Merry Christmas

Wishing you a bountiful Holiday.  Sharing time with Good Friends and Family.

May you find time this Holiday Season to settle in with a new book,
Knitting or Spinning project that you've treated yourself to.

From Our Flock to Yours,
Merry Christmas

the season has come...

Breeding season for the Shetlands is upon us.  We set up our breeding groups a little later that I wanted to but we've been so darn busy.  August through October is just non-stop.  We set up our groups on October 25, 20014 and will keep them together for 6 weeks.  We have two 'old girls' that we will keep to the day that they die.

While the breeding groups are together these girls are with the lambs and Llama's, yet they are still going through their heat cycles and just making the boys crazy.  Hopefully we won't have anything happen, as these girls deserve a break.  They are 11 yrs old and all they have to raise are their fleeces.

The Seven Dwarfs.....I mean Rams!

These a some of the little guys that I've held back from our fall 2013 breeding season.  I feel we really have some nice quality rams and wanted to hang onto them to watch them develop and have a selection available to other breeders.
From left to right:  a nice scurred Katmoget emsket ram, very nice fleece, next a very nice wide horned spotted moorit & white ram, a medium fleece with a nice handle, with the sun shining on him his spots are not quite visible.  Then we have a very nice katmoget, grey in color with very small scurs and a fleece that looks better every day and dense.  The 4th one in is a scurred Katmoget ram whose color is of the moorit base but very light in color.  He has a very dense fleece and impresses me more every day.
The black & white horned ram will be wethered, he has a great personality and a beautiful sheen filled fleece.  He would make someone a great fiber friend.
The 6th ram in is a very nice scurred ram, katmoget fawn fleece with a very nice length and handle.
The 7th ram in 1yr. old, grey fleece, katmoget pattern with beautiful horns, nice & wide and a really respectful personality.
If interested in a future breeding ram send me an email for further information.

What's New?! Coats!!

We have finally been able to get some coats for some of the girls.  These are a few of the lambs that I have coated so far.  Invested in the "Rocky Sheep Coats", they are quite nice.  Followed their site to measure my sheep, but I've found that my measurements didn't quite fit their measurement. 

 I found my measurement to be 2 inches too short.  But no harm done, I just had to put coats on sheep according to how they fit.  I will still need to order more coats, as the larger sheep need bigger coats and I don't know if these coats will make it until early March when we shear.
But I know I am excited that I will have much cleaner fleeces next year.....Yea!!

This group is set up in a temporary shelter and I haven't been able to get in with them to put on their coats.  As you can see that beautiful black horned ram in there.  This is my 'Whistlestop' ram, he has a great personality, but I don't want to get between him and his girls. 

Ashland County, Autumn Fiber Festival

We had a great time at the Autumn Fiber Festival.  This was our first year at this event and we will be back!  It was great to talk, reconnect  and meet with so many other fiber enthusiast. 
Now we come into a slower time (hopefully) and can replenish our stock.  Since my last post we (my guild, The Algonquin Spinners & Weavers) have participated in three festivals demonstrating, for a total of 14 days.  Then Dave Lewis and I helped with one Fair for the fleece judging.
We have begun setting up our breeding groups with high expectations for quality lambs and colors next year.  Will post more about some changes we are planning soon....
That's all for today!



  

Ram lambs # 108 & #125

 These two rams are both Grand Luxe offspring

on the left is #108, the right #125

108 has the katmoget pattern, with moorit based color.

125 has a moget pattern with the darker markings on the face and legs.  The pattern does not run down the neck, under the belly and up the backs of the legs.

 #108 was born April 2, 2014 he has a nice long appearance, his fleece has a very soft handle.  He has small scurs which shouldn't grow very much and a wonderful personality, very friendly, but respectful.
His Dam:  DLS Eve, Reg.# S35375 micron 26.4 Comfort Factor 81.7
His Sire: ShelteringPines Grand Luxe, Reg.# S34244 micron 24.9 Comfort Factor 92.4

 This is the crimp on his shoulder, click on the picture to biggify.

 This is the crimp on his rump.

 This is #125 he has a moget pattern. Born April 14, 2014.  His fleece color would be considered light grey.  He has very small scurs, just nubbins.

His Dam:  DLS Chloe Reg.# S35376 she is a light grey moget also.  Her micron 29.5 Comfort Factor 58.7

This ewe is one of a couple that I've kept in my flock and have bred to finer fleeced rams.  They have a wonderful handle to their fleeces, great sheen and nice length.  I am trying to incorporate their special traits along with finer fleeces.

