This shit fascinates the dickens out of me...so here, good people is your sheep naming tutorial.
It's no secret that I want to be a farmer, but since I didn't win the lottery this week, and have to work at my real job, I'll live vicariously through my friend Kelly and play with her animals.
We attended a super bowl party on Sunday. And, along with the typical hot wings and buffalo chicken dip, the hostess cleverly built into the festivities some "light" farm work. Name and tag 21 sheep.
Kelly recently acquired a herd of Tunis sheep. These beauties have cream wool, but cinnamon and white colored faces and legs. They are a meat breed, so the mammas are the breading stock, and the boy babies will be raised to eat.
They came very pregnant, so over the last few weeks, in the middle of a harsh deep freeze, babies have been coming! Little, tiny, shivering sheep. Kelly has been loving and creative - everything from taking the babies in for the night and giving them warm baths, to dressing them in baby clothes. Then back out to the waiting, protective mammas.
On to the naming. The USDA designates a letter each year for that year's herds. That way, you can easily keep track of what generation your stock is, and you also know not to breed daddies and grown up babies. The mamma sheep fall under last year's letter "C," and this years babies will be "D's."
In true Cornman Farm fashion, letters and numbers didn't cut it. They love each of these little beauties, and so they needed names. "C" names to be exact. We layed out the tags and the children started yelling ideas. We ended up with a Clio and a Chloe, Queen Catherine, Curious Georgia, Charlotte, Cowgirl, and the ram, Captain Crunch.
For some reason, Joe decided he would do the tagging...piercing the tag into the sheep's ear with a tagging gun. The young 4H young men showed Joe how to wrangle the sheep and where to tag...and the rest is history.
We were four sheep in before we realized that we forgot to identify and tag the ram first. And of course, he had already been tagged as "Cossette." Don't worry, we fixed it. I also lost one tag in my pocket, so we had to come up with an extra name...hence was born Carmen Miranda!
And in other news, as we were setting up a Valentine's making table for the kids in the basement, Kelly found this Huge striped sweater in a bag. "Put it on!" I begged her...and she did. And we laughed, Hard. I tried to defend it...It was hand knit! It was high quality! Ok, never mind, it was pretty bad.
And as I cuddled into bed later that night, this picture came across the wires.
This is Carlos, probably my favorite animal on the farm. He always wants a pet and a cuddle. He was a rescue donkey, and he came with a sombrero...you can't make this stuff up folks. And now, he is the proud owner of a hand knit sweater. And here is Carlos in the warmth of summer!
xoxo, e.
