Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Where in the World is Irena Farm?

It's been two months almost exactly and what a two months it's been. Two surgeries for me, Ben passing away, training for Ted, a Christmas program, and most of all: The Move.

We have moved about half a mile down the road to "Jewel Pond." We already love it. We have moved most of the house stuff and we have a game plan for the farm stuff that doesn't fit here.

We've scaled back our sheep population dramatically. It feels very good. The core that is left is the best of the best of the best. Hard thoughtful culling is always a positive step for a flock. All my ewes are hardy, need very little to thrive, are parasite and heat resistant with minimal inputs, lamb with little need for supervision - no jugging for most of them. So it's hard to come up with a new culling principle.

I decided to go for uniformity. I kept the ewes that either look like or are good producers of lambs that favor my Blue Faced Leister rams. This is not an arbitrary decision. The ewes with wider heads and shoulders from my brief dabbling with Texel stock, do have some trouble when they have singles. I've done a bit of pulling of large ram lambs from these ewes. I never regret it - they mother quite well after that, but it's annoying to have to keep a close eye on only these sheep.

Ted is away for training. I thought it was important that he work in a different place, with a different handler, and no matter what always intended to send him somewhere for a few weeks. Then when we had first the one surgery, and then the bigger surgery and long recovery required, I asked (no, begged!) Christine Henry of Fieldstone Farm to take him on during this time and she was gracious enough to give Ted a shot.

It seems to be going well. Christine's been smoothing out some bothersome issues and I couldn't be happier with that - just getting that done is worth missing him for all this time. He's still weak on inside flanks but that's most likely due to my only working in a weak way before he left. I really was feeling awful the last few months and every practice session required a couple days to recover from for me.

It sounds like he should come back at least ready to move to PN. After lambing he should be confident enough driving to run in Ranch and Nursery. That's one thing lambing does for you! Especially when the pregger and nursery fields are in different parts of the farm - but that won't be the case this year. Still, there will be ewes who need to go up to the lambing shed and that will be about 200 yards from the part where they will likely choose to lamb (farthest from the house).

Lu, my oldest livestock guardian dog (going on twelve), has moved into the house for retirement. Keeping Min inside for her spay recovery gave me the idea. I realized I didn't need three dogs, especially with paring the flock in half. Min and Tully make a good team and when the weather warms up and the lambs start being born, I'll let Lu out during the evening shift again.

Lu has pretty severe degenerative joint disorder. I have noticed some slowing of her step and some limping in the wintertimes, but had no idea it had progressed this far. She's been on some supplements for joint health for a couple years, but I realized she needed more aggressive therapy.

I did a consult with Sabine Contreras of Better Dog Care. Sabine recommended a diet of high quality, low inflammatory protein that was easy on the liver (and kidneys). Lu's eating mostly fish, white rice, and potatoes, basically. She recommended a couple of supplements and I've got Lu on Cetyl-M as well. I wish I had before and after videos. It's been about six weeks and the difference is like seeing time turn back. Lu is wiggly and bouncy again!

Lu has also been on a very restricted activity level until this week. She didn't mind at all the first few weeks - then the next few she kept trying to slip out again.

I will try to keep this up again but currently Blogger runs like a snail on my poor little MacBook. I need to clean off the hard drive again.