~ Lambing time !

It's lambing time - one of my most favorite times of the year. Yesterday afternoon Koko, one of my favorite moorit Shetland ewes delivered twin ram lambs. She was bred to our moorit ram, Graham, that we purchased last year. She is a great mother - instinctively knowing exactly what to do. These little guys were born within 10 minutes of each other and both were on their feet within minutes. Strong and healthy, just the way I like it. We have named them Barnum & Bailey.

This is Barnum. He was born first - he's a tad bit larger and has bigger horn buds.
This is Bailey. They are both very sweet and already love to be cuddled. The orange pigment around their eyes indicates that they will be both be moorit in color as adults even though Barnum appears black right now. Koko is the first of seven ewes to lamb. Looks like it's going to be a busy week :)
WE had a busy weekend and accomplished many farm chores that needed to be done. The little house with the blue plastic is our duck house. We moved the duck house and ducks from the back garden into the cow pasture. I thought they would do a good job cleaning up after the cows and they will all have plenty of room. That and I need the garden space. The frame of the duck house is an awning frame that DH recycled from a job he did. There were two of them and they were going to throw them in the dumpster. We have used both of them as duck house/ chicken tractors by using small chicken wire and this heavy duty plastic for weatherproofing. They are lightweight and move easily. Works great and they didn't cost a fortune. The cows and the donkey checked them out and when they found out they weren't edible, they weren't interested for very long :) This is my row of parsnips. They overwintered fine in the garden and are doing nicely. Most are big enough to harvest. Throwback at Trapper Creek recently posted a great chicken recipe on her blog with parsnips and other veggies. I'm hoping to try it this week one night for dinner.

While moving the ducks, we decided to separate out the males from the females. The males are incredibly aggressive to the females to the point where they injure them if they can gang up on them. One male is more than enough to keep the eggs fertile. The other boys went into the freezer. We raise Indian Runners and were happy at the size when dressed. We skinned them and it was much better than the usual dip and pluck method. DH halved them and is now looking for duck recipes as I write this :)

It is still dangerously dry - I york raked another pasture yesterday and the dirt devils were blowing up everywhere. They are predicting rain on Tuesday. We are praying that they are right - we need it desperately.

~ Wishing you all a great week ahead ~