Bare Hoofed and Pregnant

Today was shearing day on Gael Glen Farm.  The morning began with locking the sheep in the barn for the day since I was not at all confident that I would be able to get them to go back into the barn before dark if they got even a whiff of freedom.  Charlie was not impressed at being separated from her family.

She spent the entire morning staring at the barn,
communing her misery with the sheep through the closed door.

By lunch time she had given up on the sheep and sought out a new family unit.

Will you be my new family?

Luckily for Charlie, Mr. Ross, our friendly neighbourhood sheep shearer, stopped by the farm in the mid-afternoon, on his way home from the Sheep Shearing Festival at the Canadian Agriculture and Food Museum.  As always, he came with a trailer full of bleating ewes and hilarious stories about the time he accidentally sheared the teat off of an enormous beast of a sheep.

Mr. Ross hard at work.

We got a beautiful fleece from Abbott.

I am a handsome beast!

In order to get their winter coats off, the poor sheep must endure being put in the most undignified positions.

The advantage of this; however, is that the sheep's tummy is clearly visible.  Low and behold, both Alice and Violet have developed an udder!

My ewes are pregnant!!!  Woohoo!  And not only pregnant, they are VERY pregnant according to Mr. Ross.  He felt around a bit and declared that Alice is carrying twins and Violet a single.  Based on the date we got Loki, I am expecting that we will have our first ever set of lambs in the next few weeks.  I am beyond excited.

Don't I look beautiful?  Bare hoofed and pregnant!

Now that we have proof that Loki did his job, it is time for him to move on to his next set of ladies.  We have placed an ad on Kijiji and hopefully he finds a comfortable new home sooner rather than later.