It's Killing Me!

The waiting, that is!

Sparkles' lambs will be a week old tomorrow (tonight at 3 am, actually, but who's counting?) and Emerald and Peridot are still pregnant.

Peridot this morning

Emerald this morning.The plan was:

All lambs would come within 3-4 days of one another. All ewes and lambs would be in the barn for a week and a half. Then ALL the sheep could be turned loose on the fields at the same time.

Someone didn't get the memo. And now the ewes are going stir-crazy, and the lambs need to run free.

So today, I had to do some very complicated maneuvering. The main problem: the barn doesn't have a door (because we'll be expanding it again once the weather warms up), so we have a giant piece of plywood screwed-in to block the entrance. This would be fine if everyone had adhered to THE PLAN.

Never fear! I came up with a solution.

I moved Knox into the chicken coup (the chickens were not very happy with this situation).

The llamas were released into their temporary grazing area consisting of only two strands of electric wire that's not actually turned on. It's really just a suggestion to them, and if they wanted out, it would be pretty easy. I usually put them in there for an hour or two while I'm out doing chores in order to keep an eye on them. The sheep get to use it occasionally, but Knox has been banned due to his blatant disrespect of the non-threatening wires. This is what it looked like the day we set it up.

I then went into the barn, scooped up the lambs and had Sparkles follow me (well, the lambs) out the front door of the barn, around a set of pine trees, through the pasture gate and into the field. Luckily, she's the queen bee, and Emerald and Peridot followed her.

Once they were secured in the field, I pulled Knox (good thing he has horns and is still pretty small) out of the coup and into the secure barn.

Everyone is happy for the day, but tonight I'll have to do all this again in reverse. 

The ewes need to lamb!

Barn Expansion Update

I'll skip the typical "I can't believe it's been so long since I've posted" line that so many of us bloggers find ourselves repeating time and again. It was a nutty summer, a busy Fall, and now we're moving into winter. I'll try to catch up with summer stories during the long winter months.

But for now . . . a look at our exansion. It's coming along and will be finished in time for the first real snow!

Review (what the barn looked like):

And now . . .

That was two weekends ago--since this photo, the front has been copletely covered with plywood, but the pine tree is still laying there. The other two trees will be coming inside for us to use as Christmas trees next month.

The best part about the barn is the house door to get in. It opens directly into the animals' bedding area. So when I go out to the barn for feeding/chores, this is what I see.

Starr welcoming me into her house! It's hilarious. And she loves looking out the door to see what's going on.

The inside of the barn still has an open back wall. For this winter, we're just going to put up heavy insulation lining back there because in the spring, we'll be expanding further down again. It was silly to put up a wall just to knock it back down.

The Trifecta

Really. . . does it get any better than wool drying, sheep and llamas grazing and leaves changing?