Jefferson: Day 2 (9/10)...Show day!

I didn't take a ton of photos today, was too busy sweating as this was our first year showing. I'm proud to announce that Lightning was "moved forward" in the first round of them pulling their favorites forward for Best Fleece on Hoof, and honestly, as many animals as were there, I was really proud. I know it's not much, but it made me happy :) I found out, however, that the reason he hadn't been placing higher, is his bite is off a bit, so his breeding pen is limited this year to hopefully see if it's something he passes on or not. Anyway, here's the very few photos I took on Show Day! :)
"I'm ready for my closeup!"

Goofy boy wanted to try on dad's hat :)
"Ready, willing and able! Let me show 'em what I got!"


Mom standing in line with Lightning, awaiting entry into the ring :)




Mom was SO thrilled that Saigon got 4th place out of pair of ewe lambs.

Adam did SO well showing, I was so proud of him :)



I'll be nice and not post the photos of Juli's stubborn boy or Corinne's butt ;) This time..... Mwa ha ha....

Jefferson: Day 1 (9/9)

Okie dokie, Friday. Becky Utech couldn't make it, and so she graciously gave me her spot (you rock!) to the judges clinic. This is where Alan & Kate (our judges who came over from the UK to judge this show!) gave us all a course in judging our rams, something they take more seriously over in the UK.

Here Garrett is sitting with his ram White Pine Caiphas AI, as our specimen to observe how the judges evaluated him.


Here Kate is talking about the fluke shaped tails of the Shetlands and how important they are in judging a pure Shetland. If you look under the tail, it is always a V shape. Cool, huh?

One of the forms, these are the big 5. If they don't pass one of these, they generally don't pass the assessment.
Kate showing how to feel the teeth on the pad of a sheep.

Garrett feeling in another position, as sometimes they jut their jaw outward when you pull their heads up.
We all kinda got a kick out of this, but it's a good question :)

Kate showing the spiral of the horns on Caiphas.


Intent Garrett....


Innocent Garrett? Nah. :)
It's all in the hips...It's all in the hips...lol


Feelin' the back...Feelin his chest/lungs area....


Showin that they want wool up on the poll, cheeks and even some as far as wanting it all the way from the back of the head through the horns.
Alan getting some words in about length in the back, I believe. I have the whole thing on tape recorder, I should really download that one of these days. Probably need a computer upgrade first. *sigh* Sometime after Christmas maybe....
At the end of the clinic, we all got a certificate saying we could actually judge things like county fairs and stuff, cool huh? It was all very educational. I still gotta get copies of the papers to Becky though, just been kinda busy....

And afterwards, I had to go get my dose of cute and go see the newborn barn! No black faced babies this year :(




Here's mom trying to halter train one of our newest Shetlands, White Pine Saigon.
Alice grazing.
Wendy grazing...




"I'm keeping an eye on you...."
"I GIVE UP!" hehehe

Pre-Jefferson Opp: I.E. Brushing up on walking with a halter...

The pictures are kinda self explanitory...lol












Standing nicely, he finally figured out that the halter isn't so bad :)


The girls however, dont' agree :)


Everyones thinkin' they can get a quick snack while mom and dad aren't looking....



Hey Becky? Recognize that big mouth? Diamond, the 3/4 BFL originally from your place :)

Winters coming...that means more posting, right?! :D

Okay, there are more updates on my Facebook page, it's SO much easier to post on there, but I will try harder now that the busy year is winding down.

So...updates since my last post (which was September 5th...oh I'm sooo bad :( )
*Jefferson was a riot, I will post all the photos on that!
*I got married!
*Went on my honeymoon.
*I bought a small flock of CVM/Romeldales
*We're not moving out to the farm this fall, instead by spring lambing we'll be out there
*Getting everything ready for fall
*Getting breeding groups planned
*Got my hair all chopped off :)

SO much has been going on. I haven't gotten all of my wedding photos back, but I did get some from my FIL, and aunt & uncle. I'll try to go post by post and start updating everyone on my life. I think I'm going to absorb all of my blogs into one now that we can post pages. I can't WAIT until I get a website up and going :)

Hope I don't overload you with posts :)

xoxo - The Mrs.

Last call!

Sorry I've been so absent of late, but we've been getting ready for Jefferson! Anyway, just wanted to post quick that if anyone is interested in purchasing a sheepie or two, and wants it transported with us to Jefferson, I need to know by Wednesday, as we're going to the vet Thursday on our way down. :) Will have LOTS to post about when we get back :D

'Paca post

I forgot! I introduced our newest additions to the world on my FB page, but not on my blog!

