Yessiree!! Been awhile since we've had an "Our first --" post!

This little dude made his way into the world early this morning, and he represents Our First Spotted Lamb. He is as yet unnamed, but I'm pretty sure he's a keeper. His dam, Silent Babette, is a pure Harlequin, and his sire is our super-spotty Babydoll Southdown, Ike.

Babette and baby are currently hanging out in our chinchilla room, where the lighting is sub-optimal, so the pictures kind of make them look like swamp monsters rather than adorable sheep ... But trust me, they're cute in reality.

... There's this stupid Internet phenomenon of posting the word, "First!" in the comments below a 'blog post. Well, if Howling Hill Farm Babies 2017 was a 'blog post, and these lambs were so inclined, they'd get to post it.

These were actually born two days ago, but their maiden mom, a Babydoll Southdown ewe named Salt, needed a little bit of help learning mothering, and so I held off posting them. She's now figured it out beautifully, though, so here they are. These are our first lambs by their sire, spotted Babydoll Southdown ram Ike. They didn't get the spots (not surprisingly, as I believe the gene to be recessive), but they do have a white spot on their foreheads which I believe to indicate that they carry the spotting gene. Oh, and did I mention that these are twin ewe lambs?

I can't believe it's only been a week since the last 'blog post! ... It goes to show how much 'blog-worthy stuff can happen in one week!
 
So, the first major farm event was Shearing #1: Sheep and Pregnant Alpacas. (This is actually not all that accurate a title, as not all of the pregnant alpacas actually got shorn -- just those that are close to their due date -- and not all of the alpacas shorn were pregnant -- but it sounds better than Sheep and Group 1 Alpacas, since no one else knows what "Group 1" is.) This shearing's obligatory "before and after" photos are brought to you by sheep, because it was the sheep that made the most dramatic transformations this round.
 
The most dramatic sheep of all was Licorice, the totally wool-blind ewe lamb from this post. However, Licorice didn't feel like cooperating for her "after" shot, so instead, we bring you the second most dramatic, from the boy in the same post, Ike. As a refresher, here is what Ike looked like before:

... And here he is after:

... Holy spots, Batman!
 
On this farm, getting shorn and revealing a whole bunch of spots is a really, really GOOD thing. (This is not necessarily the case on all farms.)
 
Cheever, Jiggles and Puddin -- three of our other sheep -- also made pretty dramatic color changes; Jiggles and Puddin also revealed a good amount of spotting.
 
Then, on shearing day, we had our second cria of the season, as expected. Why was it expected? Well, you see, our new shearer, Malcolm Cooper, had been to our farm three times last year: once to shear our sheep, and twice more to tip shear the crias. Each time, a cria was born on the same day. Thus, it was inevitable, and I was honestly not surprised when a female -- Dani Rose -- went into labor. (It helped that she was due right around then, of course.)
 
I was seriously hoping for a grey female out of this one (granted, this is usually what I am hoping for), and he missed the memo both ways and managed to come out a brown male. That's okay, though -- he is strong, healthy, robust and looking good, and that's what really matters. Logically, he had to be named Malcolm.

Last but definitely not least, our last ewe lambed Tuesday, giving us a tidy lambing season of one week. All told, we had five black ewe lambs, one black ram lamb and one white ram lamb, all healthy, robust and gorgeous, with no dystocias. Now THAT is an awesome lambing season!

Now that lambing season is complete (with the possible exception of a straggler who needed some time to start cycling), we now get to play the long waiting game for crias. Every alpaca breeder wishes that alpacas were as easy to time as sheep, but alas, with a gestation length of 330 - 360 days, they are not.
 
Next up: Last-minute full-fleece and fiber photos before Shearing #2: The Big One!

... Yes, the very first lambs of the season were born this morning -- twin ewe lambs! Yeah!! .... In the pouring rain. (Obviously.) The lambing shelter had too much hay in it and they were having a hard time finding their mom's udder, so we finally moved them up to the garage. At first, they were co-mingling with Boopy and her dam, Bee, but Bee was really not so sure she wanted to share her space with a sheep, and the feeling was mutual. Thus, the sheep got their own bay, though not before Boopy made a valiant effort to befriend the newborn lambs.
 
These are some of the crappiest pictures I've ever posted to this site, but ... It's a cria. Kissing a lamb. I can't not post this.

I had to spray-paint a red dot on one of the lambs, because otherwise there would be absolutely no way to tell them apart ...

Yesterday we had a very long, marathon trip to pick up some new additions -- mostly alpacas, all of which we are extremely pleased with -- plus a last-minute pickup: Ike the ram. This was clearly something that was "meant to be," because the timing was absolutely perfect -- we were already headed on a trip, and Ike was only an hour and a half from one of the farms we visited (Havenfield Farm, owned by our friend Kim Kline -- thank you Kim!).
 
