a blog at Firefly Fields

Catching Up: More Cute Lamb Photos from May

Firefly Fields — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 17:18:00 GMT

Here are more lamb photos all from the month of May. Danger: major sweetness alert -- diabetics look away!!

Rio (our Great Pyrenees livestock guardian dog) with the mamas and babies.

The Micro-lamb became quite a snuggle bunny and was pretty sure that I was his mama. When we start letting the lambs out in the big pasture, I sit out in my lawn chair with them to keep them out of trouble. The Micro-lamb pretty much wanted to be in the barn or on my lap all the time. Otherwise he would scream at me...

Baa!

Uma and her ewe lambs -- the grey panda and the white one.

It is hard to see the colors in this small photo, but the grey panda's lighter wool is starting to come in. She has a solid body with only white on her head and the little stripe on the front of her throat. But if you look to the right of the white throat stripe, you can see lighter (grey) wool growing in. As a newborn you can often see if it you part the birth coat on the lambs flanks (butt and hips) and look at the roots of the hair shafts. The grey panda also has a bluish pink tongue. (It is like a pink tongue of a white lamb that had eaten a grape lollypop.)

Emmi and her white ewe lamb who I nicknamed "Lamb Friend". Because I spent so much time taking care of her as a weak baby lamb and also milked out her mama's too large left udder for a few weeks while the lamb climbed on me, she stuck to me like glue whenever I went outside. (More than most bottle lambs I have had.) It is also because she is Uma's granddaugher and the Uma's line is pretty fearless and almost obnoxiously friendly. This is both a blessing and a curse as they will come right up to you, but are always in the way and interfering with whatever you are trying to do!! She stayed this friendly as she has grown up.

Our friend Wendi from Louisiana was up in Rockford, IL, which is 30 to 45 minutes south of our farm, visiting her grandma. She brought her son Shepherd (his real name!), who loves animals, up to see the baby lambs. He lives with big dogs, so he wasn't as overwhelmed as you might think. Mostly we kept the bigger March-born lambs away from him because they were too pushy. (Front L>R: Emmi's white ewe lamb, Helmi's 1 brown ram and 2 black wether lambs, and Annika's brown ewe lamb. In back are 2 of Mara's bigger lambs.) It was all extremely cute. We guarded his tiny fingers from nibbling lambs and they did fine together otherwise.

One other bit of excitement for the month of May was that I bought a John Deere Gator. This is an ATV made for farming. I test drove 3 other brands before deciding on the Gator. None of them were cheap and the small amount of extra money for the Gator was well worth it in maneuverability and smooth ride. (One of the other models I drove lurched forward and practically took your head off every time you started forward from a stop!) We were able to get a discount on this one because although it was new, it was the 2008 model year so they wanted to move it out of the store.

It can be switched from 4WD (four wheel drive) for better traction to 2WD for better maneuverability and fuel efficiency. It also has a bed like a pickup truck so I can haul and dump brush with it. Ours has the motorized dump bed, though you have to open up the tailgate manually. It came with the roll bar, but we got the optional soft roof which attaches with velcro for protection from the sun and rain. (Ours runs off gas, but there is a diesel model also.) We have used it to haul water since we got it and now (in fall) are using it to haul hay also. Compared to my previous methods of hauling, a giant wagon and a utility sled -- depending on the season, this is a huge step up and frees more of my time to actually enjoy being with the sheep. I just love it!

Catching Up: The Rest of the Lambs

Firefly Fields — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 14:20:00 GMT

Dear Blogospherians,

I am so sorry to neglect you all summer. But I have good excuses; really I do. Recently, I have received some sad emails from one of the three people on earth that read this blog and she is starting to sound desperate. Frankly, I just don't want to be responsible. (I have enough responsibility with taking care of the sheep, lambs, dogs, cats, ducks and bunny... and last but not least a husband.) I will try not to ignore you so much in the future.... and this time I really, really mean it!

Sincerely,
Tracy

So here we go...

When last we spoke, Emmi's survivng little lamb was starting to thrive. Emmi was a very good mama. The main difficulty was that something weird happened with her udder this year. For most of her pregnancy, her udder stayed really small. The day before Emmi had her lambs, her udder suddenly became huge. The surviving baby started to thrive and she was able to nurse off Emmi's right teat which returned to a normal size. The left udder and teat stayed really huge though she had no symptoms of mastitis (infection). I did a California mastitis test with negative (not infected) results more than once. On the advice of a vet, I kept that side milked out to keep her milk from drying up and prevent infection so that the lamb could nurse both sides once she got bigger. The conclusion here is that I never, ever want to do dairy or anything related to it. Emmi was enough sheep milking for me.

So here are the rest of the lambs I got this year:

On April 22nd, Annika had triplets: a black ewe lamb (lower right), a black ram lamb (lower left) and a brown ewe lamb (top). Wendall (brown) is their sire, so the black lambs are recessive for brown. Finally my first brown EWE!! Unfortunately when she was born, her neck was extremely floppy. I don't know if she was crammed in the womb some weird way or what. My vet thought that she was just weak. I have never had this happen in any lamb. Her legs were strong and she could stand and walk around, only her neck was weak. So I had to milk colostrum out of Annika and feed her, and then she was bottle fed for a few days since she could not hold her neck in the correct position to nurse. But pretty soon, her neck started to get stronger and she turned out to be totally normal. She ended up both nursing from Annika and getting supplemented from a bottle a few times per day. Annika had plenty of milk but the other two lambs were so much stronger from the beginning and learned they could just push her away if they wanted to. The ram lamb is really big and has a very proud look to him. He also has beautiful markings. The black ewe lamb is like a little elf and bounces around whenever she can.

Then on April 26th, Uma had quads. Unfortunately one lamb - a beautiful solid grey ram lamb - was stillborn. The 3 survivors were a white ewe lamb, a grey "panda" faced ewe lamb and a teeny, tiny black ram lamb (who we would later wether). The grey panda is my first panda-faced lamb that is not a piebald. The tiny lamb, who we called "the micro-lamb" was the smallest surviving lamb we have ever had born on the farm -- just 2 pounds 12 ounces. And the truly amazing thing was that he was strong and spunky! He was up walking around like a normal lamb really quickly and he didn't have a the scooped out face that some of the "premie" lambs have.

Here are all 3 lambs together at one day old. The grey panda girl is on the upper left and the Micro-lamb (boy) is on the upper right. The white girl is (obviously) at the bottom.

Unfortunately, he had a teeny, tiny mouth and his mother is my biggest ewe and has big teats which were about twice as large as his tiny mouth! And the little Prichard teats, that I use to bottle feed my newborn Finns when needed, were also way too huge. So for about 3 days I tube fed this tiny lamb with minute amounts of milk -- first with colostrum from Uma and then with Super Lamb (lamb formula) -- every 2 hours for the first day, and then every 3 hours after that. Did I sleep? Not much. When I had recovered just slightly from my sleep deprived delirium, I drove into town and got a couple of small animal nursing set (made for puppies, kittens etc) that each had a little 2 ounce bottle and a variety of teats. One was shaped like the Prichard teats but, slightly smaller and an even softer latex. So then I was able to bottle feed the little guy.

Here I am feeding the Micro-lamb his tiny bottles, while his sisters nibble on my t-shirt.

