S?/S? M?/M?).

Almost breeding season

I haven't blogged in a while. Life is crazy and hectic and I know it's no excuse, but it's only one I have! :-) Spent the first two weeks of October in Germany. Lots of fun and had a good time overall. Our great friends Ruth and Ed took care of all the critters while we were gone. No major problems, but Ruth has resolved that she will get chickens, just no roosters! Ed the last couple of days decided to read our instructions on how to take care of the critters and read the grain amount we give the girls a little wrong, so needless to say they were not happy to see us come back with the "puny amount" we gave them. Thanks so much Ruth and Ed for all your work keeping our critters healthy. Now it's back to reality and needing to keep plugging along. We're going into the winter with more sheep that we had originally planned. You know what they say about the best laid plans. So, knowing that we have a wee bit too many, we're working on only breeding a few of the ewes. Here's the plan so far.

SheltrgPines Gulliver (our black gulmoget) will be getting Contented Arwen (moorit), Contented Brisingamen (black), and SabbathFarm Sylph (grey).

Underhill Bach (mioget) will be getting Maybelle Sabrina (white), Underhill Mulan (grey), and Islandfleece Viveka (moorit katmoget).

With Bach and Mulan's breeding, I'll be interested to see what the get is like as Mulan is a half poll and I'm not sure what to call Bach (threw a scurred ram lamb this year from Sage and a horned ewe lamb this year from Celebrian). Needless to say, that breeding has the potential for all sorts of things!

Will have pictures posted when the groups get put together.

Horns or Scurs? You be the judge

Around the time we were getting ready to do CD/T shots on the lambos, I noticed that Celebrian's really crimpy daughter (CB0035) has what appears to be horns or scurs popping out. The following pictures show the size of the "whatevers". This was around June 20th. I haven't noticed any significant growth of them since then. They're still there, but I'm not familiar with ewes and their horns. I'm assuming that they take a while to pop, unlike rams, that pop pretty soon in their lives.

Can you see them, they're kind of small and look chocolate chip like.

After posting about them on the Shetland polled yahoo group, it appears we forgot that Underhill Bach, this little girl's sire, came from a horned ewe.

Another breeding of Bach gave us a ram lamb with scurs. He's so super friendly that he's destined to be a wether and a local family had their hearts melted by him. The little rascal layed down right at their feet and any time a family member moved, he followed looking for scritches.

So, are they horns or scurs??

Catching up for lost time

Okay. I'm trying to catch up for being a bad blogger. I know, whip me with a wet noodle.

Sage gave birth on May 11th to two ram lambs. That ended lambing for us with 18 lambs on the ground with 10 ewe lambs and 8 ram lambs.

We've been moving the ewes over to the Gingras' grassy areas. They've been grazing like locusts! Before moving the girls, Sylph's ewe lamb wasn't paying attention to where everybody went when they moved to another patch of grass. She started to panic when she didn't see mom, so she ran into the hog panels we have up for fencing. I took her to the vet to find out she had a clean break on the bone between the hoof and elbow area. She looked like this after the vet wrapped her up.

She's now doing better - the break has healed and she's not sporting some funny kneesocks anymore. But, she still favors the leg from time to time. She's also not going to be registered. She's scritchy feeling and that's surprising for a lamb, considering her mom is the oldest ewe we have and still soft feeling. Her dad is SheltrgPines Uber and real soft, too. What a disappointment.

Rain, rain go away.
Momma needs to cut some hay.
The sheep are sad,
the weather's bad.
We'll all be glad when the sun comes again!

Thus ends your poetry interlude.

One other exciting thing that happened, was that when googling the farm name, I came across a person who bought some of Celebrian's wool and she posted on her blog about it. Check it out on her blog called Able to Dream.

Website is live!

After what seemed like many months of us and the web designer procrastinating, she came over yesterday and taught us how to upload and make changes to the website. I'm so thrilled. Keep in mind that we're still adding content (such as the color genetics of each sheep). But stop on by and see what you think.

Tim says Whoohoo! You can find us at http://contentedbutterflyfarm.com so take a look.

I'll do another post catching you all up. Sage had two ram lambs, we dealt with a broken leg (on a lamb that is) and other fun times.

Mini Baby Explosion - catching up

Sylph lambed on April 28th and gave us a little girl. Sabbath Farm Sylph was bred to SheltrgPines Uber. This little girl is going to be grey. She already had sugar lips when she was born.

The next day, Wednesday, April 29th, Maybelle Sabrina gave us a little girl as well. Sabrina was bred to Contented Balder and gave us a little moorit girl! I know now some of Sabrina's genetics! Wahoo!

That same day that Sabrina gave birth, Sabbath Farm Celebrian graced us with her twins! Both girls.

Celebrian was bred to Underhill Bach and gave us a really crimpy moorit/possibly fawn girl.

The other I believe will stay moorit. Of course, time will tell and we'll see what we get.