So, here is Ike! What's so special about Ike? Well, other than the obvious (he's the cutest darned sheep you will ever see), there's the other obvious: He's spotted. And, he is a pure Babydoll Southdown, registered with the Olde English Babydoll Southdown Registry. He has a particularly unique, beautiful spotting pattern that I am very excited about for two reasons. One is that it is just plain cool to look at. The other is that it appears to be very highly heritable.
 
Ike is a two year old, and already proven as a breeder. He is the calmest, gentlest ram -- even calmer than Cheever.
 
Welcome home Ike!

We also picked up this absurdly adorable girl from the same farm (which turned out also to be a veterinary clinic, which turned out to be owned by one of my former classmates from Cornell Ag -- small world). She has the most perfect head I have ever seen on a sheep -- if anything, I would maybe like her to have a little bit less wool coverage on her face, and that is rare, for me. I swear, she does have eyes!

... In other sheep news, our first Babydoll Southdown lambs are due in T-minus two weeks ... Prepare for cute!

... We still don't have any posts for 2016!
 
Okay, okay, I have been really bad about posting lately. Turns out that even in a relatively mild winter, like this one, there still isn't all that much news going on around a farm in wintertime.
 
Here, then, are some pictures of sheep, because there also aren't enough sheep pictures on this website.

If Cheever did his job, we will be expecting our first Babydoll Southdown lambs in a few months ... Maybe even a Harlequin lamb or two, if we're lucky!

... The kitten's name is Oswald, and he is my photography helper.
 
This is Cain, a solid silver harlequin (and you can't tell unless you open his fleece). Ozzy looks mildly perturbed by him.

This is Renegade, Cain's half brother, who is one of the most unique harlequin appaloosa alpacas I've ever seen. Ozzy has little interest in him.

Here is Poppy the sheep. While it may look like she and Ozzy are snuggling, she was, in fact, politely "escorting" him out of her paddock. She's done this before, and it's something I really need to get a video of, because it's about the cutest thing imaginable. (I have noticed that "sheep + another animal = insane levels of cute.")

Here is everyone's favorite alpaca, Sparky, sniffing Ozzy. Ozzy looks a tad frightened of her.

I crouched down to try and get better photos of this interaction, and Sparky immediately walked over and began to play one of her favorite games: Take the Clip-On Sunglasses off the Hat. I attempted to get photographic proof of this, but it didn't come out great:

Weirdly enough, one of our other harlequin gals, Mozzarella, has also played this game in the past. What is it with harleys and my clip-on sunglasses?
 
Finally, here is Penn (AKA Pennyroyal Rose -- Snowmass Royal Rose x TGF Tinker Bella x Snowmass Legacy Gold -- hey, maybe if I start writing shorthand alpaca pedigrees like the reining horse people do, it'll catch on) sniffing the kitten. I'm ending with this one, because it's the best photograph.

Also, Ozzy looks fairly content here. Kind of. Either that, or Penn's breath smells awful.

The Howling Hill Farm sheep program is finally starting to come together.

In my last sheep-related blog post, I mentioned how I wasn't really sure whether we were going to breed Harlequin Sheep only, or Harlequins and spotted Babydolls. At this point, I am still not sure ... And more importantly, I am really not sure that it matters.

We will be breeding cute, friendly, correctly conformed, solidly-built, miniature sheep with beautiful, soft (20 microns or less), uniform fleece with a high-frequency crimp and medium staple length -- with spots and other fun patterns. They may be registered as Harlequins, or they may be registered as Babydolls (Olde English Miniature Babydoll Southdowns), depending on the breeding that produced them.

Here are two new additions to help further our goal of these sheep. The first is a new ram, Cheever. Cheever is a registered Babydoll who had a spotted sire and who has a few black spots on his rump. He is the tankiest, puppy-doggiest ram you ever will meet -- totally perfect for our farm.

... And this is Lily. Lily is a registered Harlequin, as both of her parents were dramatically spotted registered Harlequins. She is white, but my guess is that she is, genetically, spotted -- a white with white spots, if you will. She is also compact and lovely, and her wool is amazing. Fleece shots of this one forthcoming. Lily is half-sister to Noah, so she will be bred to Cheever.

I am so looking forward to next spring.

So ...

I was planning to focus on spotted Babydoll Southdown sheep. I had already made the decision to focus on Babydolls, and when I realized that they come in spotted form, well, that was a done deal.

I did realize that a breed called the Harlequin Sheep existed. It's a new breed, like our Idaho Pasture Pigs, and still in the development stage, like the IPPs. I liked them, but I didn't think they were quite as cute as the Babydolls, and I didn't quite get the point. Thus, although they had definitely made my radar screen, I didn't really pursue them.

Then, I saw a little Harlequin ram lamb posted for sale on a Facebook page -- and he was in New Hampshire! How 'bout that. It seemed worthwhile to go see him, just in case ...

