Grassy Patch Soay Sheep

Each morning we head out to the pasture to see our newest additions:

Grassy Patch Bailey, a dark mahogany and black ewe, is Blue Mountain Alava's first lamb. 

Grassy Patch Brewsky, Santiam Valley Delores' second lamb, is the first Grassy Patch ram. 

Grassy Patch Brandy, an adorable ewe lamb, is Grassy Patch Annie's first.

Grassy Patch Bourbon, a chocolate ram lamb, is Blue Mountain Cocoa's first lamb.

Llamas have a natural dislike for dogs and coyotes, and our llama, Tia, has done a good job keeping our flock protected from these predators.  We got Tia from a llama farm about nine months ago.  She is a Chilean llama, and she is all white. 

So we went out to feed Tia and the sheep, and surprise!  A little llama was standing next to Tia.  At first, we thought someone had stuck their llama in our pen.  Then we realized that Tia had had a baby.  She had a super cute baby girl, who we've named Bebe.  Turns out it takes a year for a llama to "bake" a cria (baby llama).  The breeder never told us there was a possibility that Tia was expecting.  So we got two llamas for the price of one! 

Now that we have another llama and lambs on the way, we have sold our goats and rabbits, so that we can better focus on our flock of sheep.

While I was working out in the barn, a black and white cat with a rat in its mouth ran past me and ran straight up a ladder and into our hay loft.  I poked my head up there - and there she was nursing five kittens amongst old hay and insulation.  We figured it was our neighbor's cat, but it turned out to be a stray, either dumped, left behind, or the offspring of such a cat.  We got a cage out and got all the kittens; four of the five have awful eye infections.  We fed them, washed off their faces, and then tried to catch mama.  Luckily, the next morning she went looking for her kittens in the hay loft, and I was able to catch her. 

I got terramycin eye ointment for the kittens, and they cleared right up! Mama is very skinny, but very friendly.  She's so happy to be fed and watered.  You should hear her purr!  

If you are reading this and you have a cat that needs to be spayed or neutered, do it!  You can call the Oregon Humane Society, and they will refer you to a local clinic that will do it for only $43.00. 

Update: I was able to find homes for all the kittens and Mama Cat, too! 

Mama Cass (our new Californian doe, who was bred to a Checkered Giant buck before we got her) was supposed to have her bunnies by August 1st. . .they finally showed up on August 4th.  When I found them, two were out of the nest, wiggling around - so I plopped them back in the nest with their siblings.  Mama had seven large kits, all alive and well. 

Since then, every day a naughty baby bunny is found somewhere other than in its nest!  I keep putting them back in, but they must be hitching a ride back out on Mama.  When I put them back in, they get all excited and start wiggling and jumping around.  They are all doing well and they are growing like crazy - they are starting to look like rabbits! 

Our second litter, from Lady Luck, was born on August 29th, outside the nest box.  Luckily, I found them soon enough and was able to save five of the six bunnies.  We were worried that Lady would not take care of them because she had not prepared a nest for them.  Luckily, by the next morning, she had covered them up with fur, and she had fed them.  They are now doing well, and their fur has just barely begun to grow.  These are our first purebred Californian kits.

Rabbits are delicious, low in cholesterol (much lower than chicken), and perfectly sized for small farm production.  We just brought home three purebred Californian meat rabbits, a young buck, and two bred does.  We are expecting baby rabbits today or tomorrow!  They will be very well taken care of, in generous cages, and honored for their contribution to our farm. 

My hope is that we can sell some rabbits for 4-H projects, in addition to breeding stock and show rabbits.  We could sell a few as pets, as well.  I am also interested in showing rabbits myself. 

Our first litter will be half Californian and half Checkered Giant.  The second litter, due at the end of August, will be purebred Californian. If you are interested in our rabbits, please check out the Our Rabbits and Rabbits For Sale pages of this web site.

I have been looking for a new ram for the coming year's lambs, and found an awesome ram, Rainbow Apple Newton.  My ram, Demon, is wonderful, but is genetically linked to Delores and Annie, and it is time for a new ram.  I found Rainbow Apple Farm's web site, with an ad to trade one of their rams for a meat wether - I inquired to find the ram had already been taken.  But as a result of my inquiry, we were able to work out borrowing a ram for 2009!

We just picked Newton up on Friday, and he is very handsome!  We are going to have gorgeous lambs in 2009! 

In addition to getting Newton, we also took home a package of ground Soay meat.  This is the first Soay we have eaten - and it was delicious!  It reminded us of lean ground beef.  I made patty melts out of half of it, and will use the rest for spaghetti.  Yum!

I decided to add three new ewes to our flock of Soay sheep.  I was looking for genetically diverse ewes, in different colors.  I found my three at Blue Mountain Soay Farm, in Washington.  Blue Mountain Cocoa, Meghan, and Alava joined our flock of Soay sheep in June 2008. 