First came Nitro. We bought him at auction, and were in awe of his fleece. Our gelded boys never even came close to the quality of fleece Nitro has, beautiful crimp, SO soft and fluffy. Nitro is ARI registered as Peruv Noahh's Nitro PPLLC. Can't wait to see some babies out of him. He's a 2008 model, considered "light fawn". I think the 'paca colors are almost as confusing as Shetland colors! lol. Here's Nitro with some lambs. We were SO pleased to see that he LOVES the lambs, he actually get's really upset if he can't see at least one lamb in his line of sight.


Later this summer, mom was searching for some registered females, as we had two unregistered (lost one to old age this spring) females. ((And I just realized we don't have any photos of Dyna ('Nitro' and 'Dynamite' ;-) )! She's a chocolate female with a split ear, who's hopefully bred for a cria next year! )) We found a trio (didn't really want another male, til she saw him :) ), down south of the cities, so she went to check them out, and came home with our new three!

"Herculese" is our 1999 model new male, his primary color is listed as "Medium brown" and secondary is listed as "light rose grey" not sure how they come up with these :)

Herc is a beautiful, well mannered boy, who has hopefully bred both of these girls, though Stormy looks pretty chunky already, so we'll keep an eye on her.

Next is Tiara, or "Pajolo Tiarra" as her papers say. She is a 2000 model, listed as Primary "light fawn" and secondary "white".

Isn't she purdy? I just love her face.

But the star of the show is Stormy a.k.a. "Stormy Days".
She is an absolutely stunning blue eyed white female. If I could clone her, I would. She has a beautiful body, gorgeous head, and beautiful fleece. I can't WAIT to see what she and Herc and then she and Nitro have :D

Well, that's our 'paca herd. If I'm reading these right, both the sires of Stormy and Tiara are imports, Stormy's father from Peru, Tiara's from Chile. I need to learn more about how this paperwork works...hehehe :)

Over-run with babies!

Momma pastel & 11 babies above. Will be keeping the silvers, and some of the blue bibbed, but should have a few available for sale.

We're having a duckie explosion right now! lol. We were quite disheartened this spring when a momma came up with 4 babies and one of my muscovy hens ATE them all... :( Here's kind of a funny story though...

A few days ago, a hen came up with 7 babies, so mom scooped them all up and put them in the rubbermaid stock tank so the rats can't get them. Well, momma duck flew out! The next day, mom finds "momma" with two more babies, what the heck? So she scoops them up and throws them all in. Momma now stays with the babies...strange huh? Well, she put them outside in a nice cage with a swimming bowl so they could enjoy the nice weather...and here comes this hen just a quackin' away, talking to the babies...Mom made an oops! LOL. Apparently the hen NOT with the babies hatched the first 7, and the second mom that came up with the 2 got to adopt everyone! LOL. Well, she's taking excellent care of them, and is quite alright with mom picking her and the babies up every day to be put outside, so she can keep them lol.

We also had a momma come up with TEN last night I guess! Exciting...we love our calls :)

And momma muscovy is bad :( She's lost almost half of her large brood, down to about 8 babies, but the other mommy is doing excellently with all of her 8 yet, so I still have plenty to pick from, plus the 3rd momma is off setting somewhere.

Oh! And our dewlap toulouse hen is setting! I don't know if any of the eggs will actually be fertile since the buff romans didn't hatch this spring, but we'll see :)

And I never got all the lambs evaluated the other day :( I got sunburnt and got lots of other things done, but not that. *sigh* So between the sunburn, my stomach and my head (yay for days long migraines), I've been off work for a couple nights now. HOPING I can go back tonight, but we'll see if I'm feeling okay. Hoping Saturday I will feel good enough to go out and seperate sheep, because I have one, possibly two people coming to look at and buy sheepies, yay! Some of them I REALLY hate to sell, but gotta do what ya gotta do.



PS
Max says the dog days of summer are here...hehe.



Poor old Max hates the heat, but hates being shaved even more lol. I think this is a really cute photo, might black/white it and put it in the fair :)

Sassy Sapphira

Had to post this...

This was our male llama Passion meeting the yak for the first time.

Wedding Invitations!

Front:

Left side of inside:

Backside:


I didn't upload the info page, for obvious reasons (who knows if there's someone stalking me! or Adam! LOL), but if you'd like the information to come on up, please feel free to message me! Not EVERYONE is on Facebook, contrary to popular belief, and ALL of my friends are invited so please, message me if I somehow forgotted you! And sorry for forgotting you :( I'm pretty proud of these puppies! Designed and printed by us :) And the picture of the hands is our hands, my engagement ring and his promise ring I got him. It says "Anam cara" which loosely translated means "soul friend", which soul mates we are :) Anyway! Off to some errands! Have a wonderful day!