A relatively quiet week

All is quiet on the northern front. Which really is as it should be this time of year. Jen and Kim did the mighty herd-wide cria weigh-in yesterday at the Arena and though their backs weren’t feeling so great by the end of the day, our scale just confirmed what we already suspected: no one is exactly starving. Yes, we do of course have a few cases of crias falling into the “poor-doer” category but honestly we sort of expect to see some of that just on a percentage basis. While one of those crias is the 2nd born of her mom where her older sibling (from last year) was also relatively small for her age, another cria comes from a very proven mom who has a history of weaning 6 month olds that are approaching 100 lb! Sometimes these things defy an obvious explanation.

Meanwhile, the pens and paddocks of the Main Barn where our 6 month olds head when they leave their dams are starting to take on a distinctly more weanerish flair as they are known to do this time of year. Probably about 30 to 40% of last year’s birth class has been weaned at this point with another batch leaving their dams every couple of weeks or so. On the much smaller female side of the Main Barn (they’ll be no humping of the little show girls, thank you very much!) the weaners have even been joined by the yearling girls from the upcoming spring show string. With the rain and ice lately — it’s just the new normal here in winter 2012, we’ve kind of had to make our peace with it — keeping most of the Arena’s animals confined to inside pens and corrals, it seemed best for the long term viability of those fleeces to get them away from the straw and sand combo of the Arena that has an undeniably negative effect on handles and brightness when those critters can’t escape outside.

In any case you know it’s a little slow around here when Ian is volunteering to help wipe down the 40+ folding chairs we have in the Arena’s fleece room. Having cleared out our entire fiber clip over a month ago we (in all fairness that would be mostly Jen and Kim) have embarked on a mission to really clean out the room in anticipation of hosting some workshops and clinics in the months ahead. More on those later. In the mean time the combination of Swiffers, Windex, brooms, and even one of our full sized air compressors is hoping to get that space whipped into shape. Fun and games…