My daughter, Katielyn who doesn't spend much time outside was spending a lot of time playing with and taking care of her lamb. I decided we should have another-she really rose to the occasion caring for the little lamb so well. It's the end of March with lambs being born everywhere surely there is another bottle ewe in need of a home?
I've been scanning Craigslist the last few days and even wrote to some breeders to see if they had any young bottle lambs. It seems all of a sudden they are scarce. Great. I even posted a "wanted bottle baby" ad. I've had a couple of responses but they're not hair lambs and I really want to stick with hair sheep.
I did find one fellow who has a herd of painted desert sheep and he has a bottle lamb that is weaned. My daughter would really like one to bottle feed but perhaps this one will fill the void for now? He says "she follows you around like a dog and is the size of a large cat" -sounds perfect to me.
So after skating lesson today, Katie and I went to see the lamb. I had got directions by phone not by my usual method to google the address. Our first direction was to take the tollway until we got to TX190...Katie's skating arena is right off the Dallas tollway so we headed down it and down it...until it ran out. Oh oh. I know I didn't see a sign for TX190. So we dragged out a little map we had, still no TX190, but we could see the town of Wylie on it and set out again to get there (it turns out TX190 is George Bush Tollway-I despise when they change names of roads!)
When we got to Wylie I realized we came a different way then my written directions directed us so I was all turned around. Wylie's not that big so surely I could find the right road? I got to where I thought I should be but our turn was nowhere to be found. Finally I decided I must be at the right road but had no idea if I should turn left or right. I opted for left-it was wrong. I then turned right -but still couldn't find the right road. So back to the corner we went. I phoned the sheep owner and told him where we were..it turns out we just needed to turn right (which we had done once already but the road wasn't posted the same as he had said). This road turned from Stone to whatever we were looking for...grr...an hour trip turned into a good 2 hours. Ah well we were almost there.
Eric greeted us and fetched "Brandy". I saw Katies face fall-Brandy is a plain white lamb, which really isn't a color she is fond of. But then she saw Brandy's character,the little lamb followed us around everywhere as we looked at the other sheep and insisted on being center of all attention. She was growing on Katielyn. Eric has a nice herd of painted desert sheep so we decided to see if he had a ram suitable for our growing flock. We picked out one and caught him with much less ruckus than our previous sheep buying venture. He's so handsome. He's just about 3 months old so it'll be a little while until he fulfills his duties but we're in no hurry since all we have is one ewe and her lamb from last December.
We loaded them up into our dog crate in the HHR again and headed for home. We stopped at Sonic along the way...I thought that would be a neat photo to add to our HHR-Sheep Mover album.
Brennan and Brandy deciding what to order
Glad to see no sheep on the menu
We arrived home and unloaded the sheep. We introduced them straight away to our two existing residents. Gypsy the older ewe looked happy to have more company but was quick to head butt the new additions to establish her dominance. Once I had ascertained they were going to get along, I headed back to the house. I heard a pitter patter, and turned to see Brandy trotting behind us, with a very insulted look -I don't think she could believe that we were actually leaving her out with Sheep! She had slipped between the cattle panel fence so I had to find another hog panel to add to that part of the fence. I think she was quite horrified when I put her back in and left!
I'm happy with our two additions. Both are registrable painted desert lambs. Brandy will be registered as a minimal colored (she does have a couple of brown spots on her legs).
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