Since my last posting, Emma did finally kid. She had a very lovely marked bouncing boy! we named him Monty and he literally bounces around. He can be seen at times catapulting through the air, and landing in his favorite spot…on the broad back of Brownie the sheep! He has attempted it on various other smaller sheep with varying results. 🙂
The little premature doe, April, is sitll with us. she has not been feeling well so we don’t know how she will go. she has scours and we have no clue why. Tried various medicines and so far she seems to be determined to keep the scours. I did wean Jet, Ringo and Blue and put them in the big boy pen a while ago. The weaning may not have been too premature, but the big boy pen I think may have been. I do not think they got enough food even though I thought they were. Ringo was down in the pen at the beginning of this week and than his brother Jet was. Charlie just said that Jet died during the night. They were weak from lack of food, so we made them a special pen out of alfalfa hay bales and have had them separate with unlimited food for days…I thougth they were coming on, but Jet gave up the fight. When Ringo got knocked at the beginning of the week, I thought he was injured internally and would not make it. He has however still been with us for another FIVE days..so there is hope with him. We took Blue out of the big boy pen even though he was thin but not as weak as the others. he has been having fun in the doe pen but he is so close to that age where he could be too fertile. When we remove the last of our sale animals this week, we are going to separate the really big boys into that far pen and leave the smaller boys in the middle pen so that they can be separate from the girls but still be safe from being in with the big boys until they grow a lot more. I hope this helps the issues. sometimes the angora goats just grow so slowly. Monty is at least a month younger than them and is probalby twice their size and 4 times more energetic!!
After working night and day on my fiber entry for the show, they cancelled it! 🙁 so it won’t be displayed but here is it. Four Seasons:
It starts at the left with the white one as winter, than spring, than summer and than fall going clockwise. I used Wensleydale, Lincoln Long Wool (coloured and white), alapaca, mohair (coloured and white) throught out the weavings. there is raw fleece tied in, rovings, hand spun yarn, mill spun yarn from my rovings, but there is no synthetic yarns from any shops or anything other than pure fiber as even the hooks to hang it were braided from left over warps.
I listed six different listings last night on www.albaranch.etsy.com so go have a look and enjoy! it is a great collection of fine yarns that I had got back from the mill. Mohair, Merino, and some merino/mohair blends. some white and some colours. I finally listed some of the red yarns, a medium and a dark fawn mohair yarns!
I have been making goat cheese every week recently, and boy it is certainly nice to have it again. Sales are starting up on the etsy shop again, go stop in and buy something!! 🙂
