Only in this case it is Honeydew and all my sheepies...
Yes I'm ridding myself of my many woolly friends... and none of them are named Norma Jean but I sense that maybe I should have called at least one of them Norma Jean. Good-bye Fanny girl... doesn't quite have the same ring to it.
Yes, I'm selling my sheep and my llama. I can't believe I'm finally making the decision to do so but I am. So I will have to rename my blog to Ye Olde Batt-less. Actually you can relax. I am still Batt-full and not Batt-less yet. I will still have my alpacas. I was made an offer on my flock of sheep and the buyer wants Honeydew too. I'm ok with it. Actually if you want to know the truth I jumped at the chance. I am keeping my alpacas and that will make farming my fibre a whole lot easier.
When I originally decided to get into the fibre producing end of things I wasn't really sure what I was doing (not having done any of it before)! I decided on the alpacas first and then I decided to try out the sheep when I knew I was buying the fibre mill. Last year when I decided to sell the mill, the sheep kind of became redundant. I started to rethink my whole operation especially when I had so much trouble finding hay for my animals. Honeydew has always required careful management... I can't let her near the alpacas because even though they are not the same species they will breed with each other. I didn't want freak animals being bred here so always I kept her away from the male alpacas who seem to lose their minds completely when any kind of animal is in heat. I once tried putting a ram in with them and the alpacas ganged up on the poor guy and they tried to rape him... yeah... we hurriedly got the poor ram out quickly. So for a while now my paddocks have had to be managed carefully at all times. Rams in this pen.... breeding ewes in that pen.... sex crazed alpacas in another pen.... new mommas in another pen... and weaned lambs somewhere else. All in all, it has become a major headache. I always knew that I wanted the alpacas but the sheep and the llama were an experiment and almost from the first moment I had them I knew that I didn't enjoy them as much as the alpacas. So when this offer for my sheep came along, I was happy to negotiate a price with the thoughts of having an easier time of it with just the alpacas. (There's also this really nice floor loom that I want...!!!)
We are prepping all animals for transfer to their new home. The sheep will need shots before they go and we will probably do their hooves too. They also need to be tagged and ready for travel. So tomorrow we will round them all up and start tagging etc. They will be joining a larger flock on a larger spread and they will have approximately 100 acres to wander. Lucky buggers... and the nicest thing about it all is that Honeydew will be someone elses
Meanwhile back at my funny farm I have a love sick alpaca who can't believe his bad luck.
After Mishka aborted her fetus this summer we felt that we would try to re-breed her later in the month. If you recall a few weeks ago, I put here on my blog, a porn video of alpacas on my front lawn, having sex, for all the world to see. It was that day that Teapot and I decided to put the two creatures in love, in a paddock of their own for a few days, and give them time to have as much sex as they wanted. We wanted to know for sure that Mishka would be preggers over the winter. Well, the one week turned into three and a few days ago we decided that they had had enough time to do the dirty and we could remove them from one another. Coal seemed to not be getting it that Mishka no longer wanted anything to do with him. He kept chasing her around from time to time and she would run away from him until he got tired of chasing her then they would go back to grazing quietly for a while and then the chasing would begin again. As a result, she went into her old paddock with Honeydew, meanwhile Coal went back with the other males.
This morning I went out and Coal was looking sad and very pathetic and he was making strange and very sad noises. He kept looking across the fences to his girl friend and mooning over her (there's no other word for it). Later today we watched him jump the fence of the paddock that he was in, in an attempt to reach his one and only true love. Once he jumped the fence he quickly realized his dilemma. He was now in his old paddock... and he couldn't reach his girl friend because we are smart and have a fence around her that is far too high for him to jump.... now he's all alone with no girl friend and no pals to drink beer with and commiserate with him about the girl that dumped him. Meanwhile Mishka watches from afar as though she couldn't care less. I think she had enough of him and is quite happy to be back in the harem. Still, poor old Coal is the picture of misery and you can't help feeling a little sorry for him.
Mishka, I'm sure, will be lonely for her pals after Honeydew and the sheep leave on the weekend. It will be a full 11 1/2 months before she gives birth to a cria if everything goes well. I am not sure that she will be happy in the interim. I may have to buy her a pal... hmmm... perhaps another female alpaca is the right idea!!! That way she won't be all alone....
Still, Teapot probably wouldn't like it.....
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