surrogate spelling police.....lambaaada!!
Pregnant Icelandic Ewe - need help predicting birth.
Oh, of course!!! My bad...
shimmy shimmy slide slide...
woo-hoo!
I believe it's
My Baaaaad
surrogate surrogate spelling police. woot!
You guys crack me up.
Here's Calypso earlier this evening. All dry and cute as a button!
And Clipper.
The girl with a curl! I just can't stand how cute that fleece is!
Fran - here is our angora buck, Val, after shearing. He looks awful. His fleece was so matted and felted that the shearer (who has been at it for 30 years) said it was the 2nd hardest animal to shear in his entire career. He could not even do parts of him with the clippers because the fleece was too matted. He had to use hand shears. It took about an hour to do him. When we re-clip in fall, we'll get the rest of the nasty bits off, and then he'll be good to go for spring shearing.
Oh, I feel just a-a-a-a-a-awful about my mis-ewes of the language.
I'm much more fluent in don-haw-haw-haw-key-he-he-he-hooooo
{{kick, shimmy, wiggle}}
=0)
mis-ewes.....ROTFL.....clever!
Every now and then magic happens in this ol' noggin'
Thanks. =0)
Beaut!!lolol
I am a bit comfused as to why you would wait until fall to clean up the wild fibers, why not get them now so you have decent fall fiber? Or is that the novice in me asking questions?
I can understand the shearer no spending anymore time.. for him time is real money.. but why wouldn't you continue to trim him?
Read this as: asking a real question.. wanting a real answer.. no accusing anyone of being lazy, just really trying to understand how this works. Are you suppose to wait?
And what do you do with all that felted fiber? Is this straight to the compost pile? Which BTW, I hear makes the best addition to a compost pile.. scare the dickens out of regular garden pest visitors one you start using your compost.
My very matted but Tank.. His skin underneath is in very poor conditon.. not light white flakes.. more like heavy duty scabs. I can't wait to get him sheared. It is suppose to be soon.
Fran, one of the problems with shearing poor Val was that he got a lot of nicks and cuts. The skin on an angora goat can be sort of loose and when his fleece was soooo matted and stuck to him, it's genuinely hard to tell where the fleece ends and where the skin begins! So, we went as close as we could in some areas, but the matted fleece that was really close to the skin remains in some areas. We need to wait a few weeks at least, probably more like months, for enough new, clean fleece to grow in from underneath so that we can successfully shear off the nasty bits without cutting him. The shearer even used a utility knife in some areas to cut away the nasty stuff.
In order to have decent fall fiber, you'd have to remove every bit of fiber on him, and the matted stuff is just too hard to remove without potentially taking off skin with it. The shearer said that the mats will loosen a bit when Val gets out in the rain, etc over the coming months.
Val's skin was also in awful condition. If Tank is as bad as Val, you can probably only get "close" to the skin, but not right down to it. The shearer may also have trouble using the electric shears if he is as matted as Val was. They are SHARP but they just couldn't get through it.
We will probably continue to shear Val as little bits of the matting come loose, or are able to be sheared without skin nicks.
Yes, his fleece is going into the compost pile. The only thing to keep in mind is that if you put it into a veg garden that you till with an electric or gas tiller, it will get totally messed up and knotted in the tines. Use on a perennial bed if that is the case, or in other areas not destined for tilling.
Congrats on the babies. They are so cute. They look so soft. Twins just like predicted. Now awaiting triplets! hehehe Poor goat. :D
Oh, the triplets are in Kitkat, and she's an Icelandic sheep! If she has goats, I will be truly stunned. ;-)
I am hoping to take a video of the lambies this weekend and if I do, I'll YouTube it and post a link.
Can't wait CMoxon......
Janet
Ooops! Yes that would be a weird moment huh? She looked so brown in the pic. I did not know sheep were brown too. Goes to show how little I know about the livestock end. hehehe
Yup, brown sheep like that have a special name to describe their color: Moorit. There are lots of sheep color/marking names, like katmoget and gulmoget and moorit and many others....it's a whole other language!
Whole nother, Claire. You tease....are you saying that just for the pleasure of leaving out the 'n' ? }:-p....
gives me goosebumps just thinking of 'lothers instead of 'nothers....
{{smirk, snigger, muffledsnort}}
It's the Canadian in me, 'sperimentin' with the lingo.... ;-)
Oh. Well. In that case. You GO girl! Practise makes perfekt....lol
Visited the lambs just now and they are starting to get their feet under them more securely. Calypso did several leaps and jumps while I was in with them. They are just so cute!
Would love to see video at some point. Sheep and pigs are my next fits to the farm here. Our winter ice storm did huge damage to the woods and fences so not this year (:-() but soon. And I'm very interested in the Icelandics. With all our wonky weather the last two years durable and versatile are sounding very good. Would like to find an 'heirloom' type pig too...
Choctaw, Mulefoot, Guinea Hog, Ossabaw Island, Red Wattle. I want an heirloom hog too!
Well, hog. Any suggestions? Or were those ALL what I should get?
googlegooglegoogle....
Tamworth...
ALERT, ALERT...
CMoxon going native!
Woooo-EEEeee, WOOOOoo-EEEEeee
Danger, danger (say THAT with a hard 'G')
Golly gee willikers...
Or is it just a virus?
LOL Jay
What? Me? Going native? What?
It's insidjus....creeps up on ya when yer in yer unawares...
{{{hiding under rock}}}
Surely you know the story, Moxon. Wild young woman from Canada is sent to the USA by her proper parents with hopes that she will finally succeed and not embarrass the family. But while there she is corrupted and "goes bush". Animals everywhere, unmentionable things on the bottom of her shoes, inappropriate posts.
Oh the HORROR, THE HORROR!
LMBO :0
Oh Catscan, you plagiarized that last line from Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness. I remember it!!
Nah, that's not plagarism... that's creative license. Sorta like found art...
LOL
Dang I never got through that one...
Definitely a "must read", along with "The Great Gatsby".
"They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made . . . ."
I want someone to clean up my mess....any offers?:0)
I think I headed to Conrad after I had done Fitzgerald. Probably why I never got through or don't recall. My cheerful-meter almost broke...
Hooo.... I read to escape depressing people. }=oP
If I want to get depressed, all I have to do is call my family... instant downer.
Give me fluff...
=0)
LOL. I haven't read anything like that since I graduated my melodramatic teens...
"The Great Gatsby" is about the only American Lit. I like, except for Henry James. What's depressing about the storey of a man who builds his life around an exquisite fantasy of love, only to have it end in death and disenchantment? And then there are those enormous eyeglasses.....