He also had a problem that even with weighing him and calculating what should be his milk intake each day, he still tended to scour (get diarrhea) every time we increased his daily quantity of milk. (I use the schedule and amounts in the blue Laura Lawson book "Managing Your Ewe and her Newborn Lambs".) I felt we were walking a fine line between starving him to death and killing him with diarrhea. But amazingly, he survived. Because of the diarrhea, many of his early photos show red lamb medicine on his mouth.

This is not a great photo, but it shows the relative heights of the grey panda (who is an average size Finn lamb) and the tiny microlamb who is totally normal, just very small. So... Reason #1 Why This Blog Is So Far Behind: The Micro-lamb!!

On April 27th, Helmi had triplet rams: one brown and two black -- all with gorgeous wool!! All three lambs were healthy and Helmi is a wonderful and experienced Mom -- so there was no drama with this litter -- thank God! I think this year was the most difficult lambing since my first year when I barely had a clue. Last year was extremely easy, so I guess I was due.

One weird thing about this group was that the brown ram was born with obviously nice birth wool. The two black ones were born with a very strange straight birth coat -- like a dog. It didn't look like bad birth wool. It didn't look like wool at all. This seemed bizarre to me since both parents have really good wool and Wendall's wool is quite fine. I called Sandy DeMaster aboutt his and Sandy said that she had had some of these lambs with straight hair born before and eventually it just fell out and they had good wool afterward. And that is exactly what happened!

In this photo, you can see the good wool starting to come in on the black lamb on the far right up by his shoulders and that the weird "dog hair" type coat is still on his butt area. The lambs are 6 days old in this photo. (This brown lamb is a lighter brown than the brown ewe lamb that I got this year and Kahvi, my brown ram born a few years ago.)

So that is all of the lambs we got this year. Fourteen healthy surviving lambs, 2 stillborn and one weak one that I could not save.
More lamb photos to come...

Lambs: Large and Small

Firefly Fields — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 00:25:00 GMT

Eeva's lamb shows that she can eat real food like a big sheep now. The creep has been set up for several days and the lambs have been playing in there, going through the slatted gate. Today they suddenly discovered, "Hey! There's food in here!" Now that they are eating lamb creep, they will grow even better.

Emmi and her lamb. (The little survivor) She likes to go under her mom even though she isn't able to nurse yet. Emmi is really good about not stepping on her. She is naked here because I was changing her jacket.

I realize that a photo of a lamb pooping is not exactly picturesque, but it shows how tiny this lamb is next to her big mama. Emmi is the second largest ewe in my flock. She has been such an attentive mama. Usually my ewes just let their lambs poop wherever. Emmi is the first ewe I have had that will hardly let their poop fall to the ground. She has everything clean: the lamb and the pen.

The baby hadn't had her dinner yet in this photo, so her belly does get a little rounder once she is fed. Unless it is the rare single lamb (born as a single), Finn lambs don't get that Hallmark Card lamb look until they are about a week old.

Settling in under the heat lamp for a nap. Since today was a warm day, I decided to leave the door and windows open until 9:00 tonight but turn on the lamps for the lambs. That way they can have more fresh air and decide if they are cold or not. Lambs do not very good control of their body temperature until they are about 72 hours old. (I can't remember where I learned that, but that number sticks in my mind, so I think it is right.)

Being a baby lamb is very hard work! It must be the stress of looking cute all the time!!

Hope, Disappointment and Peace

Firefly Fields — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 19:44:00 GMT

The past two days have been quite an emotional roller-coaster.

Wednesday night, I got up every 2 hours and went out to the barn to tube 1 oz of milk into each of the surviving baby lambs. I milked Emmi and used her own colostrum thinned with a little splash of warmed milk replacer. The colostrum is thick and yellow like Squeeze Parkay (liquid margarine), so it doesn't like to run through the tube.

Yesterday (Thursday) morning, I reweighed each of Emmi's surviving lambs and discovered that the weaker lamb (#3 in birth order who was the smallest of the two survivors) was actually a ewe-lamb and not a ram-lamb. When she was born she was a little prune-y looking and I had mistaken a roll of wrinkled skin on her abdomen for a scrotum. After being unsuccessful at reviving the stillborn lamb, I was in a hurry trying to keep the 2 lambs alive. So I really just made a quick glance. I was pleased to see that the lambs had each gained 3-4 oz of weight in their first 15 hours of life. Both had pooped out their black fetal poop, so I could tell they were digesting and moving milk through their systems. The smaller, weaker lamb also seemed to be gaining more control of her head movement. And when I took her in an adjacent pen to tube feed her (so Emmi couldn't "help"), she responded to her mother by baa-ing back.

But by 2:00 in the afternoon, it was clear that the smaller lamb was becoming weaker and more lethargic. The larger lamb had started pooping the yellow poop of baby lambs (from drinking milk) but had a slight case of diarrhea. Diarrhea isn't all that rare when a lamb is being fed "artificially" because while we may try duplicate nature's schedule (frequent feedings of small amounts of milk), we are not as good as nature. I started her on Specto-guard Scour-check which has given me very good results before. It is actually a baby pig medicine that is used off-label for baby lambs. (Because sheep are considered a "minor species" in the U.S. almost no medicines or de-wormers are actually labeled for them. You can use them but should have a working relationship with a vet, so you are using them with his/her approval.)

I have been milking Emmi and using her milk for the lambs. (I just milk her out by hand which always makes me feel a bit Amish.) I have also been milking out extra and just keeping it in the refrigerator for now in case her production declines. Sometimes ewes get a drop in milk production when they are switching from colostrum to milk. But so far that hasn't happened. Emmi has a ton of milk this year -- Plenty for the 3 lambs that she was carrying. I don't want to risk her getting mastitis and I want Emmi to continue to produce milk.

By evening, the larger lamb's stools were firming up, but the smaller lamb had lapsed into a coma. At least she was in no distress or pain. Overnight, she was just permanently asleep under the warmth of the heat lamp. My vet is out of town until Monday night, so I didn't have any way to get her euthanized in the evening. While I could have driven her out to my friend Cindy's house (her husband is a vet), that is 2 hours each way. I didn't dare leave the more viable lamb for 4 hours (when I am still tube feeding her every 3 hours) to end the life of the other lamb who was not suffering. I also noticed that the smaller lamb was no longer peeing or pooping even when Emmi would try to clean her. It seemed her digestion was shutting down. The milk that I had put in her belly was still there (you could feel it from the outside).

I continued to tube feed the larger lamb switching to an every-3-hour schedule since she was now on her second day of life. I follow the schedule that Laura Lawson gives in her book "Managing Your Ewe and her Newborn Lambs". It tells you to figure out the lamb's weight in ounces, multiply by 20% (or .2) then divide that amount by the number of feedings per day on a schedule according to the lamb's age.

By this morning, the smaller lamb had died. I had decided that if it was still alive today, I would try find another vet to put it to sleep. I was grateful that God had made that decision for me. Rest in peace little lamb. You were beautiful and I'm sorry we didn't get to spend more time with you.

I weighted the remaining lamb and she was up to 5 lbs 2 oz. Emmi is very protective of her one remaining lamb and is being a very good mama. After the other lamb was dead, she seemed to know and no longer seemed concerned about it.

