What The Flock?

I knew y'all wanted a few more sheep pictures, so I headed out with my camera yesterday. But the sheep were way too interested in what I was doing, so I kept getting pictures like this:


And this:

(Well, you did want a closeup of Orion, right?)

Or, I'd get a nice shot lined up, and suddenly there'd be a sheep butt in it...

(Notice how gray Onyx's back and sides are since her shearing. After a bit of research, and talking to some Shetland raisers at Vt S&W, we think this means she's a shaela (here's a link that talks about the shaela color) though she might be an iset. (Which is actually a marking rather than a color. Shetland colors and markings are confusing...)

Anyway, today I got smarter - I pitched some hay into their paddock first, so they'd have something more interesting than me to hold their attention.

Chew, Goldie, chew!



In all those photos, from left to right we have Goldie, Onyx, Orion, and Merlin. (Notice that Onyx never once raised her head out of the hay. Great powers of concentration, our girl, especially when it comes to food...)
You can see how much bigger Orion's horns are than Merlin's. (And someday, Orion's will look like this. He's only 6 months old, so he's got a heap of growing yet to do.) Merlin was wethered at a young age because his horns were turning in, toward his skull, rather than out like they're supposed to.)
This photo shows what I'm talking about:

We had to have the tips of his horns cut off at shearing time because they were almost to the point of touching his skull. Because he's gelded, his horns grow slowly, but they do still grow. We can keep trimming them for awhile, but we can't go too far up, because there are blood vessels involved in the horns (it's actually a cooling mechanism) and cutting into that part would be purely ghastly and horrible. (It's the kind of thing best left to a vet.) In the meantime, we keep a close eye on them. (If only there were orthodontic devices for horns...)