Big Blue Bucket

So, our new little ram, Orion, is fitting right in with the gang. Except for one thing.
He's a grain hog.
Our sheep live on a diet of grass and hay, supplemented with a little grain. Shetlands are a hardy breed, and actually do better when not on too rich a diet. So, morning and evening chores involve chucking some hay at them, then giving them some grain - hand feeding it to them when we have the time (and it's not 40 below), otherwise just dumping some into a big food dish.
Our original three managed to share fairly nicely, with the occasional disagreement that ended in a butting contest, but usually things worked out pretty fair.
Orion, however, thinks he should get all the grain, and elbows... well, horns, actually, the others out of the food dish. They stand around going "Hey! Hey! That's for everybody, ya know. Hey!" while he guzzles all the grain.
So, I tried an experiment. I grabbed their spare water bucket, shook a little grain into the bottom of it, and set it in front of Orion. Once he was engaged with that, I put grain for the other sheep into their food dish, and stood back to watch.
It worked like a charm. Orion, with his head in a bucket, couldn't see the others eating, and thought he was getting the grain all to himself. The other sheep finally were getting their fair share.
My only concern was the bucket handle - I was afraid of it getting hooked on Orion's horns, with him panicking and dashing around the pasture like a... well, like a sheep with a bucket on his head.
Good thing I was worried, because getting his horns caught is exactly what happened. I was close enough to intervene before he realized he had a problem (he was still distracted by the grain in the bottom of the bucket), so I was able to work the handle back off his horns before we ended up with a situation where the other sheep were laughing at him and calling him 'Buckethead.' (It's so hard to maintain any ramly dignity when your flock refers to you as Lil' Buckethead...)
The next day, I came up with a better bucket - a big blue one without a handle.

Much better.

Goldie, Onyx, and Merlin can now enjoy their supper without getting a horn in the snoot.


And nobody has to be a Buckethead...

神聖的睾丸 ・ Shun-SHENG duh gao-WAHN

Because it IS Tuesday, after all.
I was going to save this one for later in the month - it's NaBloPoMo time again, after all - but who could resist a perfect combination of Tuesday and Nerdiness?
Go here to find out what I'm talking about.
Any other Browncoats out there?

That's Frahn-ken-steen!

One morning, shortly after we got the last batch of meatbirds, Madman came in from morning chores and asked, "Have you noticed one of the chicks has a weird crooked neck?"
"Oh, yeah," I answered. "I've been calling him Igor..."

Meet Igor, all grown up. Still looking at the world sideways (and slightly-from-the-right.)

At least he seldom trips over things...

It's a Puzzlement

Orion was a little puzzled this morning.

"What is this white shi... er, stuff... all over the ground?"*

But I distracted him with hay, and that made it all better.


* He was born in April, in Indiana. I don't think he's seen much snow...

We win! We win!

It's been a week since any of the pullets have gotten out of their pen!
(Stupid chickens...)

Catching up

Just a few more words on the Vt Sheep & Wool Festival and then I'll hush about it until next year.
First, I did buy yarn - just one skein in a fabulous color, with a stealth project in mind. (So, no sharing. Sorry.)
And I have to keep laughing to myself about our ram purchase. The very nice man (from Indiana) who sold Orion to us offered to help us load the sheep in our trailer. Then he looked around, saw our car, but realized there was no trailer. The look on his face as we said, "Oh, no, we'll just put him in the back of the car. That's how we always haul sheep." was priceless. I can just imagine him returning to Indiana and telling everyone out there about crazy Vermonters who drive around with sheep in their cars...
And lastly, to the anonymous woman who handed me toilet paper under the stall door - a Thousand Blessings on you and your house.

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...)