The national average for lamb mortality is 14%. Even with the 2 deaths this year the lamb mortality on our farm has been 5% over 5 years of lambing. (We didn't have lambs in 2005.) Assuming that the next three ewes have no problems with their lambs, that percentage will fall further. (I am expecting about 9 more lambs this year.) My vet has always told me that I am lucky because nobody is that good -- He is a vet with spoiled show sheep and he isn't that good. I knew that one year my luck had to run out. I just hope that this isn't the year.

I will take a photo of Emmi's adorable lamb this evening and post here later...

The four older lambs from Eeva and Mara seem so big and strong now. It is like they are already professionals at being a lamb.

A Microcosm of Life

Firefly Fields — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 02:56:00 GMT

I spent most of today walking out to the barn every 2 hours to see that Emmi was still not in labor, but was standing around rubbing her sides on the walls of the barn for a good scratch. Finally at 2 PM when I went outside, her water bag was hanging from her, but it hadn't broken yet and she wasn't really pushing either. More standing around. After about half an hour of this she started pushing intermittently.

But after half an hour of pushing with no real progress, I decided to intervene and used a sanitized scissors to puncture her water bag. Then I put on an OB glove (thin plastic, goes to the shoulder) and a ton of Super-lube (antiseptic lube for sheep) and checked inside her. There was a lamb right there and I helped him be born. Emmi pushed as I pulled (always toward the ewe's heels) and the lamb came out quite easily. Unfortunately he was dead and there was no reviving him.

It was a little white ram lamb and while he didn't look that small, when I weighed him, he was just over 3 pounds. So that is pretty small even for a Finn lamb. (My smallest survivor, Sparky, was 3 1/2 pounds and he needed a lot of help for a long time. Emmi was very good about licking the dead lamb and trying to stimulate him as I tried to get him going. I left him in the jug (pen) with her for a while just because I didn't want to freak her out by taking her lamb.

My vet's machine said he was away for the day, but I called my long time sheep mentor, Sandy, and she agreed that I should go in and get any other lambs out now, just in case they were still alive. I was not overly optimistic. (It always feels good to have someone agree with your plan of action when things aren't going so well.) I got out a white ewe lamb that was weak and a white ram lamb (breach presentation) that was even weaker. Both have beautiful pigment around their eyes like eyeliner. There is a 50% chance they carry for grey and a 50% chance they carry for black.

I helped Emmi get them dried off - tongue on her part, towel and hairdryer on mine. Then I snipped and dipped their umbilical cords in strong iodine. I weighed them -- ewe: 4 lbs 10 oz; ram: 4 lbs 1 oz -- I think. It is written down out in the barn. I put on their little coats and and set them under the heat lamps. Fortunately it was a nice and sunny day so the barn was fairly warm anyway.

The little ewe lamb tried to stand and tried to nurse, but I wasn't sure now much milk she was really getting. And the little ram lamb was too weak to stand, let alone nurse. So I milked colostrum out of Emmi, thinned it with a tiny bit of warmed milk replacer as straight colostrum is think and hard to get through the tube, and tube fed both lambs. (Thank you Randy Gottfredson for teaching me that. It has saved several lambs.) I got Emmi a bucket of warm molasses water and some hay. She was glad to have a snack at that point.

With the lambs fed and under their heat lamp, I had a couple of hours so that I could go dig a grave for the little dead lamb and run back to the house to feed the inside dogs. At one point I had to come indoors to get some tape to seal up the little box that I found to bury the lamb. The radio in the house was playing Natalie Merchant's "These Are the Days".

these are days you'll remember...
...to be part of the miracles you see in every hour
you'll know it's true, that you are blessed and lucky...

The poignancy was overwhelming.

I have a lot of friends who say they could never do what I do. But as in all things, you just do the best that you can and the rest is up to God. When I first got my sheep, my mentor, Sandy DeMaster, told me that sheep were going to teach me a lot of things. Nothing has ever been more true. (And no one asks you which lessons you think you might like to learn.) Life on the farm is just like life anywhere. It is just that the miracles of birth, the sadness of death and the life in between are much more "in your face" on a daily basis.

I have fed the lambs 3 times now and they are still alive. I will feed them about every 2 hours all night. The little girl is still trying to stand and I helped her onto Emmi's teat a bit, but then still fed her just to be safe. When I went out to the barn at 9:00 PM she had walked across the jug on her little "Bambi legs" and gotten tangled up in another corner. But fortunately she wasn't too chilled. So I fed her and put her back under the heat lamp. The little boy does fight a bit when I try to feed him but that is about all. He can lift up his head and flop around a bit. There are no attempts at standing yet. But as long as he is still alive, he can get better. Their fight to survive is incredible.

Upper left: ewe lamb looking spunky. Lower right: little guy still a bit floppy.

Watching Emmi

Firefly Fields — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 13:23:00 GMT

We have been in a holding pattern for the past day. Yesterday (Tuesday) morning I went out to the barn to notice that Emmi had gotten much more pregnant looking overnight. More of the largeness seemed to be on the left side. But it was solid, not a big, gassy balloon so it wasn't bloat. I just wondered if maybe the lambs were sitting more to her left side all of a sudden. She also suddenly had a big, full udder. The udder-thing is great. I was actually really concerned that she had the smallest udder of the group of 4 ewes left to lamb and she was due first. She was still eating fine yesterday morning.

Photos cannot adequately show her sudden hugeness.

Then by last night, she was eating less and standing around looking "odd". I kept checking the barn every 2 hours, but then at 11 PM went to bed and then went out again at 6 AM. The theory is that most ewes do not have their lambs at night especially if you don't keep bothering them and waking them up. So at 6 AM, no lambs. And at 8 AM still no lambs. I have the feeling it will be today and may be later this morning. The ultrasound tech said she had "at least 2 lambs" and I am guessing three given her size, shape and past history. (She had triplets when she had lambs before.) I think that the "odd" look is because the ewe is starting to have some small contractions. This can start about 24 hours before real labor begins. I have the feeling I will get a lot of exercise walking back and forth to the barn today!

Yesterday, I also put Eeva, Mara and their 4 lambs in a little nursery pen with an attached creep. The creep is an area where you put special lamb food. The lambs are starting to taste their mothers' grain when they eat and most of them have gone in and out of the creep gate a few times. But I haven't seen them show interest in the creep feed so far. Usually one lamb will figure it out and then they will all start. We will watch and see who the smart lamb turns out to be. I have a feeling it will be one of Mara's little black lambs.

The gate to the creep is the blue thing toward the right/rear that has adjustable bars so you can set
the size to allow lambs to fit through but not their mothers.

Finn and BFL: You Learn Something Everyday

Firefly Fields — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 12:29:00 GMT

I am going to be getting a new batch of roving in from Wooly Knob Fiber Mill soon. It is supposed to be natural white Finn with a bit of pastel bamboo fiber blended into it. I will post it on the roving page on my website when it is available for sale.

Note for the non-fibrous among us: Roving is wool that has already been washed and carded and is ready to sit down and spin into yarn or use for needle-felting or wet-felting. Roving looks like this:

This roving is a blend of natural white and black. I am sold out of this color but it is easier to see the texture in the photo than it is with the solid color roving.

