Shearing Day is upon us...

We have been waiting for this day with excitement.  Our shearer's will be here tomorrow morning bright and early to shear my flock and my friend Dave's.  We have shared the shearing day for a couple of years now and it has worked out well.  Combined we have 59 sheep to shear and 2 Llamas.

Although looking at this picture, I wish I had a coat on my new black ram, this is going to be fun picking all that hay out of his fleece.

Meet this new group of guys we have added this past year.

On the Left is Barg's he comes from Karen Valley, my friend Dave is the proud owner of this guy.

In the middle is a new ram brought in from Oregon, from the flock of Jim Chastain, I am quite happy with this guy.  I didn't give him a name yet.  Jim only registers his animals with numbers, this is number #1107.

On the right is the white ram that I've been wanting, this is Duroy and he comes to us from Theresa Gygi in Indiana.  I am quite pleased with him too.    

We have a nice selection of rams at this time, which will serve us well for quite well for some time.

This lovely moorit is Clyde, he will be 2yrs this spring.  He has a longer fleece but still very nice

I am quite pleased with his micron avg at 24.6 and he has such beautiful horns.

To the left in this picture is Mr.Mr., he is a Rideau Arcott Ram, a canadian developed breed of a dairy ram.

This past year I have been researching the dairy breed and have decided to cross 13 of my ewes with this ram.  He is a big guy, but I suppose not any bigger than some of the Leisters that other breeders cross with their shetlands.  I have been very careful not to overfeed the ewes, I am still concerned with how the lambing will go, hopefully no problems.  I hope to develop the start of a dairy flock from these original cross breed ewe lambs that I get with this ram.  So an East Friesian ram will be needed for a end of year breeding.

This guy really has a nice fleece too, very consistant from front to back.  Can't wait to see what this fleece weighs.

Will try to get pics. while shearing.........can't wait!