His Sire:  ShelteringPines Grand Luxe Reg.# S34244 micron 24.9 Comfort Factor 92.4

 This rams fleece length is a shorter than #108, yet crimpy.

 This is the crimp at his rump.

These are two more to consider if you are looking for a breeding ram this fall.

I have two more special ones to show you hopefully tomorrow.

Ram Lambs #94 & #98

Ram #94 on the left & Ram # 98 on the right.

Both of these lambs are out of Sheltering Pines Grand Luxe

Registration # S34244

He is a wonderful ram that I have had the opportunity to use on my ewes.

These two have very typey shetland tails & scurs.

They both have the Katmoget pattern, although #98 on the right has the darker underbelly & rear.

Click on the photo to 'biggify' #94 has a nice crimpy fleece at the shoulder.

This ram was born March 21, 2014 -twin

I had a pic. of his fleece on the rump but accidentally deleted it while setting up this post.

But he has a consistant style of crimp through his fleece and it is dense.

 #94's Dam is Whistlestop 1113 Reg. # S33987

Her micron is 25.8 Comfort Factor: 92

Sheltering Pines Grand Luxe, micron 24.9 Comfort Factor 92.4



This is #98, he is a nice solid ram, he is was born March 23, 2014 - twin

Dam:  DLS Sweet Pea Reg.# S36683

Sire:  Sheltering Pines Grand Luxe Reg. # 34244

Sweet Pea's micron 23.6 Comfort Factor 90.2

Grand Luxe micron 24.9 Comfort Factor 92.4



This ram has nice wide scurs and color.

His fleece is a very nice fawn color and he has crimp!

This is the crimp on his rump.

This guy has a nice look to him and a great personality.

I have a few more ram lambs I will be posting about that will be available.

They all have respectful dispositions and would make a positive addition to any flock.

We have been breeding for finer fleeces and these are some of the results.

Inquire by email if interested.



Our Flock

This is our entire flock of ewes and lambs.  I have several crossbred 2yr.old ewes and 2013 crossbred ewes available.  Several shetland ewes are also available.

I have posted a couple pictures under the 'for sale' tab....of course my camera is acting up and I could get certain pics. loaded...so I will try and take more Saturday.

Saturday, July 9, 2014 I will be demonstrating spinning at the "Heritage Forest Festival" at the Tuscarawas Co. Fairgrounds.  If you are in the area stop by, this is a free event and we will be spinning under the grandstand.

...gorgeous ram for sale

The above four photos are posted here for a fellow shetland sheep breeder who does not use the internet regularly.  If you are interested in this gorgeous ram contact me and I will put you in touch with him. 
This is a 3 Month old  purebred shetland ram *this ram can be registered and would make an excellent ram to be used to improve a shetland flock in both fleece and conformation.  His horns will be good, he has a respectful disposition and a gorgeous grey/emsket fleece.  He will be ready to be used on your flock this fall. He is $250.00
This ram lambs sire is: http://www.mtn-niche.net/NASSA/nassa_pedigree.php?pregno=S38656


See next post for more Sheep available for sale......

Sheep for Sale

After evaluating our lambs from this year I have more that I want to keep, so I have to let some of the adult ewes go.  I have approximately 10 ewes that I would like to move on and a couple of crossbred ewe lambs to go also.

I have mostly registered shetlands and some shetland cross.  Top picture shows a Moorit based ewe, her fleece color is Musket. Next pic. down shows two  Katmoget ewes, above picture shows a light grey shetland along with some of the crossbred ewes.  The crossbred ewes are 3yrs.old. The crossbred ewes have been sold!!!  The shetlands range in age from 4-5 yrs old.  (2 ewe crossbred lambs approx. 3 months old. These two are sold!)
I did not get pictures of all these ewes, as it is sometimes difficult to get them separated for individual photos.
I have several nice quality shetland rams that have very nice fine fleeces and would be a great addition to a registered shetland flock.  The Shetlands are registered, the shetland ram lambs can be registered.
Pricing on adult ewes is reasonable, what I would consider my prime shetland ram lambs the price is $250.00 as a registered ram. 

I have other ram lambs that are available, that would make nice grass eaters if that is what you are looking for , I would not consider as breeding rams and would 'crimp' them before they left the farm.
These would be available for $1.80 / lb.