When you take it out of the bag, it looks a bit like a long, woolen caterpillar. You break off sections and stretch it out a bit to make it thinner (called pre-drafting) and then spin it into yarn. The advantage of roving is that it is clean, smells good and doesn't mess up your house. Also it is instant gratification. You just sit down and spin!

Back to our story... Last year I drove a whole bunch of fiber to Wooly Knob Fiber Mill in Indiana. I posted the story about going here. It was a lot more than I usually take at one time because it was a whole set of complete fleeces from two years ago, when my dog Frolic had her knee rebuilt and I didn't get my jackets repaired and on the sheep, as well as the neck wool and other misc. wool from last year. (BTW, there was a HUGE amount of dirty wasted wool the year I didn't jacket my fleeces. It was really a shame. I'll never let that happen again.)

About a month ago, I called the guys at Wooly Knob to ask them a question about making roving for machine spun yarn for my friend who knits but doesn't spin. They mentioned that they had found one bag of my wool in their storeroom that had somehow gotten separated from the rest of my order. (Which wouldn't be hard since I took them about a million bags... ok, maybe 2 million. It seemed like it anyway.) The wool was white and they knew I already had a ton of white roving. So they asked if i would like this carded with flecks of some new bamboo they had just gotten that was all pastels. (It is soft, sort of like flax which is used to make linen; not hard like the stuff pandas chew on.) I said sure!

So this week, I called and asked them if it was almost ready to ship because I have sold out of several colors of roving this spring. They said that they had sent it back to the washing side for a second washing because it hadn't gotten clean the first time. I was really surprised by that because the wool was not very dirty and Finn wool does not have a lot of lanolin in it compared to other types of wool. (When it is washed you lose about 30-35% weight from removal of the grease, not 40-50% like Merino, for example.) They said that it is due to the lock structure of the wool. It does not allow the water and soap to penetrate into the fibers and get it clean. He said that in Finn and Blue Faced Leicester, they send it back (to their washing side) to be re-washed about 90% of the time. It is because these two breeds have almost identical lock structure. Who knew? You learn something everyday!

A Visit to the Moderately Big World

Firefly Fields — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 13:09:00 GMT

Tasting some hay with Mom. (They aren't actually eating hay yet.) But nibbling on food introduces
bacteria into their gut and gets their rumens started. This is a very good thing.

The lambs are growing really well. Yesterday we let the lambs and moms all out into "the lamb pen", a small paddock attached to our barn, where they could have a little time running around together. The nice thing about this pen is we can give them some freedom but still keep them under close supervision in case a lamb tries to get into trouble. Also, the babies can't get too far away from the mom. They still panic at first, but it is quickly resolved and mom and babies get some practice in finding each other again.

At first Eeva was a little concerned about Mara's lambs getting too close to her lamb, but she started to settle down after a while. Mara is an experienced mother. So while she did a good job of keeping track of her lambs, she wasn't so overly dramatic about anything.

Eeva's white lamb is 3 weeks old today and Mara's black triplets are 2 weeks old today. Eeva's lamb is big and fat, so she has already outgrown my larger size lamb coats.

Some Finn breeders seem to make a big deal out of the fact that a single grows faster since it has all of the space in the womb and gets all of the milk. (It is like they think a breeder is going to cheat buyers by selling them a single lamb which is going to look bigger than the others.) I have found that while the lamb might grow larger and faster at first, in the end, its genetic potential can be best predicted by looking at the size of the parents. If the parents are large, the lamb will grow up to be large. (This is assuming that all of your sheep are fed well and you start your lambs started eating 20% lamb creep as soon as they are able, along with eating very good quality hay or grass with their mothers.) So if you are looking to buy sheep look at the parents, and if possible the grandparents, for your clues on what the lamb will grow up to be.

Singles are not typical in Finnsheep. I have only had singles in a ewe lamb mother (1), lambs conceived with AI (2), and in a ewe who was chased and possibly aborted and reabsorbed the others (1). But a single is always an easy lamb for the shepherd and I always have a least one litter of quads that needs my help. And I have more than enough genetics for prolificacy in my flock. So I don't mind the single. If you keep good records, then you can track traits (such as prolificacy and mothering ability) in whole lines across several years and not base decisions on one litter of one ewe in one year.

Here are a few photos of the lambs from Sunday and yesterday (Monday). Be prepared for overwhelming cuteness!

Yes, the lambs are the left are airborne!

Mara's Black Triplets - More Love Lambs

Firefly Fields — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 13:28:00 GMT

After Eeva had her lamb so early -- 138 days gestation which was a new farm record -- you can bet I was on the lookout for Mara's lambs. By that time, the ewes were all in the barn and the adjoining pen and I had a "jug" (small pen for mom and lambs) all set up and waiting for her. If Mara had her babies between 143 and 145 days gestation, as is normal for Finnsheep, then they were to be born between March 23 and 25th. Because these are "love lambs" I know exactly when they were conceived. See: Love Lambs and Regular Lambs

A lot of times it is harder than you think to tell if a ewe is going to have her babies anytime soon. Supposedly her belly drops and her hip bones become more prominent along her back about 24 hours before she gives birth. Supposedly it is from the ligaments in her rear end relaxing. But honestly I don't think it is very obvious with any of my ewes. Sometimes it seems like their hip bones become more prominent a few days before they give birth. And frankly when a ewe's belly is that big, their body has to look different all over. I have also been told they lose their appetite on the day they give birth. My ewes lose their appetite about 1 hour before they give birth. My ewes aren't going to walk away from a good meal, no matter what!

With Mara, I did have a lot of clues this year. On the afternoon of Tuesday, March 24th, Mara started look at her rear end occasionally as if aliens might fly out of it at any moment. (Well, there was some truth to that... but not aliens exactly.) So I knew she was having some small contractions. Then she started walking around the barn and calling to her lambs, like she was looking for them. (Pssst! Mara! They're still inside you.) Sometimes the ewes do call to their lambs while they're in labor. I've never had one actually search for them before. And Mara has had lambs twice before, so she knows what it is all about.

Unfortunately, we don't have a barn cam and our barn is too far from the house to use a baby monitor. So normally, I walk out and check the barn every 2 to 3 hours (on the days I am expecting lambs) and then if it looks like something is happening, I will either shorten it up to every hour or else just take a thermos of coffee to the barn and sit in a lawn chair. Mara is a more nervous, aloof ewe who does not like human company all that much. She is also an experienced and excellent mother. So I just left her alone in hopes that I would stress her less, but quietly peeped in the door every hour.

After many hikes out to the barn, cursing the former owners of this farm for building the barn so far from the house with each step, I went out at about 5:30 to do the evening feeding. When I went into the barn, a little black lamb had just been born and Mara was cleaning it off. I used the nasal syringe, a.k.a. "the booger sucker", to clean out its nose and mouth (which is supposed to decrease the chance of pneumonia by 50%) and helped Mara dry it off while still letting her lick it off. Then I walked backwards carrying the lamb into the jug (maternity pen) and so Mara would follow me in there. I stuck the lamb under the heat lamp as it was becoming clear that lamb #2 was on the way.

