Wet felting a dryer ball

Today I tried my hand at using the washing machine to make a dryer ball. I actually made three.  I used two Southdown roving and one Hampshire roving. The Hampshire dryer ball came out really well.  The Southdown dryer balls came out a little lumpy, so I decided to needle felt a more extensive design to cover the lumps.

Here is a pile of Southdown wool that has been cleaned, but not carded.

Then we have the nice drum carder that I got for my birthday this year from my wonderful husband. This step makes the carding go so much faster than the hand carders. I love it.

 Then we have our roving all completed.  These are Hampshire roving.

I took strips of the roving and dipped them in hot water started rolling them in a tight ball wrapping itself until it was about the size of a tennis ball.

 I did that with the three balls, and then tied them each individually into a nylon sock and threw it in the washing machine with my regular laundry.

 I did run it through two loads just to make sure, and then the dryer . For my first time, I was pretty happy with the outcome. 

It did need a little needle felting to tack down the outer layers.

If you can see this beautiful Hampshire dryer ball came out wonderful all by itself without any decoration. Thanks to our wonderful sheep Boston isn’t he a handsome boy.  

The Southdown dryer ball one I have completed as a cute frog so I think will be a really cute and sweet gift or for someones own dryer. 

So I will be at the Sabattus farmers market this Sunday, weather permitting, and I hope to see some of my local friends there. 

 Entropion

A Common Health Concern for Lambs

After experiencing this problem for the first time, even though it is our third lambing season, we feel much better prepared for this if or when this recurs.  We let this go WAY too long, because we just didn’t know to look for this or notice right away.

Sunny was the first one born this season and had entropion, a condition where the lamb’s eyelid curves inward, causing their lashes to scratch their eyeball.  We didn’t figure out until we brought her and Barrel to the vet over a week later.  

These were the signs we missed, and you can see them in her photos above.  Due to the irritation, she had a weepy eye and her wool under the effected eye was wet and goopy. She kept her eye closed often due to the pain.  And the irritation to the eye became so bad that she developed an ulcer on her cornea.  If we didn’t catch it, she could eventually become permanently blind!

This is Barrel on the day I first noticed that something was wrong.  I honestly thought he had conjunctivitis.  He is bottle fed, so I get up and close with him more often than the others.  But I examined every one of them after seeing this.  In this zoomed in photo you can see the lower lid curved in ( I didn’t realize until the vet pointed it out).

 

That day at the vet was busy, but I learned a lot and got these two lambs better.  It was expensive, because they had to be sedated to have surgery.  Barrel had a little cut done and it was glued to keep the lid pulled tight.  It looks a lot better!  The first photo shows him that same day and the second was after almost two weeks of healing.

 

Here is Sunny after her procedure, she had stitches to pull the lid down and prevent it from curling in again.  The first photo shows day 1 and the second is not quite two weeks later.  Look how wonderfully it healed and that terrible ulcer is complete gone!

Here are our pure Southdown twins from mom Dolly.  Their names are Kittery (female) and Kokadjo (male) born on March first.  I continued to stay on alert for entropion and found that I had missed Kittery when I got home from the vet that same day.  We’ve now found THREE lambs of this year’s season with this problem and all from different mothers.  Upon researching this, it is suspected of being genetic and up to 80% of a flock can be effected.

Right now the clues are pointing to our ram Lambert.  None of his offspring had it last Spring.  Considering the cost, we were wondering if we would need to replace him, but further research into what other farmers do helped us come up with a plan.  It is such a common and treatable problem, farmers do not breed it out.  So what about the cost?!?  

Well, we tried the inexpensive method we found online from farming websites and it worked just as well with the alligator clip at 1% of the cost!  We left the clip on for about three days, which immediately pulls the lid away from the eye to stop the irritation.  But it also causes inflammation and that is what permanently fixes this problem.  We may also purchase Michel clips , that work similarly and fall off on their own.

You can see the lid has healed correctly.  It’s been two weeks since this picture and her ulcer is almost complete resolved.  Just below is the picture of her almost completely healed. 

I’ve sanitized the clip and it will be stored until next lambing season.  

Our goal is to monitor for this more carefully next year and minimize the risk of ulcer formation from the start!

