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This morning I made a major breakthrough with Griff.

He took some sheep treats from me.

Not out of the bowl.

Directly out of my hand!

Really. Truly.

Did my heart good.

Perhaps enough time has passed (he’s been here almost 6 months)

Or maybe he really digs the kelp meal I just put out for them and he’s saying “thank you”

Or maybe, just maybe I’ve just won him over and now he wants to be my buddy.

Whatever the reason,
this morning when he trusted me enough to come over and nibble some goodies he really made my day.

What a nice Christmas present 🙂

Edgar says “I think it was the kelp. Yum.”

Check out- Colin’s Creatures

He’s also on Etsy.

Will post more later. Just couldn’t wait to pass this along-

Denise 🙂

Aren’t they lovely?

Just simple and pretty.
And I think I’ve really got the thumb shaping down now. They fit so nice.
I love them so much I think I’m going to start another pair tonight.

This was such a nice weekend around the homestead.
Mid-40s during the day, and clear! Not bad for December-

Was nice to spend some time outside, adding compost to the garden beds, hangin’ with the sheepy boys, and takin’ in some sunshine.

Did the hoof routine again today, and I’m really excited to see that they are starting to look better!
Seemed like they’d grown a fair bit even since last week, and the depth of the pockets between outer hoof and sole is decreasing.
Was so glad to see that.

They’ve been eating mostly hay since our big freeze before thanksgiving,, so I’m thinking that must account for the difference, since I hadn’t changed anything about their mineral yet.

I am still planning to get some kelp meal and give that a go. See how they like it, and if they would choose that over what they have been getting. Heard lots of good things about kelp.

Chone says, “I’ll try anything once!”

Knowing that little bugger he’ll end up wearing most of it! 🙂

I might have forgot to mention that a few weeks ago I sent a sample of our pasture grass to the lab at the University of Idaho.
And Monday I got the results back in the mail.
Here they are:

So, the first thing I had to do was put it in context.
I did a little math, consulted http://www.ag.ndsu.edu/pubs/ansci/sheep/as989-3.htm to get info on how much of each nutrient sheep actually require, and came up with this-

(when looking at the Mineral Supplement info you have to consider that the sheep are only eating a very small volume of that daily- I haven’t actually been able to figure out how much they are eating, because they waste a fair amount,, but it’s probably about an ounce or less a day.)

There are a couple of things that jump out at me.
1. We’ve got a lot of Molybdenum. I was expecting this to be the case, and the lab results confirm it.
2. We’ve got a lot of Iron and Manganese

Otherwise, we’re doing pretty good.

I do wish that the trace mineral panel they did had Selenium,, but that wasn’t on the menu. So, I’m going to assume that we’re deficient, just like everyone else in this region.

The Molybdenum is a problem because it interferes with the uptake of copper. And the Iron might be doing the same thing.

So, that could be causing the sheep to not get enough copper, even though it is present in the plant material they are eating.

I’m going to do some reading up on the various minerals and how they interact and affect metabolic processes – to see if I can get some clarity on how this whole thing comes together.

Wish me luck.

In other news, we’ve got new yarn (from last week’s impulse drum carding)

A doggie hat

And 1 and 1/3 mittens

Hopefully I will soon have 2 mittens.
And yes, I know they look a little long.
I plan on lightly felting them, and that should bring them back to the perfect proportions. 🙂

Have a great week!