In the end, there were 3 lambs born in less than 1 hour. The main concern is making sure that they all get dried off and get colostrum in their bellies. It is really good if you can get something in their stomach within the first 30 minutes and definitely within an hour. When I have been able to do this, I have had NO cases of lambs getting hypothermia and needing to be rewarmed. Usually I can help them get on the teat to nurse that first time. Some time during all of this hubbub, I weigh the lamb, strip the waxy pugs from the ewe's udder, snip the umbillical cord down to about 1 1/2 inches in length and dip it in strong iodine. The rhyme is strip-snip-dip-sip. (Sip means making sure the lambs nurse.)

Here are Mara's beautiful triplets shortly after birth:

Top the bottom, they are ram, ram, and ewe. I have since wethered (neutered) the two boys since I didn't have any orders for black ram lambs this year. I hope a handspinner will buy the middle one with the big white blaze as a fiber pet. He has nice wool and a lot of personality.

Note: the vet just came today to take blood so I can do DNA testing and find out who the sires of these lambs are for sure. I am 99% certain that the white lamb is sired by Martti and these black lambs are sired by Usko. We'll see if I win that bet!

If the white ewe lamb is out of Martti, then I will keep her for my own flock. I had not planned to keep any white lambs this year, as I already have too many white sheep. But... I only have 2 other daughters out of Martti and he is getting old and very arthritic so he will be leaving our farm soon. He seems to be in discomfort all of the time and as much as I will be sad to see him go, I will not keep an animal suffering that way. Sometimes this farm stuff can be really hard when you know what must be done.

The Early Bird... uh Lamb

Firefly Fields — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 19:10:00 GMT

I am going to be posting photos of our sheep and lambs on a regular basis now, so don't forget to check back here. Or just subscribe to the blog so you don't miss a single day of lamby fun!

When last we spoke...

I knew that Mara and Eeva (pronounced Ava) were expecting "love lambs" (see: Love Lambs and Regular Lambs)

conceived early in the morning on October 31st. My ewes normally have their lambs from between 143 to 145 days gestation. This is typical of Finn ewes. So I had planned to bring the ewes into the barn and start watching for lambs around March 21st, which would be 142 days gestation. We were having beautiful warm weather and the ewes were enjoying being outside.

Imagine my surprise when I walked into the pasture on March 17th and saw a white lamb just sitting just inside the pasture fence! She was completely silent until she saw me and then let out a little bleat. You would think that on a sheep farm, one would not be all that shocked to see a lamb, but in fact I was... very! It was only 138 days of gestation! There couldn't be a lamb born yet!! (Up till this point my earliest lamb was Eeva who was born at 141 days gestation. But Eeva was a very large single born conceived through AI and born to an adult ewe (Helmi). So I attributed Eeva's early birth to the fact that she got all the nutrients in the womb and was fully developed and ready to be born.)

The new lamb was totally cleaned off and perfect looking and just sitting out in the pasture all alone. Rio (our Great Pyrenees livestock guardian dog) had not even noticed her yet and was napping in an adjacent paddock with another group of sheep. I grabbed an old, but clean, towel out of the garage to wrap the lamb in and took her up to the barn.

The 6 pregnant ewes were all up at the barn and I could see by Eeva's messy rear end that it was her lamb. I quickly set up a jug (maternity pen for mom and lamb(s).) I dumped a tiny bit of grain in the trough and caught Eeva (who was pretty freaked out) and put her in the jug with her lamb. Once she was contained with her lamb, she worked to clean her off a bit more. I got out the hairdryer to help the mom dry her and to keep her from getting chilled (since she had been sitting outside). Eeva was really nervous but fortunately liked her baby. I held Eeva still, stripped the waxy plugs from her teats and helped the lamb get a drink of colostrum.

Around this time Upal got home from a business trip in Virginia. So he was just in time to throw on barn clothes and help! He helped me get a heat lamp set up and also run up to the house for supplies. I snipped the lamb's umbilical cord and dipped it in strong iodine. (This is antibacterial and helps it to dry up really fast.) Then I put a litle jacket on her and set her under the lamp.

Here is the lamb at just a few hours old. The yellow stuff on the lamb's mouth in the
photo on the right is "Baby Lamb Strength" which is a baby lamb vitamin in a vegetable
oil base. You put one squirt in the back of the lamb's mouth at birth, but sometimes they drool a bit.

I searched the pasture and the barn to make sure there were no more lambs to be found. (There weren't.) Finn ewes typically have only 1 or 2 babies if they are bred as ewe-lambs (to have babies when they are 1 year old). The baby seemed to be a really smart little lamb and caught onto things fast.

Love Lambs and Regular Lambs

Firefly Fields — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 14:28:00 GMT

Our lambing has started already this year and I need to get going on posting some pictures! This year we had one extra twist added into the mix... "love lambs"!   Or as my husband calls them "your bastard lambs". But I think that "love lambs" sounds a lot nicer. So in the effort to get this blog caught up, here is their story.

Last fall, I had to make a couple of trips down to Central IL after the death of my mother to take care of her funeral and estate. I was the exector and there was a lot to do. The second of these trips was on October 29/30th. When I returned home on the evening of October 30th, my husband had already fed the sheep. But I could see them all out in the pastures as the sun was going down and all was quite normal. At that time, we had 4 of our older rams on one side of the back pasture and our ewes/wethers on the other side. This pasture is subdivided by a very sturdy, rigid fence made of cattle panels and we always double or triple chain the gates. (My two ram lambs and the two rams that I had gotten earlier in the fall from Sandy DeMaster - a real ram and a teaser - were in another group, in the front of the property, up by the barn.)

At 6:30 AM on Halloween morning, my husband and I looked out the windows in the back of the house and noticed that there were 3 rams (Usko, Martti and Bo) in with the ewes and wethers. And one ram (Kahvi) pacing the fence trying to figure out how to join the gang. We threw on our coats and boots and ran down to the back pasture. (My orignal plan had been to set up my breeding groups on November 1st, so none of my ewes had been bred at that point.) When we got down to the back pasture, Usko was "humping" Mara, though I didn't actually see him "getting the job done". He was also guarding Mara from the other rams.

We dragged the 3 errant rams back to the other side of the pasture and saw that despite the gate being double chained, they had partially lifted the gate off the hinges, allowing it to tilt to one side so the larger rams could push through. (Now any gate on a pasture containing rams has multiple chains on both sides of the gate! I would suggest that others do the same.) I later talked to my vet who said that we could take blood and do DNA testing to determine the sires once the lambs were born, so I could still register them. Of course, I didn't know for sure which ewes had gotten bred.

Usually, I figure out when each ewe was bred using the "dirt method" (perhaps my own invention). I haven't had any luck keeping marking harnesses (which goes around the chest and has a crayon on the front) on my rams. They are wearing jackets (to keep their wool clean) in the fall and the straps can't sink into the wool when they are wearing a puffy balloon-like cover. But the ewes have jackets on too, and the rams' chests get dirty from sitting on the ground. So the ewes' beige jackets get a stripe of dirt on the back when they are bred. After this incident, I noted that Mara's jacket was quite dirty on the back and Eeva's jacket had a few dirty stripes along the sides, but really no dirt on the back. Eeva's dirt pattern wasn't very conclusive, in my opinion, because the rams will *try* to mount anything standing still for a few seconds, especially when they are first turned in. (Sheep-breeding CSI that I am!) The jackets of the other ewes were still quite clean.

