Monday, February 23, 2009

The Glamorous Life of the Sheep Farmer

What a day! After stopping on our way to the ranch to buy goat's milk and lamb milk replacer for the bottle lambs, we proceeded to get the truck stuck in the mud at the Lincoln ranch. We processed the 12 new lambs (which means we put ear tags on them, docked their tails, gave them a selenium supplement and dipped their umbilical cords in betadine) and gave the flock some fresh feed. The first tow truck that showed up to pull our pick-up out was too heavy, so we walked a mile in the rain to move another set of sheep on the north side of the ranch. By the time the truck was out and we were done, we were all soaked. Thankfully, our intern Courtney and our daughters Lara and Emma were all good humored about the entire ordeal.

As I mentioned yesterday, lambing in weather like this always makes me nervous. As usual, my nervousness proved to be unfounded, for the most part. We've tried to select ewes who take good care of their babies, and all of yesterday's lambs made it through the storm just fine.

The glamorous part of this job is the muck and mud associated with being outside in this kind of weather. Even with the best rain gear, it's tough not to get soaked. I enjoy being outside in all kinds of weather, partly because it feels so good to get warm again once I'm back inside.

We hope you're all enjoying the wet weather - we sure need it! However, I wouldn't mind a little sunshine now and then over the next several days!

2 comments:

  1. Sounds like I am going to have to get some good rain gear.

    Dan, do you or anyone else hear know how I get alerts via email when the blog is updated?

    Jason

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  2. No worries, I figured out you have an RSS feed for the blog.

    ReplyDelete