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Several of my wonderful customers have expressed an interest in hearing about the goings-on around our barnyard! So I will take this opportunity to fill you in on what goes on here at Prindle Mountain when I’m not crafting or making patterns!
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New Lambs!
February and March is a very busy time of year for us, as we raise a flock of 25 sheep, which grows to over 50 around lambing-time! Around the second week of February, we can expect the first little lambs to start arriving, and by the first of March, we not only have a couple dozen adorable little critters running around in our pasture, but we are severely sleep-deprived! Sheep are not the brightest creatures, and the new inexperienced mamas-to-be in particular, seem to pick the farthest corner of the pasture to lamb. It is often in a downpour (remember this is the Evergreen State, and we live in the ever-wet Southwest Washington area!), and that’s not the best conditions for anyone, man or beast, to enter the world! This said, we have to check them every 3 hours or less around the clock! With the dear husband holding down the full-time job (I am SOOOO lucky to be able to stay at home with this internet craft business!), I usually take the middle of the night shift. To his credit, he has taken more than his share of middle-of-the-night stuff so I can get my beauty sleep! Anyway, more often than not, if there are going to be troubles lambing, it is going to happen at 3:00 a.m.! Spring 2008 update: The baby lambs shown in the photo at left turned out to be some great lambs! Our daughter, Emily, took the darker, boy lamb to the fair, and he was the Grand Champion Market Lamb! Yay for Emily! The other, lighter-colored lamb, is a girl, and we kept her. She had twins this spring, and, bless her heart, she also accepted another ewe's single lamb when it was rejected! For a yearling to raise twins plus and adopted "triplet" is almost unheard of, and certainly makes her a hero in our book! Her name is Paula, but we think she really is an angel in disguise!!! Okay, back to the story.......
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Warming Up A Baby Lamb!
Occasionally lambs are too chilled to simply warm with dry towels, and we have had to bring them in to the house. We use their mouth temperature to determine if they need to simply be warmed by the woodstove, or if they are in real danger of dying of hypothermia, and need to go into the bathtub in a warm water bath. In the past we have had some lambs who seemed totally life-less and dead, and we have brought them back from the brink by putting them in the tub. Our first experience with this was quite a shock for my husband! Eldon came home from work, and found me in the bedroom using the hair dryer on a newborn lamb! I believe this was one of our first year’s raising sheep, and I think he probably thought I had gone off the deep end! I had found a lamb in a puddle of rain that at first I thought was dead, but detected a heart-beat. I didn’t know what to do, so I got out our trusty sheep-raising book, and found out about the bathtub trick. By the time Eldon got home, the lamb had been resuscitated in the tub, and I was giving him a blow dry to take him back out to his mama! Recently we had a lamb that had a cool mouth, but not ice-cold, so we brought him in, at 2:00 a.m. (of course!) by the woodstove. As I dried him off, I noticed that his tail was short! When the lambs are born, the mother's lick them to dry them and remove the afterbirth. This one particular mama apparently got too carried away and actually ate off the lambs tail!!! Lambs are born with a long, wooly tail. In this country most people shorten the tails for hygienic reasons. This one won't have to have that done, as his mom took care of it! We had to give him antibiotics, however, to make sure this rather unconventional method didn't get infected! We band the lamb's tails at 1-2 weeks of age. It cuts off the circulation, and in a week or two it falls off. Sounds gross, but is cleaner and less painful than cutting off the tails. They are left with a tail that is 1-2" long.
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Emily's Grand Champion!
Our sheep are Suffolk sheep. The kind of sheep that are generally associated with the white wool and black faces, ears, and legs. Suffolk lambs are all black, and when their wool grows out, they will look just like their mamas. (See photo of 6 month old market lamb at left, compared to newborn lambs above). They are a meat breed sheep, and no, we do not eat them! When we first got involved in raising sheep, I laid down the law that we would not eat any of our critters! Besides all having names (my husband prefers to call them by their ear tag number, however), they have personalities and are my pets! I try not to get too attached to the boy lambs, because by late summer/early fall, they are history! It is hard to believe that these little lambs can grow to be big market lambs in 6 months or less! The kids take market lambs to our county fair in August, and we sell the rest of the lambs, with the exception of keeping 5-8 replacement ewe lambs.
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Baby Peyton and Mama Maggie!
We also have several cows. Our middle child, Emily was cow-crazy when she was a tiny little girl, and when she was 9 she was finally big enough to get a cow of her own. She now has three cows, Maggie and her calf from 2006 - Paisley, and her calf from 2007, Peyton. Maggie will calve again in June. Emily has Hereford cattle.
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Twins and their cows
Our youngest daughters, twins Kari and Kaitlyn, decided Emily was having all the fun, so they each got an Angus calf a couple of years ago, when Lizzie and Clara joined the herd. They are now two and will calve this fall. Charlie the Angus bull, joined the herd this winter.
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Bailey Jo the Farm Dog!
In addition to the cows and sheep, we have some chickens and a couple of goats. No small farm would be complete without the farm cats: Jack, Cindy, Ella, Jenny Anne, and Lexie. We also have a Border Collie, Kallie Mae, and our wonderful Great Pyrenees, Bailey Jo. We bought Bailey Jo in May of 2004. We brought home this adorable fluff ball, and according to all the literature we had read regarding raising the perfect livestock guardian dog, we put her in our sheep barn with some bottle baby lambs and left her there. Hardest thing we ever did! She had to bond to the sheep before she bonded to us, if we wanted her to perform the job we got her for. Before long, that little fluff ball was a 100 lb. bundle of love! Once she bonded to the sheep, we showered her with love and attention, and we have the best of both worlds…a dog that will protect our sheep from any of the numerous predators in our area: coyotes, cougars, bear, etc., as well as the sweetest dog we’ve ever had. Since bringing her home, we have went from losing several sheep, goats, and lambs each year, to losing nothing. Bailey Jo is the best dog ever!
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Prindle Mountain In The Snow
Well, that’s our life on the farm at Prindle Mountain. Stay tuned and I’ll have some new stories to share soon!
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