Trivia And Trivial

I spun a lot of cotton yesterday but I still have more to spin so will be concentrating on that today.

Trivia Alert:
Did you know that Wiener Schnitzel is breaded veal cutlet and not hot dogs at all. Did you know that it comes from Vienna, Austria?  I didn't know that until just now when CBC Radio had their trivia question for the morning... I had to look it up... you never know what you are going to learn.I don't know why it was important to tell you that... I just found it interesting.


It is still cold in this neck of the woods. A balmy -28 degrees as I'm sitting here. The year that we moved into this house we had a freezing day... we moved in on the 10th of March and it was -32 degrees... it was really horrible. I think this year is going to be very similar... we will be waiting for spring still in May.

No new lambs yet which is good with these temperatures still dipping. I am hoping that the forecast is wrong and that we will be getting warmer temperatures as the week continues. The wee lamb born last week continues well. She is fighting her mother who is a desperately bad mom and tries to shake off her baby every time she tries to nurse. I had hoped that last year was an anomaly but apparently not. For some reason some ewes just don't want the bother of feeding their lambs. Last year this ewe had twins and she was the same then too. One of her last year lambs is doing fairly well and the other is very small. Not what I would call a good mom. I hate to see them ignoring their babies. This year she only birthed one and that is a good thing. We have her in the shed which is very small, we do that to force her to nurse her baby and so that the baby doesn't have to work so hard to latch on, but she still stomps and tries to shake off her baby every time the lamb tries to suck. Generally those lambs get pooped on (literally pooped on), a lot because they have to chase their mom and nurse from the back (between the legs) when the mom is not expecting it. It doesn't make for a good mom or a healthy lamb. I have kept the mom only because she is my only pure blood merino. I am hoping to get a good fleece from her and then I won't breed her again (she'll be able to retire and just provide fleeces). Meanwhile, the other ewe (who goes by the name of Fanny), who is also left to give birth is an awesome mom.... the complete opposite to Queen (the above mentioned ewe). Fanny has always given twins and they are always strong and hardy though usually a little on the small side. This doesn't bother me since my animals don't get a lot of the green feed since we do not have lots of pasture... they are mostly fed on hay all year round and we only put them on grass in the spring before the grasshoppers eat it. Also Fanny is part Shetland which is a breed that tends to be smaller anyway. I'm assuming that her lambs tend toward the Shetland rather than the BFL/Merino which is what she has been bred with.  Clear as mud?

Currently we have ten sheep but two are promised for meat so we will be butchering those later in the spring. I am thinking of getting rid of one of my rams. He is a freak and constantly freaks out and has a good run at the fence whenever anyone happens to look at him. He is not a nice animal. Tending towards stupidity! Twice now I've had to extract him from the fence when he has taken a run at it and gotten his head stuck... he's just too stupid for words.  I'm not sure if he will be butchered or if I will sell him. Maybe someone else can get better behaviour from him.

Anyway that is a little update on lambs and weather... not much interesting going on so I had better go listen to the news about the Oscars... (go Colin... he's my favorite actor anyway)... and spin that cotton.