I have also found out since that if you act immediately you can give your ewes an injection of some kind to prevent conception. Sort of a sheep "morning after pill". But I didn't know about that at the time and it is probably just as well. (You will find out why in a later post....)

Because I wanted to know for sure which lambs were "love lambs" and which were from my planned breedings, I waited 2 weeks before setting up my breeding groups, just as you would do if you were using a "back-up" ram. (A back-up ram is a second ram put in with a breeding group to insure that the ewes get bred, either after a natural or AI breeding.) This turned out to be more like 3 weeks because my husband was away on business and it is much easier to move a lot of sheep around if you have 2 people to deal with the gates etc..

So in late November, I set up my planned breeding groups. I had decided to breed 5 of my ewes this year and use 2 rams. I bred:

Wendall (brown) to Mara (black; brown recessive),
                                   Helmi (white; brown recessive) and
                                   Annika (black; 50% chance of being brown recessive.)

Taivo (grey) to Uma (white; carries for color)
                           Emmi (white; carries for color)

While most people breed every ewe every year, I don't anymore. I get about 3 lambs (on average) for every ewe that I breed. I breed for myself and the number of lambs I think I can sell. Also, my husband has a off-farm job, so the sheep business is mine and he helps me when he can. So we don't like to raise more than 15 to 18 lambs per year. We would prefer to have a smaller number of lambs and do a really good job of taking care of them. Keeping more ewes overall, lets me choose what traits I want to breed for in a given year and I have more wool to sell.

This year, I wasn't sure if Taivo (a ram lamb, i.e. a "teenager") would be able to get Uma and Emmi bred, since they are my two largest and tallest ewes. But the Finn rams are quite hard workers and seem to always get their job done. But... I was wondering if he might have to send out for a step ladder.

If a ewe is already pregnant, she won't come into season and can't get bred again, so there was no worry about putting Mara in with Wendall, even though I suspected she might already be pregnant.

I was hoping that out of the 5 ewes that I put in with rams, I would see which ones were not interesting to the rams and therefore already bred on Halloween. I have been able to notice this in years past when I had some ewes already bred through artificial insemination (AI) and then used back-up rams two weeks later. Unfortunately Wendall and Taivo were the most modest rams I have ever seen. They would barely look at a ewe while I was outside!!   We were breeding later in the year than in years past and this year we had early snows. So no "dirt marking" to give me any clues either since the rams' chests were clean.

So on February 23rd, I had Carol Dodge from Ewe Count 'Em come and ultrasound my ewes. I needed to know which ewes were pregnant, since they were all exposed to rams for a few hours. I also wanted to know which ewes I need to watch for late March lambs (the "love lambs") and which ewes I needed to watch for late April lambs (the planned lambs). With sheep, they can only ultrasound one little spot of the abdomen, near the "leg pit" of the back legs. (They can't see into the whole abdomen like in a human.) On a big sheep farm, they set up big chutes (like a rat maze for sheep) that they run the ewes down and when the sheep gets to the front of the line, they ultrasound her. At our small farm we don't have fancy things like that. I had all my ewes penned up in the barn and Carol brought her ultrasound machine and a little table that holds it right into the pen with the ewes. I caught each ewe one at a time and held her while Carol did the ultrasound. Carol has sheep herself and she was very calm and nice to the ewes. They were not stressed in the least. In fact, Uma wanted several turns!

I discovered that both Mara and Eeva were pregant with "love lambs" from the Halloween breeding. This just demonstrates the fertility of the Finnsheep breed that my rams got 2 ewes pregnant with no more than 8 hours of exposure! They were too far along to count how many lambs they had because you could only see one big spine of the one in front. With the other 4 ewes you could see tiny blobs which were the lamb fetuses. It was quite fascinating!

I found out that all 4 of the other ewes had gotten pregnant by the rams that I chose for them. And none of the other ewes (other than Eeva) that I had not planned to breed this year were pregnant. Carol said that Uma had at least 3 lambs, Emmi had at least 2 lambs, Helmi had at least 3 lambs and Annika had at least 2 lambs. Carol said that she can always see 2 lambs and sometimes 3. But with quads and sometimes triplets, the other lambs are hidden behind the front ones.

Mara looking very pregnant.

So here is one little mystery which will reveal itself eventually... Carol predicted that both Mara and Eeva were 109 days gestation, when I know for certain that they were both at 115, since I know when they were bred to within 8 hours of acuracy. As a rule, black- faced breeds (the big white meat breeds with black faces) like Suffolks and Hampshires have their lambs at 149 to 150 days gestation. White-faced breeds (white sheep with white faces, often wool breeds) like Rambouillets have their lambs at around 145 days gestation. While Finnsheep are considered a "white faced breed", they often have their lambs a few days earlier like 143 to 145 days gestation. I had always assumed that this was like a human with twins or a dog with a large litter of puppies in which the fetuses runs out of room to grow in the womb and that starts labor. But now I am wondering if Finnsheep actually mature more quickly than some other breeds?? At any rate, I am subtracting 6 days off Carol's estimate and hoping that the pattern is consistent across all of my ewes.

If I subtract off the 6 days and the usual pattern of lambs starting at 143 days gestation holds, that would make me watch for lambs from:
Emmi - starting April 15th
Uma - starting April 28th
Helmi - starting April 30th and
Annika starting May 4th.

The exceptions seem to prove the rule, however. More on that in the next post...

Lost is Found!

Firefly Fields — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 20:58:00 GMT

The lost roving order lady has been found! I posted it on my website and fortunately she check it. (I didn't want her to think I was ignoring her.) YAY!!!!

Lost Roving Order (eek!)

Firefly Fields — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 20:38:00 GMT

I managed to totally bungle a roving order over in the weekend. A new customer had emailed me with an order. I had planned to weigh a bunch of roving out on Monday (today) and planned to email her back at that time with her total. But... when I opened my Inbox to email her back, the email wasn't there! I must have somehow inadvertently deleted her email yesterday when I was clearing out my spam.

If that order was yours, please email me back! I have plenty of roving left. (Since it was a new customer, I have no idea how to get in touch with her or what her email address might be.) I do not usually bungle things like this!

Autumn at Firefly Fields

Firefly Fields — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 03:45:00 GMT

Jacketed Finnsheep graze in the pasture in front of our beautiful fall foliage here at Firefly Fields.

Finland - Setting the Scene - pt 2 (or skip the Coke, eat the licorice!)

Firefly Fields — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 15:28:00 GMT

Here is a little more about how I found Finland to be -- especially compared to what I was told or expected. Then I will start posting my photos of the farms I visited.

Not everyone in Finland is blonde. (The only place I saw lots of blondes was at the airport in Stockholm, Sweden.) Everyone I saw there was white and typically fair but most had brownish hair and there were no more blondes than you would see in the U.S. (Keep in mind, I didn't spend any time in Helsinki except for being at the airport.) The nice thing is, that being fair and brown haired, I could blend in while in public as long as I didn't speak. It is nice to be a "fly on the wall" while traveling and see people as they normally are.

