An extremely enjoyable wine tasting weekend in Walla Walla was mostly just a ruse to get us mostly to the tiny town of Irrigon. A family there is moving soon and is looking to re-home a number of their farm animals, including a few East Friesian milk sheep. It took awhile to convince Keith that getting a yearling milk sheep was the best idea ever, but finally he came around!
They had 2 yearling sheep (that just means they are in-between 1-2 years old), one was all white and the other (the cuter one) was brown and black. I was leaning towards getting the black one, based solely on looks, but a few things changed my mind. One is that we are kinda giving up on the Snowy having kids this year. Yes, she's fat and acting strange, but we really only have about a week left to be expecting kids and we just don't have the confidence that she is actually pregnant. I was planning on milking 2 animals and producing cheese for what was hopefully a nice amount of milk, but now it seems that we have just Frannie.
Then I got an email from the woman selling the sheep that one of the yearlings was in milk-not giving very much because it's her first freshening-but still! That changed my mind! Having someone else do the work of breeding and milk stand training this animal is priceless. We also didn't have to take her lamb home-thankfully! Her lamb is already 2 1/2 months old and ready to be weaned-but that also means that we don't have much more time to milk her, as milk sheep are only in milk for about 5 months-and that is if we do everything right.
Say hello, Margo!
Nope, she's not the cutest creature, but hey, who's judging! We had to start milking her twice a day as soon as we got her home. She had been milked once a day at her old home, but was also nursing her lamb. Even though Margo is a very tolerant sheep, it is taking both of us to milk her. We have a different milk stand set up and she is just not digging it.
The first time milking her we did get her on the stand, but this is what she did.
So, that didn't work. We ended up working together to hold her on the floor and milk her that way both that night and the next morning. I've been working with her, to get her less skittish and more comfortable around us and the stand and it seems to be working, but it still takes the both of us. Hopefully we figured out a different plan soon!
And I already made some cottage cheese!
I asked the kid on the farm what her name was and she responded that only little kids name animals...I have to disagree! I decided on Margo because Manchego cheese is my favorite sheeps milk cheese and I aspire to make it, but that just didn't fit. I think Margo is a nice, kind of abbreviated version of Manchego. And now I'm hungry for cheese!
Frannie's babies are still the cutest ever. I milked Frannie for the first time this morning and while I only got about a quart and half, I still count it as a success.
If anything changes with Snowy, I'll let you know!
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