Fencing Project: Day 7

WE DID IT !!!  We have completed our fencing project.  I have been wanting to get this done for soooo long and now it is completed.  I want to say, a big THANK YOU to my son, Brian, friend, Dave and my husband, Lloyd for spending their time helping me.  I could have never done this by myself.  I know the next time I drive down the road and see a stretch of fence, new or old that was run I will appreciate all the work that I know was put into getting it up.  Most people don't think twice about something like this, but there is a lot of 'now how' that goes into a project like this.

I still have work to do on the interior fencing, but I can work on that at a more leisurely pace. 
I temporarily tied off the new area of pasture so I can gradually introduce grass back into their diet, I loaded them up on hay prior to turning them out into what I call a paddock.  Once they've eaten this down I plan to let them graze the interior fenced area a couple of days before letting them out into the larger pasture.

I have hopes of cleaner fleeces too.....this will be another post as we will be working on coats for some of the sheep.

Hope everyone enjoys a day of rest today....I know I certainly will.
Take Care,

Fencing project: Day 6

No picture today.....I was too tired to walk back there again..  We had trouble of course, fussing around the next corner, between a tree root that we had to use a chain saw on and a good dip in the ground that we had to add a T-post in the line just to help with the angle as we worked through the corner.

After several hours spent getting around the corner, we did manage to get the rest of the roll of wire unrolled and stretched just beyond this corner.  Crimping another roll of wire together and temporarily tying it upright to the posts.  I had to go to the hardware and buy new bolts, washers and nuts for the woven wire stretcher as we had one fail and had to cut it off....small price to pay as we wouldn't have been able to do this job without it.  We stopped at this point calling it a day......now I feel whipped!

The next stretch, should go well and hopefully we will make the final stretch in our next workday....finishing the job........I hope.
Stay tunned.....

Fencing Project: Day 5

This was the first stretch of wire that we ran, it went pretty good.

We stretched the wire around this corner.....we were told that, "yeah, you can stretch it around the corner".
Well, we tried and that first line post that you see after the corner?  Well we snapped it off like a toothpick!
Thank goodness my son was here to help us on his day off of work.  Brian and friend, Dave came up with the idea to drill a hole into what remained of the post in the ground, screw into it a large aggressive wood screw and use my new post hole remover tool to pry it out of the hole.  It pulled right out!  I was so glad, cause I thought we would be done with our plan of finishing this stretch of wire.  Thank goodness we had a few posts left over and pounded a new one into the hole.  We were able to finish this run to the next corner.

This was a final stretch of wire to run today, we stopped at the far corner and called it a day.  We spent about 10 hours on this fence today.  I am thinking the we may get the final two stretches run tomorrow.
Check back later for updates.....it would be great to get the sheep out in the pasture this weekend!

Fencing project: Day 4

We had a short day of working, due to rain most of the morning....but still we were able to finishing
getting all the inline strainers attached to all the corner posts.  This is a far off picture of one of the interior
corners.  We will actually have two separate interior areas.  A smaller enclosure around the barn, maybe the ram area.  Then another area just to the outside of this as a rotational area.

This corner and the one at the other end of the trees are part of the interior fence line, also the second rotational area I mentioned above.  Now I can try and get all those t-posts aligned and stretched in between. 
Now we are ready to stretch fence whoo hoo!!
Since we are putting this up ourselves and have never put this type of fence up, we wanted to do it correct.
So I've been following the "how to" instructions on www.staytuff.com  as this is the fencing I am using.  The high tensile wire knot was confusing in the written instruction with still pictures.  So I did find a you tube video, which I've added to my blog in a posting today.  Quite simple when you can watch someone else do it. 

The girls are tired of being cooped up in the barn, they go to the fence and stare at the grass....trying to will it to them, or think how can I get out there!!
With great ambitions I hope to have them in grass by this weekend!!!
.....that's all for today, we'll see how much we get done for tomorrow's post.
...stay tuned...

Tying Off High Tensile Wire

Fencing project: Day 3

Well....I think this is day 3 of working on the fence.  I thought I better number the posts, since we will be on this project for a while.  We really need the weather to cooperate with us, we have gotten so much rain the ground is completely saturated.  We have not tried to work in the lower corners as we would be buried to the top of our boots in mud.  So we are working on the high ground.  We have completed putting in all the brace posts.....yesterday....YEAH!!!

