A Phrase I Never Thought I'd Hear

"Well, since we used up all of our antacid breaking out of jail..."

Jamie Hyneman

MythBusters

(The Kid is addicted to this show, and rightfully so!)

Today Included a Double Take

We've seen this before. Several times. But each time I'm startled and do a double take, even when I hoped that a particular breeding pair would produce something like this.

This is Greener Pastures Lorelei with her dam, Greener Pastures Hollyhock. Lorelei's sire is as dark as her dam, but both parents have white with spots in their ancestry.

Bright white. Pristine white. Pink nose and white hooves. And those markings on her face and neck!

And our most recent lamb is another little girl, this one from Greener Pastures Evening Primrose. I saw her being born from inside the house, and got out here just as she was getting up.

Her first meal. I forgot to check her skin color; it could be brown like her sire's, and thus affect her adult coloring. Her dam is quite a looker, and poses nicely for the camera. But she didn't want me near her lamb.

I couldn't get close enough to her dam to read the eartag, so I took a number of closeup photos in hopes of being able to magnify the photo and get a reading. I did, successfully, but just had to include this photo expressly for...

Chai Chai!

It's a good thing the back of the eartag was clean and readable. And what's that? Some brambles in the wool?

~ Ronda

Easter Lambs and Pregnant Ewes

We had a couple lambs born on Easter morning! Both boys, and both from ewes born last year! This is Kittiwake with her cute little boy. He has brown skin, a white cap and 2 white socks on his back legs. His coloring will change dramatically within a short time. His daddy is Jackpot, who can be seen in yesterday's post.

The other boy was in the barn with his dam, where photos always come out badly, so I'm waiting for a better photo opportunity.

This was apparently the Play Group on Easter; Kittiwake was hanging out in this area and Valerian stopped by to see the new baby. Her son is very curious. Very soon we will see the Lamb Races and these boys will have loads of fun together.

Turning my camera to the left, here are a couple of my favorite ewes, Lavender and Honeysuckle. Lavender is a new "auntie"... she has 4 half sisters on three other farms. One of her nieces was born on Easter and can be seen here. Lavender is also a Grandma. Her granddaughter Lollipop was shown in yesterday's post. I can hardly wait to see what she gives us this year, and Honeysuckle never fails to amaze with her lambs.

And here are pregnant Cascade Farmstead ewes ranging in age from 1 year to my beloved 4-year-old Belladonna.

Obviously, more lambs are coming!

Have I mentioned that I love lambing season???

~ Ronda

Easter Sheep. Sort Of.

Here's our Day Before Easter lamb: Greener Pastures Lollipop! And if you scroll back to the post on April 21st, you can see that the "next ewe to lamb" was the big whitish one right ahead of the ewe and her babies. Greener Pastures Jazz is the fabulous lamb shown on our A Life in the Day web page.

And here are a few photos taken Saturday of a few of our adult rams.

Greener Pastures Jackpot has wide horns and is in the early process of rooing his fleece. He was utilized as a breeding ram last fall, and is Lollipop's daddy. Lollipop has brown skin and will likely be blonde like her Pa.

Greener Pastures Jester, Jumping Jack Flash and Redwood are lined up for a photo shoot. You can see how much Jester's and JJ's horns have grown since January if you look at the previous post. Redwood was utilized as a breeding ram last fall. I am surprised that his horns are not quite as wide as I would like... his sire had really wide horns, and his dam carried the genetics for wide horns. Because he has genetics on his sire's side that I really needed, I utilized him carefully with selected ewes whose sires had really wide horns.

I have photos and thoughts on body structure to share in my next post. Oh yeah... and hopefully more lamb photos!

Happy Easter!

~ Ronda

Catching Up On Ram Photos

While we wait for more new lambs, I'm catching up on all the photos I took last summer and winter.

These handsome boys are just a few of the Cascade Farmstead rams in our flock. Greener Pastures Indigo on the left was nearly 3 years old at the time this photo was taken; Jan 2, 2011. Quite a rack of horns, huh? His twin brother lives in Missouri, and I'm hoping to see photos of Juniper sometime. You can see a larger photo at the bottom of this page.

Greener Pastures Jumping Jack Flash (black with super wide horns) and Greener Pastures Jester are shown at right. At the time of this photo they were nearly 2 years old. JJ's horns are wider than we normally see, and are quite useful when breeding to a ewe that we know carries narrower horns.

Indigo was utilized for two breeding seasons; once as a flock ram for his group of allotted ewes, and I was so pleased with his progeny that the following year he had another breeding group as well as performing duties as a "clean up ram." Last fall I kept him just as pasture decoration and as my Grandpa Ram in the Bachelor Boy pasture. If the economy hadn't sucked so much, I would have kept him longer, but since I no longer needed him for breeding, we ate him. And that's what this breed is for! Several rams were butchered at that time and we processed them into the best tasting burger we've ever had.

More photos to go through, so you'll see more activity on my blog than you've seen in a long time! Woo hoo!

~ Ronda