I was warned that I would be eating 12 different kinds of fish. In fact, I had fish only once. It may have been because I was visiting sheep farms, but I had mostly lamb and once had mutton. Everyone wanted to show off their home-grown lamb just as we do when people visit. It was mostly different versions of lamb stew but once we also had lamb sausages -- sort of like a skinny bratwurst. It was all very good and all Finnsheep lamb, which is IMO (and the result of one USDA study) the yummiest of lamb meats due to its mild flavor.

I also had some very tasty Karelian pies a couple of times. These look like a pastry except that they aren't sweet. They are either made with rice or potato and people have them at their mid-afternoon coffee break. They taste a bit like bread or a soft cracker except that they aren't. I liked both the rice and potato varieties but thought the rice ones were slightly better.

The most popular type of candy in Finland is licorice. (What we would call "black licorice" in the U.S. except that theirs actually tastes good.) They have many types of licorice and fall into two major categories: sweet and salty. Once that I tried were some licorice chews that were the Panda brand and looked like little tubes. Panda Filled Licorice You can get the plain Finnish Panda licorice in the U.S., but in Finland they also have a type that has some kind of colorful candy stuffing in the tubes that make them even better. They also have something they call "salty licorice" which are little disks that are like a flat gumdrop consistency with finely ground sugar on the outside. They are sort of sweet and sort of salty. The one I tried had a leopard on the label. These things are highly addictive! salty licorice (My husband didn't care for these though.) If you ever have the chance to go to Finland, the licorice is definitely worth trying. (The links I provided are from a website where you can order these candies from Finland, but because of postage it ends up being ridiculously expensive.) I did find a website in the U.S. that has a different brand of Finnish licorice with a mild Salmiakki (salty licorice) flavor. If it turns out to be good, I'll post it here...

The one familiar thing that was very different was the Coke (CocaCola). It has rather an unusual taste in Finland which was drinkable but less yummy IMO. For some reason I am always amazed when I experience things in other places which seem like they would be the same but aren't. Coke is one of my guilty pleasures (full caffiene; full sugar) that I buy as a treat once in a while. I talked to a guy on the plane coming back home who has a friend that works for CocaCola in Finland. According to his friend, the recipe is the same but the different taste is due to the different taste of the local water. (Unlike Mexican CocaCola which has way more sugar than our U.S. variety.) So while it would be far easier for me to give up Cola in Finland, I would probably just make up for the lack of dietary sugar with additional licorice!

Trip to Finland: Setting the Scene

Firefly Fields — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 15:21:00 GMT

People have been asking me to get to work putting up some information and photos about my trip to Finland this past July 2008. I have been home over 2 months now and am just starting to get caught back up on things around the house and the farm!

First of all, I had a great time. The country is full of natural beauty, the people were very nice, and the sheep were incredible. I was there for 7 days and visited 13 farms -- 12 of Finnsheep and one of Åland Sheep. (It is pronounced OH-lond.) I also got to meet with Dr. Juha Kantanen PhD who is doing genome mapping in Finnsheep and Dr. Perti Hankonen, the veterinarian who saved the Kainu Grey Finnsheep from extinction. We traveled through about 3/4 of Finland by car -- a rented Volvo which I drove. (No, I wasn't scared. Everyone asks me that. It was just like driving in the U.S. for the most part.) My host, Helena, is not able to drive because of problems with her legs, but she was a great navigator. This was quite a blessing because the road signs are in just Finnish (of course) or in the west also in Swedish. (The Spanish classes I took in high school and college were of absolutely no help. )

This site has a very good map of Finland and when you put your mouse over a province it tells you what it is. I did not have time to go to Lapland, North Karelia or South Karelia. For only being in Finland for 7 days, I saw a lot!

Before I went, people who have been to Finland before told me a whole bunch of stuff about what Finland was like. I didn't find some of these things to be true. So I will describe how I found it...

The landscape looks a lot like Northern Wisconsin or Northern Minnesota. There are tons of white birch trees and pine trees. In the southern part of the country there are also spruce.

The forest on the Korhonen farm. The trunks are pines and there are little
sprouts of trees trying to grow up between them. The forests are very nice
and you can walk through them easily. There are mostly small plants and ferns
growing between the trees. No scrubby, thorny stuff.

I flew into Stockholm then into Helsinki. I didn't spend any time in Helsinki other than at the airport. Once you get out of Helsinki, there are very few 4 lane divided highways. Most of the roads are two lanes and very winding. They are in very good condition and I didn't see any potholes, even out in the countryside. There is about 6" of gravel along side the pavement and no shoulder to the road to speak of. So if you want to pull over, you have to wait for a bus stop which has a little turn-out and happens every mile or so.

This is a Finnish mailbox. (The kind you have for an individual home.) Some are different colors
- but otherwise all look the same. I gathered that the color was based on the manufacture date
of the box, not preference of the owner . They are made of plastic. These mailboxes fascinated me.
Note how the road has no shoulder.

Because the roads wind around so much and the speed limit changes frequently based on your proximity to a town, crossroad, or other things known only to the official who decides these things, you really have no idea how far you have traveled based on how long you have driven. Plus it stays light quite late into the night, so you don't know what time it is either. The upside of this is I didn't become very tired while driving!

This is a photo that I took of a traditional Finnish fence all made of natural sticks. I saw several of these driving through the countryside and finally saw this one in a place where I was out of the car to take a photo. You can see the 2-lane road behind it which is like most of the roads that we drove on.

There are large fields used as pasture or hay fields. I also saw quite a few fields of rape seed which is used to make Canola oil.

The bright yellow stuff is rape seed plants. I took this photo from a boat on the sea in the archipelago.

These fields are divided up by forest and also lakes. Once you see how things look you can understand how things can be close together in a small country and yet feel very remote. (The area of Finland is the size of Wisconsin and Minnesota put together.) You can see how there can still be predation problems on the sheep/lambs from bears, wolves and lynx because there are tons of places for them to hide.

The people were very polite and had proper manners. (More like the way that we behave in a formal business setting in the U.S..) But I found everyone very friendly and willing to talk to me. They were all very proud of their beautiful sheep and wanted to tell me about them and also look at the photos that I had brought and ask me about my Finnsheep in the U.S.. I had heard Finns described as "not wanting to talk" and I didn't find that to be true. But then I am quite quiet around "regular" people and when you get me around dog/sheep/fiber people, I can talk for hours. So maybe it is something similar.

Most people are not fair blondes like people imagine Northern Europeans to be. (I saw a lot of those very blonde people in the Stockholm airport on my way there.) While there were a few blondes, most of the people I saw in Finland were very fair skinned but had brownish hair. One thing that was really nice was that I could go into public places and blend in, as long as I didn't talk. (When I packed, I tried to select generic clothing that didn't have printing on it.) This was great for me because my dream in going to other places is just to be a "fly on the wall" so you can see how people really live their lives.

Not everyone speaks English. (I was told by Americans who have visited Finland that they did. Maybe it just everyone who works at Nokia does.) The younger people all speak English and with very good accents because they get American TV shows in Finland now. I think I initially overwhelmed Helena's sons by talking way too fast. Their accents were so good that it seemed like talking to American teenagers (except that Helena's sons have better manners). Many of the middle aged people and older people studied English when they were in school. Some of them still speak English quite well. Others are "rusty" because they haven't used it for many years, though I suspect they could understand me quite well even if they weren't comfortable speaking. Just a few people spoke no English at all. In the western part of Finland, which is across the Baltic Sea from Sweden, most people speak Swedish as their first language and Finnish as their second language. Some also speak English as their third language. Fortunately Helena, my host, is a professional Finnish-English translator, so she was able to translate for me when needed.