We have finished putting up the inline strainers on two corners and one end (the wire with a ratchet) and will continually 'ratchet' them as the weather changes to keep the corners tight.  We still have three corners and the other end to do yet.....and of course while the man was here to pound the posts in, we had some extra posts.  So I had him put in three extra corners for my interior fence.  The interior fence is some thing I can work on later, my main focus right now is to get the perimeter fence up so I can get the sheep out in the field. 
Hope to have an update tomorrow for what we do today!

Taking on our biggest project

We have been planning for some time to get our land fenced in for the sheep and it is finally becoming a reality.  We researched who had the supplies we needed and went with Straight A's, just outside of Minerva, Ohio http://www.ranchcity.com/ .  We found they had everything we needed, plus advice on 'how to'  when you are putting up fencing yourself and have never done it before.

Last week we had a local man come and pound the posts into the ground that was a sight to see.  He was actually pretty fast.  Once we had an understanding of what to do we were able to keep ahead of him.  It took six hours to get all the posts into the ground.  Thank goodness we've had alot of rain, as this made it easy to get across the top of the hill, which is very hard shale ground.

This week I hope to get the woven wire up, as I have taken a week off of work and with the help of our 'great friend' Dave, we are getting alot done.

 The largest part of the fence will run through the woods, which I didn't take a picture of and will probably be the most difficult part.  But, this will be sooooo nice when it is done, I can't wait!

The roll of woven wire in the pic. was part of the old fencing, which I will still use as part of an interior fence.  It is nice to have a couple of separate fenced areas so the sheep can be moved around to rotate into the pastures, which means leaving the grass grow in one area for a while without letting the sheep in so it can grow, then moving them back into that area and out of another area to let it re-grow.

~hence, it is called 'rotational graising'.

That's all for today, plan to post our progress as we take on our biggest project.







Three ram lambs available

These our the first of more ram lambs that I need to post for sale.  The two in the back are siblings, back left #94 (lamb tag) scurred katmoget, light fawn in color, very nice fleece.  Back right #94 horned katmoget, horns are yet to be determined on this guy, but a fine fleece he is.  In the front lamb tag # 113, fleece is a little darker in coloration that the other two, he is scurred.
THESE LAMBS ARE WEANED AND READY TO GO!!

Lamb # 94, born March 21, 2014.  When I look over all of the ram lambs that I have available, my eye keeps coming back to this guy.  He is scurred, has a very light colored face and a soft fleece, very type tail and a wooly patch on his forehead.  This lamb is weaned and ready to go!!
His Dam is Whistlestop 1113  http://www.mtn-niche.net/NASSA/nassa_pedigree.php?pregno=S33987
His Sire is Sheltering Pines Grand Luxe http://www.mtn-niche.net/NASSA/nassa_pedigree.php?pregno=S34244

#94 Typey tail.

#94 This is a fine typey ram that would help develope anyones fleeces into finer, softer spun yarns.
Dams Micron:  Mic.Ave 25.8, SD 3.5, CV13.6, CEM 6.0, CF 92.0
Sires Micron:  Misc Ave 24.9, SD 6.2, CV16.3, CEM 7.1, CF 92.4

This is Lamb tag # 95, twin to the above ram, born March 21, 2014  he also have a very nice fleece, very clearly marked pattern and a wool patch on his forehead.  See details above regarding Dam and Sire.  This ram has a darker katmoget pattern, he has full horns, at this time we will still need to keep watching the horns to know if they will be 'good'. 

This is Lamb tag # 113 Katmoget ram lamb slightly darker in fleece than the two above.  He has scurs and a nice little patch of wool on his forehead.  He was born April 6, 2014 he also have a very nice fleece.
He is weaned and ready to go. 
His Dam is Autum:  http://www.mtn-niche.net/NASSA/nassa_pedigree.php?pregno=S29349
His Sire is Shelterpine Grand Luxe http://www.mtn-niche.net/NASSA/nassa_pedigree.php?pregno=S34244

Dam Micron:  Autum: Mic ave 27.1, SD 5.2, CV 19.3, CEM 9.0 CF 74.5
Sire Micron:  Grand Luxe Mic ave 24.9, SD 4.1, CV 16.3, CEM 7.1 CF 92.4

This is all for today, I have more to post, stop back and look for updates.
You can also view my March & April posts to see most of the lambs as they were born. I do have two spotted ram lambs that can be seen in previous posts and will be added to this list soon.

Thanks for looking!

If interested contact by number given in Ad or link to me through the email address above.