Sheep Shearing Day! by Emily & Dad

Yesterday was sheep shearing day! Since lambing time is fast approaching, it is important that the sheep be sheared before that. The Kingery family, some friends of ours, had their sheep sheared with ours. This helps to reduce the costs, as our shearer has a minimum charge. Plus it makes scheduling easier for everyone. So our shearer, Doug Rathke, had our eight sheep to shear plus the Kingery's nine, an easy day for him! Doug is a world class sheep shearer that does a great job.

Doug pulled up shortly after the Kingery family arrived. We all worked on getting our very stubborn eight sheep into a separate pen for the shearing. Normally the sheep don't go into this pen, so they were fearful of what might be in there I guess. Then Doug got his equipment setup, and we were ready to go.

It's really amazing how quick he can shear the sheep - about three minutes! He had a large audience, since Mom invited the Mathison family over, too. We're expecting that most of the mama sheep (Barbara, Bertha, Valerie, Jane, Molly, Nancy, & Sue, to be specific) will probably have triplets. Everybody marveled at now absolutely huge they are! (And we found out that it actually wasn't all wool!) I think Rammer (the boy, also known to me as David) gave him the most trouble, but it's really cool how he just flips 'em over and they become as "meek as a lamb", as some city-fied person would say! :)

The sheep are due starting April 8th, based on a 145 day gestation period. We bought our ram on November 14th... so depending on how quickly the ram got busy, the lambs will be arriving over the next two to four weeks.