The End of a Lamby Week

I came home from college yesterday and to my great surprise and pleasure, my last ewe was going into labor! A couple of hours later, I had two beautiful ewe lambs. Both are HST, and their names are Etta and Lady :) That makes the total lamb count six ewes and two rams.
Here is a selection of lamb snapshots from today's fun!

Izzy with the two new arrivals!! Both sired by Bard. Etta is left and Lady is right

Little Etta posing for the camera 

Phoebe and Florence hanging with mom

Inseparable sisters

Rosie with her beautiful baby Daffy

Its the year of the HST

Oliver and Dickens are growing quite well

Oliver has the sweetest face

As the only ewe that didn't get bred this year, Faye is looking quite svelte and ready for the upcoming show season!

Margery is full of mischief and cuteness

The Day of Lambs

Yesterday was quite the day for lambing at the Wild Air Farm! Two ewes finally had their babies. The first one was expected, she had gone off grain that morning and was separating herself from the flock. The second one was my ewe Rosie, who I did not expect to lamb until early May! Minnie gave us two stunning girls, Florence is the black and white HST and Phoebe is a black gorgeous gulmoget (both of them I expect to be grays once their lamb fleece grows out). Rosie gave us a little ewe lamb, who we are calling Daffodil (Daffy for short).
I have not had this many ewe lambs on the farm since my first year lambing. I am headed home from college to see them this weekend and cannot wait :)
The sire to all my lambs this year is Bard, and he has done a wonderful job. Although, the running joke on the farm at the moment is he seems to have introduced skeleton facial marking! That being said, I am super happy with all the lambs, and our last ewe should give us more very soon.

Florence and  Phoebe fresh from the womb

Phoebe drinking from Minnie

They have such sweet faces!

Rosie's baby Daffy

Daffy

Oliver and Dickens

Yesterday two little boys arrived on the farm! Eloise gave me two beautiful rams. Both are dark gulmogets and have lovely facial markings. I am thrilled that both ended up with the pattern!

Dickens is the lamb standing up, Oliver is on the ground

Margery has a striking face :)

This leaves three more ewes to pop, and a lot more snow to melt!

Lambing Begins!

Much to my surprise, on my trip home this weekend, I was gifted with the most beautiful little ewe lamb. Margery is the daughter of Bard and Melody. I believe that she will be a gray bersugget, with a crazy panda face that for now I'm calling yuglet.

She is everything I was hoping for from my new breeding ram this year and I am super excited to see how she grows up. 

Spring

Spring is here! Only the inch of snow we have received today is not so convincing...
Lambs are going to arrive soon and in order to make room for the new I figure it would be a good time to highlight the old.
Show season ended with Remy getting champion Shetland at the Topsfield Fair and even more exciting... Pascal's fleece won Reserve Champion Primitive Fleece at Rhinebeck Sheep and Wool Festival!! We are incredibly proud of this bloodline and are very excited to see what lambs this year brings.
Speaking of lambs, we have five bred ewes this year. All five were bred by Bard and should be lambing in the next month. The older brood ewes are Izzy, Eloise, Melody, and Minnie. The fifth is, unfortunately, my best yearling this year, who had an encounter with the ram after the older ewes figured out how to open the gate. So an extra baby will be bouncing around the farm this spring.
I will have plenty of lambs for sale this year as well as a yearling, Faye, and one of my older brood ewes. So if anyone is interested please feel free to contact me with questions! I will be posting more about for sale animals later when all the lambs are born.

North East Youth Sheep Show

This past weekend we made our way out the NEYSS at the Eastern States Exposition! It was loads of fun and filled with the best people :) We made out really well this year and I couldn't be happier with the results.

My border Leicester, who I bought from the farm of Colin Sigmound, got first place yearling ewe and champion white Border Leicester!

Rosie was placed as first place ewe lamb out of a class of 15 other lambs.

She went into the champion round however lost to the other yearling ewes in the ring. However, this picture represents all things wonderful in the sheep world. All four of us are the Bolton crew, these girls are some of my closest friends and to have them all in a champion round with their own sheep was more rewarding to me than any champion ribbon.

Rosie did get her time to shine though after she won best headed ewe

My ram lambs did fabulous and were placed first and second out of another 15 head class. I was blown away and super happy about these two.

Together they went on to win first place pair of ram lambs

Remy even won reserve champion ram!

Overall an awesome show with good competition! I cant wait till the next fair :) Bolton is in about three weeks!

The Newcommers

There are a few newbies on the farm as of recently! One of them is a little chick out of our own farm breeding who is as cute as a button. Her name at the moment is Gladys, however we fear that the name might take a more masculine turn at some point.

Next consists of two more chicks who are still on their way here! This mottled cochin is carefully brooding over her nest :)

The most exciting of all the arrivals is Bellwether Bard! He is a most handsome ram from Trinity farm out in New York. We are super excited to incorporate him into our flock and he will be our stud ram this fall. He has the most gorgeous gray fleece, with a pretty luster and phenomenal crimp. I couldn't be more happy :) At the moment he is separated from the rest of the flock while I get him used to eating grain (he comes from an all grass diet) but not to worry we have given him Dempsey as a friend!

Just look at those facial markings!

 Here are his lovely ladies who he will be breeding with in the fall. All brood ewes are in fabulous condition and are enjoying the grass and the lack of milking lambs.

 Our bunny is enjoying the grass too!

 And Rosie is too cute :) All the lambs have had their scrapies tags put in now and are almost ready for their show next week! The only thing left is a visit from the vet to check them out.