Updates!

Boy we've been busy! 14 ewes have lambed since Pandan & Parsley. We took our annual trip out to Ramsay Farms in New York Mills, MN for to see our bestie, Garrett, and to go to the exotic animal auction hosted by Vern Paustch in three seperate locations through-out the year. It's been a bi-annual tradition for us ever since they started the auction up there, though we've missed a few here and there. It was great to see Garrett again, that's for sure! Anyway, lets start at the beginning!

All was quiet until the 8th of April, which means no one won the contest! :( We had 4 ewes on the starting date!

River Oaks Tasha X North Star Lightning McQueen gave us twins, a ram and a ewe, both black as the night and nice tight crimpy fleeces. So far the ram will be available, but we will know more after both have been evaluated

Quartz(Heinz 57) X Sampson (Romeldale) gave us a little single. This is her first time lambing and she did great! A beautiful snow white ram lamb with amazing looking fleece. I was loving having used a Romeldale already! He will be available for sale as a fiber wether or flock sire or meat until we ship to market in the fall.

Lil'Country Maid Marion X North Star Forsetti gave a sweet little black smirslet sokket with a white tip on her tail! "Angelica" certainly looks like she has a halo! She will probably be for sale.

And finally, miss Winter Sky Torrent gave BEAUTIFUL twin grey katmoget ram lambs out of Lightning. Now, this should be interesting, as she's a horned ewe, and he's a poll carrier ram. :) Both boys are stunning, one a little better than the other. Being both parents are katmoget, they could be homozygous kat as well. One of these boys will likely be staying with us.

On the 9th, we walked out to find one of our maiden babydoll X Shetland ewes with a beautiful little ewe lamb at her side. Mica did great on her first run! Again, this baby will be available as a fiber animal, otherwise we'll keep her to add to the meat producer flock. Daddy is Sampson.

On the 10th, Thor finally was a daddy for this year! White Pine Salida had a little krunet katmoget ram lamb. Cute little fuzzy bugger. He got out of the fence first thing, as Glenmore March Maddness was trying to steal him away from his mother! Salida is lower on the totem pole, so wasn't fighting back much, but he knew who his mommy was, and she never gave up on him. We moved them to another pen and now mommy and son are fully bonded with no problem :)

Also one of our F2 Orion ewes went that day too, North Star Arkrose had a moorit gulmoget ram lamb with Forsetti. Tiny little bugger, but very spry!

Skip a day...lol

On the 12th, Diamond (3/4 BFL 1/4 Shetland ) X Sampson had a little white ram. Beautiful boy! Will have a LOVELY fleece.

We left early morning Friday the 13th for Garretts. Got a call that afternoon that Olga had two lambs. Mom said "One was lighter, one was darker" so I'm assuming a katmoget and a gulmoget, as they were in Thors pen and he has the ability to throw either. We went out today to find two gulmoget EWE lambs! One is nicely marked with a heavy krunet, the other is the darkest marked gulmoget I've ever seen! She's so dark I hardly saw she was a gulmoget.

Mom met us out at Garretts Friday night, got there just after we'd gone to bed. We all woke up that morning and went to Lakes Cafe, as tradition dictates, for breakfast. We all nudge and poke each other during the auction, and Garrett ended up going home with more ducklings than he had intended, and we also took home 10 call ducklings. We left for the sheep and goats and went to get lunch while Garrett went home and took care of the puppies & other critters. Unfortunately we missed out on a spotted potbelly gilt we had wanted as a friend for Missy, but oh well. I ended up buying the last cage of the auction, well, because I hadn't gotten anything else! LOL. He's probably a 2 year old red golden male pheasant, beautiful and fairly tame (considering he got loose in the topper and we had to catch him while putting sheep in).

We always hate leaving Garretts, because he's so busy and it's so far we only get to see him a few times a year, so we stayed Saturday night and late into Sunday. We went out for supper at the VFW and had nummy greasy burgers, and then came home and had a glass of wine. Sunday, we helped him tag all his lambs, and I finally got to find out what our wedding present was! He let me take a sheep! So we got to welcome White Pine LaBelle to our flock, along with River Oaks Eliza, and probably a few more this fall (even though I said no buying sheep this year...lol). It always sucks leaving a good friend.

So we headed home to pick up Pandan from Adams parents house, and then headed to Hinckley, to deliver him to his new parents. They had already driven from southern WI, to IA, and then up to Hinckley. They had already picked up Pandans future girlfriends, and boy was I jealous! They're were beautiful! Kendra is going to have a great start in the Romeldales/CVMs! I can't wait to see photos of him when he's grown. I miss the little butthead already, but to be able to sell a house, it's kind of important to get it ready, and with a demanding bottle baby, that's really hard!

So, while we were gone, we had 4 ewes lamb! Crazy chaos! hehe. Babydoll had twins by Sampson, beautiful, looks like either two ewes or one of each. Bedegrayne had a cute little fawn kat krunet ewe lamb, but unfortunately her daughter wasn't as lucky. Ruby had a 10-12 lb stillborn single moorit ewe lamb. She was/is sooo sad :( It's never easy to lose one, espically something so helpless as a lamb. It looks like it may have been backwards, so probably not an easy birth, so we're glad Ruby is still okay.

And last, but definitely not least, Charm did it again, only better! This year, instead of triplet boys, 2 white, one katmoget, she really outdid herself. This year, all three were moorit based instead of just one. One solid moorit with little romeldale type teardrops like dad, one smirslet flecket, and one wildly spotted yuglet flecket. And guess what....ALL EWES! WOOHOO! :)

And now we come to today, after all the torrential rain and snow last night and today, Aurora graced us with a little black or moorit (too dark outside to tell) yuglet lamb, healthy and huge!

I will try to get photos as soon as possible, it's just really hard with the dialup to sit and wait for an hour to upload 4 pictures, even after downsizing them lol. I will try though :)

Oh and we're only 4 people away from 100 likes on Facebook, so head on over there and like us if you haven't yet! We'll be having a few giveaways when we hit 100!