And treat this at the farm instead of the vet to avoid the cost. 

Some heroes have four paws

 Some Heroes Have 

Four Paws

Carla our barn cat really did a great job managing the barn and then alerting us of a problem last month.  We’ve been so busy with lambing that I hadn’t posted about it yet.

Sometimes she does sit outside our sliding glass door to say hello, but on February 10th when we were getting home very late from a hockey game in the dark and cold, she was meowing to me like something was wrong.

I thought immediately that Carla is sounding the alarm. Something is going on in the barn.  My head goes to the babies, since it is that time of year.  Maybe there are lambs being born and a ewe needs our help?

So I quickly pull up our animal cam on my phone to see what’s going on.  What I saw was not what I was not expecting.  

Carla likes things in order.  She has her favorite cozy spots to snuggle in.

Most recently with the cold snap, she has nestled herself a layered corner between the hay bales and the stairs.

This is where our boys: Boston and Lambert are supposed to be.  When I checked the camera that night, I had to run to my husband to tell him that Carla was sounding the alarm that the boys were wreaking havoc in the barn.

They had knocked over the grain barrel, Boston had jumped into the pen with the girls and Lambert was pacing up and down the stairs trying to figure out how to follow.  It was chaos and the Mamas were not happy.

This photo was from that night after getting things back in place.  Notice the time stamp.  

If she hadn’t alerted us or if I didn’t heed her warning, then it would have been an even bigger mess to clean up.  Heroes come in all shapes and sizes… ours comes with a tail and sass and affection.

 Double the Trouble

Two sets of twins within two days

Squirrel (female) and Barrel (male)

PeterPan (male) and TinkerBell (female)

Natalie had her twins February 24th.  Little ram Barrel came first, malpositioned with only his snout showing. Some manipulation by Justin and he was born.  He had some raspy breathing and grunting, which didn’t clear up with nose clearing or swinging by his hind legs.

Natalie did a great job licking him and caring for him as the second lamb got into position. He was 11.4 lbs.

Her second was malpositioned with one hoof and her snout first.  She was a quick fix and delivered well. Squirrel was 11.7 lbs. These twins are Katahdin/Southdown mix. Last year Natalie had Acorn. Her offspring have Autumn/Harvest themed names.

Barrel took a trip to the vet when his grunting and breathing difficulties continued.  He had a full check up   with a normal heart and lung exam.  Our wonderful vet at Annabessacook large animal clinic figured out that it was his trachea vibrating. He got a dose of steroids, his Vitamin E, antibiotics to cover for lung involvement (like aspiration) and an oral feeding tube feed with his mom’s colostrum and some colostrum replacer. 

The good news is his health is great and he’s breathing normally.  The bad news is, since we took him away from his mum so long, she is not accepting him anymore.

We’ve been monitoring their bonding and feeding on our animal camera.  Mom, Natalie will allow her daughter Squirrel to feed, but walks away when Barrel attempts.

So far we have been going out and holding her still every 2-3 hours to allow Barrel a turn to feed.  Perhaps he will end up being another bottle baby.  But we would like for him to stay in the barn because he and Squirrel really enjoy each other.

This morning on February 26th, we rushed to the barn after hearing Nala had already birthed her twins recently in the night. The little kids have been excited to help with the lambs and got there first.

We were lucky that they all survived. Nala must have cleaned them up a little before we arrived, because the twins were walking around the pen, still damp and with frozen tails.  It was -1 degrees this morning.  

Nala was very weak and couldn’t get up off the ground.  Justin gave her some drench (super calorie squirt into her mouth). She fed, drank and went back to caring for her babies.  Despite the cold and that little scare, it really went well.  

You can see Barrel and Squirrel in the pen behind them.

TinkerBell has the brown dot on her back and is 11.9 lbs, otherwise they both look pretty similar with brownish gray speckled heads. A lot like last year’s Charm.

PeterPan weighed in at 13.1lbs.  If you haven’t guessed it yet, Nala’s lambs are named after cartoon characters. Last year was Charm (Prince Charming) and Lucky (Spirit tv show).

Now three out of four of our ewes have lambed and we have just Dolly left. Dolly had triplets last year, but she did a great job all on her own. It was a very productive February vacation.