... In case it turned out that he might be the cutest danged sheep imaginable. ... Which he is. He looks, in fact, an awful lot like a spotted Babydoll. Oh, there are differences, sure, but ...

No one can tell me that face is anything but ridiculously adorable. He is a sweetheart, too -- even calmer and friendlier than the Babydolls, which means that he is more like a little puppy than a sheep, because Babydolls are incredibly calm, friendly sheep!

The other thing that struck me about this boy -- and the other thing that sets him, and the harlequins, apart from the Babydolls -- is his fleece. It's nice. It's really nice. It is also soft. Soft, fine, and with a medium to high frequency crimp style ... Hmm, that sounds an awful lot like what we breed for in alpacas! The staple is also substantially longer than that of Babydolls, which makes it a more versatile fleece.

Given that Harlequin Sheep are still in the foundation stage, the offspring of a registered Harlequin and another breed may be registered as an F1 if it conforms to the Harlequin breed standard, which is very close to that of Babydolls. Thus, our Babydoll ewes -- whose wool is also relatively fine, though not nearly as impressive as this guy's -- can be used as foundation dams for a Harlequin program.

Thus, I realized that I had found our perfect sheep flock-sire. His name is Noah, and we brought him home just this evening. Howling Hill Farm is officially one of the foundation breeders of the Miniature Harlequin Sheep!

... Does this mean that we are officially "out" of Babydolls, having devoted our foundation Babydoll ewes to our new Harlequin Sheep program? I'm not sure yet. I still love the Babydoll breed as well, and there is no reason why our girls can't be used to produce registered F1 Harlequins this year and registered Babydolls the next. At this point, we are still up in the air as to our Babydoll program, but what I do know is that Noah is going to be the sire of our 2016 F1 Harlequin lambs!

Today, our last four Jacob sheep -- the adult ewes -- left for their new home. I have also redoubled my search for a Babydoll Southdown flock sire.

It probably seems a little abrupt, from a 'blog perspective. Not even three short months ago, I 'blogged about the last Jacob lambs for the season having been birthed out that day; now, I report that all have been re-homed.

What didn't get 'blogged down was the thought process that occurred in the meantime. Jacobs were our very first, experimental foray into sheep. I had always wanted sheep, Babydolls specifically, but, having never owned sheep before, I was extremely hesitant to plunk down the $300-600 per lamb that a Babydoll ewe commands. A much less pricey breed, Jacobs were a good way to test the waters of sheep-dom. They helped us discover that we did, in fact, both really enjoy sheep.

Once the Babydolls arrived, though, I had the feeling that we would be switching focus in the future. They were just as cute and friendly as they were rumored to be. Moreover, their short, stocky body build perfectly fit the standard that I typically seek in most animal species. They just looked -- and felt -- "right." The Jacobs still were cool, but ...

The next strike came when the Jacobs were shorn a week or so later. Previously puff-balls, they were suddenly denuded into revealing their true form. True to breed standard, our Jacob ewes were "unimproved," meaning that, while the Babydolls waddled around like little meat-bricks, the Jacobs looked fairly lanky. This is not a fault -- it's what they're supposed to look like. It really just didn't quite fit on our farm. Despite the spots, the Jacobs now looked out of place.

Then came the baaing.

Our sheep paddocks are right behind our bedroom window. This may seem like a glaring stupidity of design to seasoned shepherds, but it never even occurred to us that the sheep might eventually make noise. They really didn't make much noise, either; not until their lambs were weaned. That night -- weaning night -- we did not sleep. This is not surprising. What was surprising was that the weaning seemed to have flipped a switch in our ewes, and suddenly, they went from being relatively quiet girls to being the all-sheep chorus of New Hampshire. This wouldn't have been so bad if the baaing was a cute, gentle sound, but it wasn't. I eventually realized that it reminded me quite powerfully of a really, really loud version of one of those noise makers that you turn upside down that makes that very sickly mooing noise, and when I was a little kid, I used to hate those.

So, we concluded that, between the relative discord of the Jacob standard (fine-boned and lanky) with our farm standard (heavy-boned and stocky), the discovery that Olde English "Babydoll" Southdown sheep fit our farm perfectly, and, of course, the baaing, we made the decision to find our ewes a new home.

With the re-homing of the Jacobs, my plan is now to spend some time seriously focusing on the development of our Babydoll Southdown breeding program. I never even got around to seeking out a Jacob ram, and now, my focus is on finding the highest-quality Olde English Southdown ram I can find. I've learned by now that when I choose to really work with a breed of animal, I don't like to mess around with low-end. Howling Hill Farm takes all of our breeding programs seriously, and our Babydoll Southdowns will be no exception. Now that we have made the decision to focus on the breed, it's time to seriously focus on building a top-quality flock!