Naked Sheep & a Teat Taped Goat

It would not be spring without being sheep shearing time.  With an upcoming heat wave, it is high time to get the super thick fleeces off of Abbott, Violet and Molly.  Organizing sheep shearing is always somewhat of a fiasco and so every year I decide that I am going to shear my sheep myself.  My sheep are small and super docile.  I feel like shearing them is something I should be able to do.  Yet, every year without fail, my shearing attempt goes awry and I find myself in need of the services of a professional sheep shearer.  This year was no exception.

Last year I tried using some special manual sheep clippers Ian bought for me.  On the second snip I sliced Abbott's skin and that was the end of that.  This year, I decided that my electric dog clippers should do the trick to shear my sheep.  I can clip the dogs' woolly coats with them just fine but nope, absolutely not.  That totally did not work.  So, we tried to buy real electric sheep clippers online.  The only reasonably priced ones were being shipped from China and would not arrive for months.  The ones made domestically were $700.  We also tried to borrow some from a fellow homesteader with sheep but we had no luck with that either.  Back to Plan Professional Sheep Shearer.

Now, sheep shearers in this day and age are few and far between.  There are even fewer shearers who will agree to come out to clip tiny flocks like mine without requesting a small fortune for the inconvenience.  So, I am beyond grateful for our area's resident hobby farm sheep shearer and very willing to work with his eccentricities.

Our shearer is a master of his trade and will shear each sheep in exactly 3 minutes and 30 seconds.  Every time.  Furthermore, he is most kind to the sheep.  He talks to them soothingly while shearing, referring to the boys as "Chum" and the ewes as "Lassie".  It is a riot.

On the down side, he is somewhat challenging to get a hold of each year to book our appointment.  He is a very busy fellow without a cell phone so the only time you can be guaranteed to catch him is by calling his farm much earlier in the morning than is socially acceptable.  This year I did not even try calling since I was pretty determined to shear my sheep myself and I was not even sure if he was working because of the pandemic.  So, imagine my surprise when I received a call from said sheep shearer on Saturday telling me to expect him on Monday around "lunch time".  Perfect.  

Now, I know from past years that punctuality is not our sheep shearer's strong suit.  He operates to the tune of his own drummer.  So, when he still wasn't here by Liam's bedtime (much to Liam's disappointment), I can't say I was particularly surprised.  He finally rolled in around dusk and made quick work of our sheep.  Good thing too because our sheep had been locked in the barn all day and were getting antsy and the shearer said that he still had two other farms to get to before nightfall.  

The lambs cannot figure out why half of their mamas are laying on the tarp.

 With the sheep's fleece removal taken care of for another year, I was then able to turn my full attention to Mellie and the problem of her 10 month old kids determined to nurse every drop of her delicious milk, leaving none for Alistair.  With them sharing a sleeping space, the morning milking yielded 3 tablespoons of milk instead of her usual 2.5 cups.  Not cool.  My "gentle" solution of using bandaids to cover her teats to try to prevent Luna and Percy from overnight nursing was an epic failure so I moved on a stickier option - green tape.  It seems to work for everything else, so why not?  I do not have high expectations that this will work but I have put some first aid tape on my shopping list.  I think we might need to go with an ultra strength stickiness factor.

And so, we concluded the day with three naked sheep and one doe with taped teats.  Yes, things sure can get weird on the farm!