Cocoa is a rare chocolate Soay, Meghan is a mouflon, predominantly British Soay, and Alava is a black, polled Soay.  I love how they complement each other, and my other two ewes, Delores and Annie. 

Soay sheep are known for naturally casting their wool - they will rub it off on fences or it can be hand plucked.  For our ewe, Delores, this was very true.  She had cast off most of her wool, and we handplucked the rest to clean her up.  Our other sheep - not so much.  Our ram and one wether cast off a strip of wool down their backs, and our other wether didn't lose any wool at all.  We were able to handpluck about half of our Ram's remaining wool, then we used hand shears to finish him off.  The two wethers we hand sheared.  Hand shears worked just fine.  I have learned since that non-breeding animals do tend to retain their wool. 

I gave a sample of the wool to the wife of a co-worker who was interested in it, but I haven't heard back. . .a little research, and I have a likely reason: contamination! 

Contamination is bits of hay, less-desireable tummy wool, yucky rear-end wool, any matted wool, poop, dirt, dust etc. that can end up in your bag of wool.  Now I know that wool harvesting is not just a matter of cutting it and bagging it.  It really takes management to have a good product.  I'm not giving up - I'll try it again next year!

Our old fence was failing - the welded wire was falling apart, and the whole fence sagged pretty much everywhere.  It was time to do it right.

We used 6"x8' wooden posts for the corners and at 50' intervals, 4"x8' posts for bracing at the corners, 6 1/2' t-posts at 10' intervals, and heavy woven wire sheep and goat fencing.  We rented a post hole digger and used our neighbor's tractor to stretch the fence and move fence rolls.

My husband and I did all the work ourselves, and it took us three weeks of work to complete the project.  This is the hardest we've ever worked in our lives! 

In mid-May, I noticed our Soay ewe, Delores, was going through some changes - Delores was expecting after all!  On May 30, 2008 she gave birth to Grassy Patch Annie.  Annie is adorable!  She was up and running around with her mama when we found her. 

Annie was a big baby and is growing fast!  She is a lovely red-mouflon, polled, and her forehead is grey - we can't wait to see how her coloring turns out as she grows up. 

This event got me in gear - I got all of my registration application forms in order and sent in.  Then I started to think about my flock for the coming year, and what changes I'd like to make.  I decided that I would like to add a few ewes and find a new ram to sire our 2009 lambs. 

I also knew it was time to replace our fence.

I have always wanted chickens, and I was finally able to talk my husband into getting "a few".  As we were also new to chicken keeping, I decided I needed a variety to begin.  So, I ordered 50 chicks from a mail order hatchery: 15 meat and 35 layers.  They arrived in a tiny box at the post office in late November 2007.  I made a giant box for them to live in, and put the box in an unused bedroom. 

Within two weeks the meat birds grew big and slow, and the layers stayed small and active.  The layers began to pick on the meat birds, so I had to turn the chick condo into a chick duplex.  The dust!  Where does all the dust come from! 

At six weeks, the layers went into their permanent home in a converted shed, which we kept heated with a heat bulb (since it was January).  My dad, who is a hunter, helped me butcher my meat birds.  The hardest part of that day was getting the birds out of the bedroom.  They weighed 7 to 9 pounds each, and I ended up putting each one in a brown grocery bag and stapling the top shut.  Catching, confining, and moving the birds took over an hour - what a workout!

Butchering went smoothly.  As I do not like skin on my chicken, we butchered them like game birds, removing the skin with the feathers - this worked really well.  We ate all of them.  Would I do it again?  Not with Costco offering 10 lb bags of frozen organic chicken breasts for $23.00.

The layers began to get big - I knew I had too many!  I found someone interested in them, and I reduced my flock down to 17 birds.  I was able to sell four more birds to a friend from work, and one bird (of course, my favorite one) had a problem laying and the other birds pecked it - it didn't make it.  So I have my 12 hens.  They lay between 9-12 eggs a day.  They are really wonderful, the eggs are so good!  Raising layers is totally worth it!

Note: It took weeks to get the chicken dust and smell out of the bedroom. 

Recommendations: Buy chicks from a local source: the birds will be more expensive, but you don't have to order minimums of 25.  Don't get them in winter - the heat lamp is expensive to keep going 24 hours a day for weeks.  And most important - don't raise them in a bedroom!

A few months after getting the goats settled in, we realized that they were no where near taking care of our mowing needs.  What we really needed was animals that were more like sheep. . .how about sheep?  I was concerned that sheep were too big, as ewes of many breeds average 150 pounds.  I wanted small animals like my little goats, that I could handle by myself.  I stumbled on to a breed I had never heard of before:  Soay sheep.