There is no land to buy. It doesn't matter how much money you have to spend, it just doesn't exist. All of the farms that I visited had been in the owners' families for generations. Or possibly it had been part of a larger parcel divided amongst family member when the previous generation died. I saw many beautiful homes that have been in families for generations and people still live there. The homes, barns and many other buildings are all made of wood. (They have a lot of trees there and appear to manage their forests very well - harvesting and replanting the trees.)

The houses are traditionally dark red with white trim and most are that color. However, I stayed in a white house and a grey house. Manor houses are traditionally yellow -- but the one I visited was very pale pink.

It is not light out all night - like daytime. From people's descriptions of Finand as the "land of the midnight sun", I expected it to look like day all the time. That isn't true... at least in most of Finland. (I think that up in the far north of Finland in Lapland it might be that way.) In central and southern Finland, in July, it looks more or less like day until 11 PM. Then it starts to look like early dawn and continues to look that way until early dawn. This means that when you wake up, you have to look at a clock to figure out if you should be getting up yet or not. It might be 6 AM or it might be 3:30 AM. It looks pretty much the same.

It was rather hard for me to sleep while it was still rather light out. And when I did fall asleep and woke up in the morning, the presence of light told me that I should be waking up. While I didn't ever have jet lag, the difference in the light / dark outside was hard to transition to and by the time I was just starting to be able to sleep close to a normal number of hours, it was time to go home. If I am able to go back again, I think I will train myself to sleep wearing a sleep mask for about a month at home before I go.

The Finnish people themselves don't seem to need that many hours of sleep in the summertime. They all told me that it is so dark, cold and snowy all winter, that they try to pack in as many hours of activity as possible in the summer. I think this is aided by the many hours of daylight, which seems to make you feel like you are on some kind of sunshine "high". (Sort of the opposite of Seasonal Affective Disorder.) It is probably also aided by the enormous amounts of coffee that they drink.

They have their first morning coffee when they get up, then coffee with breakfast. There is often coffee with lunch and a mid-afternoon coffee break which they have with a snack. There is often coffee with dinner or after dinner and sometimes more coffee in the evening. And it is all "leaded". There is no decaf except for instant coffee. They drink their coffee out of small cups -- like the kind that come with your good china. So they are not the huge mugs that we get in the U.S.. So it is small amounts of caffeine throughout the day and I never saw people hyper or jittery.

And of course we were visiting people, so we would often have coffee and a snack a the people's house. My record was the day I had seven cups of coffee. I could have had ten -- I turned down some. Fortunately, caffeine doesn't bother me. I have been known to nearly fall asleep drinking coffee after dinner at home.

Finnish is a cool but difficult language -- assuming it is not your native language of course. It is not related to the languages of neighboring countries such as Swedish, Danish and Norwegian. It is related to Hungarian. One easy tip is to remember that all words (with very few exceptions) have the accent on the first syllable. So while we might say Hel-SINK-i in the US, it is really pronounced HEL-sink-i. When I first arrived, I couldn't even guess how a word might be pronounced. By the time I left, I could at least give sounding out a word a good try. I did learn maybe a dozen or so words in Finnish and feel like I got a feel for how the language sounds.

to be continued...

Grey Handspun Finn

Firefly Fields — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 15:17:00 GMT

Here is a photo of some handspun Finn that I have been working on. It is from my sheep and is natural black and natural white carded together. I made the mistake of leaving it on my small niddy-noddy overnight last night so it is a bit bent. I haven't set the twist yet. It is softly spun, but my best guess based on past experience is that it will spin up to sock yarn / fingering weight. (I know it looks fatter than that but it smooshes.) I haven't decided what its eventual use with be. I have a few ideas...

Baby lambs growing up

Firefly Fields — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 20:40:00 GMT

This is Taivo, my grey ram lamb. His father was a Kainu Grey Finnsheep in Finland. He is one of my lambs out of the AI. It appears that he will be light grey (or "water grey" as they call it in Finland). His wool was black at birth but soon started changing. It looks like he will be a very pale silver, that you have to examine closely to see that it is not white. Taivo is almost 6 month old now.

Here is a side view of him walking.

This is his twin brother, Vesa (also a ram lamb). He is white, but there is a 50% chance that he carries for grey. I kept him as a "back up" to his brother because these genetics are so precious.

The three ewe lambs that I kept this year are

Eeva (left), Sini (middle), and Laila (right). Eeva is white but genetically has one or two brown genes. This means she either carries for brown or secretly "is" brown covered by the white which is considered a "pattern" that inhibits the expression of the color. Sini is grey and her father was a Kainu Grey Finnsheep in Finland. She may end up being slightly darker than Taivo, who is her half-brother. Laila is white and probably black factored.

Here is another photo of Sini looking a little camera shy. She is one of our cutest lambs ever! (IMHO)

Roving, roving and more roving...

Firefly Fields — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 18:45:00 GMT

I have my roving that I got back from Wooly Knob up on my website now. They are all natural colors or blends of natural colors. They are from a combination of fleeces, so I can't tell you which sheep any one roving is from.

There is natural black.

and natural white...

There is a blended grey (white and black together) which spins up looking a bit heathered...

And there is a black and white stripe (or "skunk" as our visitor Laura named it yesterday ) which spins up looking rag-wool like...

There is a small amount of taupe, which I believe may be brown and white blended together...

And a frosty one which is white with a sliver of grey running through it. It is a lot prettier than it photographs.

I also have some natural white blended with silk which extremely shimmery in the natural light...

There are clickable photos on my website so that you can embiggen them.

I am spinning up some of the grey and it is lovely. This is my Ashford Joy that I bought a year ago and have not practiced on at all. (I bought it so that I would have a travel wheel to take to festivals and not knock every bolt loose on my Louet S-51.) And... I am not a very good spinner as I spend lots of time outside taking care of sheep and not enough time in the house spinning. So if I can make it look like yarn, anyone can!!

Two New Rams

Firefly Fields — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 18:21:00 GMT

Two weeks ago, on September 14th, my new rams came home. They are both from my friend Sandy De Master of Wee Croft Finnsheep who is retiring from breeding. One is Wendall...

who is brown. Wendall is a big ram and has lovely wool.

The other is Charlie...

who is white. His wool is also nice. Charlie is a "teaser ram" which means he has had a vasectomy. So he thinks he is a real ram, but he "shoots blanks". Teaser rams can be used to help bring ewes into season and are especially helpful when doing Artificial Insemination (AI). I won't be doing any AI this year, but hope to be doing some again in future years if I am able to import some more frozen semen from Finland. But he had already had the surgery and won't be of any use to anyone else, so I thought, why not give him a home and hope it works out for all of us?

Both boys are very sweet and starting to trust me more. This is the first time I have purchased adult sheep. All of my other sheep were purchased as lambs or born here. So it is a new experience for all of us.