Adding to the Family

This past weekend we finally got Aiden's 4H lambs.  I was a little nervous about it but so far everything has gone great!

Backing up a bit, a few weeks ago we went out to my folks' farm to pick out Aiden's sheep.  Originally we were just going to show 3 lambs but Aiden's 4H leader, who is a big show lamb breeder, talked us into buying a lamb off of him.  We backed down to 2 lambs from my parents, 1 from the 4H leader.  We checked out the lambs in the pen at my parent's and chose 2 that were wooled, not haired.

*** My parents raise both sheep that have wool and sheep that have 'hair'.

Saturday morning was weigh-in day for the sheep.  My nephew is showing 3 of my parent's sheep so we met Charley and my brother in law, Pat, out at the farm to give all the sheep their wormer and over-eater vaccine and then load up the sheep.  Pat hauled them into town for us.  We got to the fairgrounds about 8:00 for the weigh-in that started at 8:30.  We were in a long line of other 4H-ers with their sheep.

After inching our way up the line we finally weighed in our sheep about 9:15.  The 4H leader brought Aiden's 3rd sheep and also a 4th for him to show.  Yep, we now are the proud owners of FOUR SHEEP!!!  Holy smokes.  :)

After weigh-in Pat hauled our 4 sheep out to the pasture we are renting from our neighbor. She lives across the street from us but owns a few farms around the area.  One of those farms is just a few miles north of town.  We built fence a couple weeks ago to make a small pasture area for our sheep.

Once we arrived we unloaded the sheep.  Aiden was so excited!  I think he figured they'd be more tame and want to 'play' with him right away.  Seeing how wild they are was a surprise to him.  Aiden wanted to try putting a halter on one right away so after a few attempts at catching one we got it haltered.  Aiden named him, one of the 2 wethers (male sheep that's been castrated), Nubbie because it had 2 nubs of horns on it's head.  After keeping him on the halter for a few minutes and petting him all over to get him used to being handled he laid down.  We took the halter off and it stayed there on the ground so Aiden sat beside Nubs and pet him some more.  It was a pretty neat moment for him.

We caught the other wether, this time one of the black faced ones from the 4H leader.  We named him Ted, after the leader. :)  He was quite a bit feistier and he about broke my thumb.  It still hurts today, 3 full days later, but getting better.

Sunday we were able to get 3 of the 4 caught and haltered.  The first step in breaking them to lead is to get them used to being on the halter, so you halter them and tie them up to a fence.  We did this and kept them tied up for about 15 minutes. The whole time we pet them, rubbed them, talked to them, got them used to us a little.

We are slowly getting used to running out to the farm twice a day.  Yesterday was a very rainy day, almost 3inches fell, so we were there for just a few minutes to check on them and give them feed. Today is another wet day but hoping tomorrow to get out there and get back to halter training these sheep of ours.

It took him a while but Aiden finally decided to name his 2 ewes (female sheep) Tiny and Skippy.  Tiny is small, thus the name.  She was pretty good at jumping so Andy said we should have named her Skippy instead, which is how we got the name for the other ewe.

Aiden's project goal is to learn how to halter break a lamb.  My goal is for Aiden to learn a lot and have fun (and for me to survive this whole ordeal - STRESS!!!)!