From my research, I could tell that they met all of my requirements: small, easy to care for, adorable, and they have multiple products: wool, meat, and baby sheep to sell.  In 2007, we purchased our first Soay sheep from Santiam Valley Soay Farm: a ewe, a ram, and two wethers.  They moved into the donkey hut, now called the sheep hut. 

They have truely been a perfect match for us.  They do their mowing job, they require minimal care, they are so cute, and we just love them. 

Back to the internet.  I spent a lot of time looking for livestock that would fulfill the following checklist:  small size, easy care, cute, and productive.  We decided to buy a pygmy goat!  Fred was our first goat - we found him on Craigslist.  He is friendly, cute, easy to care for, small in size. . .however, as a wether (neutered male) he isn't productive.  But we didn't want baby goats until we knew we liked goats. 

Fred was lonely, and he escaped!  He jumped his chubby, short body over the front of our fence, and he ended up in our neighbor's front yard.  Which, with the route he took, was about three blocks from where he started!  (Thank goodness he didn't end up on a bus!)

So within a week, we had another pygmy goat, little Gus.  No escapes since!  But little Gus has had some problems.  He was dehorned by his breeder, before we purchased him.  His wound did not heal properly and became horribly infected which was not evident until the scab came off - we rushed him to the vet that day.  After $400 in vet bills, and me giving him shots every day for over a week, he barely survived.  Luckily, he is now thriving.  After this experience, dehorning scares me. 

The goats are awesome, but we decided that two goats were plenty, and that we were not interested in breeding them, so our search for the perfect livestock continued.  We are keeping the goats as pets.

Harry and Lloyd, our new miniature donkeys, were awesome!  We had a party in their honor, which we called our donkey and doughnut party.  Our friends came over for doughnuts and coffee, and got to see our new babies!  They did a wonderful job mowing our pasture. 

A year passed by, and we decided that the donkeys were not the right match for us.  They were cute and friendly, but we wanted more than that.  We wanted to have animals that would be productive - especially since we had vet bills and farrier bills to pay for.  We also noticed that the donkeys craved human attention, much like our dogs do.  

We contacted the breeder, and with her help, found a perfect new home for our donkeys.  They are now living with a family that has both parents working from home, and two little girls to play with, who will be using them for 4-H.

We do miss them, but we are happy for them.

The donkeys are coming!  The three month count down had begun, and our pasture had no fence.  It did have a giant loafing shed which we decided would serve as their main shelter (with a few modifications).

The previous owners used this loafing shed to store cow manure.  Luckily, the manure that remained was well aged, garden gold, and we gave it to a grateful gardener.  In the process of shoveling it into her trailer, our friend's husband freaked out and started beating the ground like a crazy person!  Only when he finally stopped did we find out that he had dug into a mouse nest, and he had flattened the escapees.  Gross!  : (

The following week was spent hosing down the cement floor of the shed and the surrounding area.  Old manure plus water equals a nasty mess!  But after much work, it was finally clean.

We added the structure we needed for the shelter, including a three sided wind shield, fencing stapled to the front for viewing and ventilation, and a main access gate.  The donkey hut was done!

Economical is the best word to describe our first fence.  (Crummy is another good word to describe it.)  We had little information to work from at that point except that we knew it needed to be four feet high. 

We purchased four foot u-posts and four foot welded wire fencing.  Once we pounded in the u-posts, we realized that a four foot post becomes a three foot post when it's in the ground.  Doh! 

Three months later, we had our first fence completed.  Yes, the posts were too short.  Yes, we didn't have solid corners and they soon started to sag.  Yes, our gate from our small pasture to our large pasture never closed properly because the posts leaned out from the weight of the fence.  But, no, our donkeys never escaped!  So we consider it a success!

Until we moved to Wilsonville, we had never owned livestock before - we had three indoor dogs.  Our dogs are our kids; sometimes they are angels, sometimes they are naughty - but we love them anyway. 

Several months after moving into our house in Wilsonville, we decided that we were done mowing our pasture.  The pollution, the time it took, and the gas money were just too much.  So we began our search for the perfect animals to be our mowers. 

After much internet research, we purchased our first livestock: two gelded miniature donkeys, who we named Harry and Lloyd.  They were so cute!  They were little and white and were coming home as soon as they were weaned. 

We had a deadline to install a fence! 

We grew up in the suburbs of Portland, Oregon.  We moved to our small farm just outside of Wilsonville in 2004, from our first house in Sherwood.  Our house in Sherwood was on a 5000 square foot lot - the sides of our yard were so narrow that we couldn't get the lawn mower into the backyard.  Our goal in finding a new house was to have some room for gardening, for a workshop, and for playing music loud without bothering our neighbors. 

Our new house was an older farm house, built in the 70's, on what used to be a dairy.  It was a cosmetic fixer-upper with solid bones and a giant pole barn that had been on the market for a long time.  As soon as we saw it, we made an offer.  We saw its potential!