All About the Sheep

I mean, what else could today's post be about, really? The first lambs of the season born yesterday AND the shearing? All about the sheep, indeed.

So! Shearing first! Only because I'm mean and like to make you wait until the very end for the much-coveted and oftentimes shrilly-demanded lamb photos.

Buncha harpies, the lot of you.

ANYWAY.

Shearing. Yes.

The woolly before shot.

We love our shearer. We love that he will come out to shear only seven sheep. We love how nice he is to the sheep, talking to them and telling them what good girls they are. We love how knowledgeable he is about sheep, having grown up on a huge sheep operation himself, which he still helps to run. And we love how he charges only whatever the shepherd thinks is fair and can afford. He is, to put it mildly, a very nice guy.

He is also a very good shearer.

The woolly action shot.

It takes him less than an hour to shear our small flock, and he doesn't even mention what a pain in the ass it is that our three Merino ewes have undocked tails. We know it is a pain to shear undocked sheep, but we bought those Merinos from some people who raised their sheep "naturally," which included not docking lambs' tails. And if the tails aren't docked before the lambs are about a week old, it becomes less like snipping off a tiny little annoyance and more like major surgery. So we have three undocked sheep, but our shearer just works around their tails.

Still in action. Less woolly all the time.

Notice the very nice platform A. constructed to get both the shearer and the sheep out of the nasty mudbath that was the shed. The shearer very much appreciated this dry, solid platform. I get the distinct impression that he has done his share of shearing sheep in the field and much prefers to have a floor to work on.

The shepherd's crook, by the way, was a great success. Whenever it was time to get the next sheep out of the pen, A. would just step in, snag it around the neck with the crook, and grab it to wrestle it to the gate. Things go much faster when you're not actually chasing sheep around the pen. Imagine that.

So, 45 minutes after getting his machine buzzing and clipping . . .

Wool? What wool? I have no wool.

Okay, they actually do have SOME wool left--enough to keep them warm, anyway. And Bonnie did get sheared after all, despite her very recent lambing. The shearer said it was okay, and he knows WAY more about sheep than we do, so we went with his expert opinion.

And speaking of Bonnie and her procreation!

LAAAAAMBS!!!!

I know you can only see one whole lamb in that picture and one lamb butt, but you'll just have to trust me that there are two whole lambs there, both of which are girls. And since we no longer have Donnie (R.I.P.) and don't have to worry about inbreeding, we might actually keep the ewe lambs this year.

Now to start thinking of names . . .