We'll miss you, Wilkins

Today is a sad day. Wilkins has passed away. He was born in 2001 and I was fortunate to have purchased him from Nadine Chounet back in 2005. For those who've never met him, he was a wonderful ram. He was very gentle and was a great way for me to get used to rams, even though in the beginning I was very nervous about his size. He was very good about not letting one ram pick on another by either stepping in the way or just pushing the "bad boy" out of the way. He was VERY good about converting poor quality hay into a "beer gut"!

I think he was taken out by one of the yearlings that was trying to establish dominance. I've called the Federal Vet to report the death and may have to call the local vet for necropsy sampling to be done. Yipee.

I know that he's now frolicking around the fields just beyond the rainbow bridge and looking for all the ewes he can find.

I'll post tomorrow or another day soon about the shearing that happened on February 1st. Just got the pictures yesterday evening.

Do we have quail or chickens??

Today Tim came in after giving the chickens a little veggie snack and said that he had a special egg for me. I waited as he pulled out six different eggs from both the Chanteclers and the Hollands until he showed me the "special egg". It came from the Chanteclers, but I could have sworn it was a quail egg. Below is the picture of the crazy egg next to a nickel.




Here's another picture with it next to some of the normal sized eggs we've been getting.




We decided this wouldn't make much of a scrambled egg, so we decided to crack it open to give to Adrienne (aka Boober). The shell was very thick and took a good whack to get it to crack. Only a small portion of the top (or the bottom - if you're so inclined) came off. Try cracking a grape and you'll understand! It was very interesting looking with what appeared to be a fairly colorless yolk with only a smidgen of color that was comma shaped. How bizarre! Boober enjoyed it and downed it in one slurp.



On the sheep side of things, Bergelmir was placed in with the ewes for clean up duty. We figured that if he settled his mother or any of the other Wilkins children we have (Helle and Rafn) that the offspring would go into little white packages. Bergelmir is an old chip off the block, and was walking around with his neck stretched out looking for all the world like he's been walking around following his chin. On a side note, it will give Wilkins a break as the two of them have been trying to determine who is king of the farm. Wilkins wants to keep his crown and Bergel is trying to dethrone him. Arrgh! Why can't boys just behave??

Lambs are growing!

Here's a few pictures of the lambs. The one below is Belja (musket blettet ram lamb with possible scurs) on the left and #7 (black krunet ewe lamb) on the right. They are from Mulan and Wilkins.

This is a picture of Flik (musket blettet/flecket ram lamb) on the left and #9 (moorit or musket ewe lamb) on the right. They are from Sassy Too and Wilkins. This is a picture of Bergelmir (gre blettet/flecket ram lamb) from Sylph and Wilkins.
This is a picture of #11 (moorit or musket ram lamb) from Celebrian and Wilkins.

The second round of lambing will be starting shortly. Keep posted for more lambs.