Third ewe gives birth.

Will post soon.

Another lamb today...

This little black ram lamb was out in the pasture with our Black Welsh/Tunis ewe #200 this morning. He was quite spirited and cute!

Ram loose again....

That foolish white ram was out again this morning. This time though he was ready to return to the pasture right away and I didn't have much trouble getting him through the same gate as he went through on Wednesday. I hope this doesn't become a common occurrence.

Ram on the loose.

Evan and I went out to do chores this morning and Evan yells out from the deck, "Hey, one of the sheep is out!"

"No, couldn't be.", I thought. I walked over to the chicken coop side of the barn and sure enough there was our new white ram munching on grass across the fence from one of our buck goats. My only thought was that he was trying to reach the falling acorns and after finding himself on the wrong side of the electric fence had no desire to go back through the fence to rejoin the ewes.

Evan, McKayla and I tried to get him to go through one of the open gates but he was too skittish and confused to oblige. He didn't seem like he was interested in wondering too far away from the pasture with the ewes so I just left him alone and continued on with chores. After the chores were done I offered him an open gate again but he didn't go through.

Finally, after being out all day, I went back out at dusk to try again. Just me this time... no kids to get him all flighty. He was agitated and pacing the fence so he wanted to return to the pasture. I opened the gate and stepped away to give him room. He took a few cautious steps forward and then made a mad dash through the gate and across the pasture to his ewes... who had quite forgotten about him by now.

A quick sniff of all three ewes and he settled right in to grazing.

New farm additions...

We now have a small flock of sheep on the farm. Three ewes and a young ram. They were delivered today.

The three black sheep are the ewes. One is pure Black Welsh Mountain Sheep and the other two are Black Welsh/Tunis crosses. The white one is the ram. He is half Black Welsh and half Corriedale (I think, still need to check on that).

We don't intend to grow the flock, just use the lambs for meat or sale each year.

The woman who we got the sheep from also had what she was told were two Giant Chinchilla rabbits that she needed to find new homes for. Even though we have American Chinchilla rabbits I told her we would take her two GC does. I figured we could still cross them with our AC buck for meat rabbits. I was a little surprised when she took them out of the truck as they were almost solid black (but still oddly chinchilla patterned) and not the size or shape of a GC at all.

In fact they were pretty much the size and shape of my AC does as you can somewhat see from this photo. So, am not sure what these rabbits have in them, surely some chinchilla, but there is something else in there too.