Is it the weekend yet?

[altivo]

I only wish. And tomorrow is Wednesday, too. Weather not too horribly hot, yet, but still predicted to hit 100F by Thursday. And still no rain in sight. Everything is turning brown. The big trees are not showing signs of stress yet, but a lot of smaller stuff is.

Week old lamb has been tail banded and should be ready to rejoin the flock with mom tomorrow or the next day. She's growing fast and still curious and busy, which is a good thing.

Cataloged a substantial stack of books today, clearing my desk just in time for another shipment to land on it at 5 pm. Those get to wait until tomorrow.

Gary has a doctor's appointment in the morning, with blood to be drawn so no food for him after 9 tonight. He'll manage that but no coffee in the morning is going to be rough. Fortunately I go in late on Wednesday so I will cover animal chores in the AM.

And that's the news.

Comments

[schnee]

Week old lamb has been tail banded and should be ready to rejoin the flock with mom tomorrow or the next day. She's growing fast and still curious and busy, which is a good thing.

Any pictures of her? :)

(Also, what does "tail banded" mean?)

Oh, and I feel for Gary; no coffee's no fun. I hope he'll be able to enjoy a nice cup of java afterwards, at least.

[altivo]

We follow the customary practice of tail-docking with the sheep. They are born with longish tails that have limited sensation and tend to become bags of fat. Docking is performed with a tight heavy rubber band to reduce tail length to about 5 cm or so.

Left undocked, they tend to injure the tail eventually and develop fly strike which is a particularly nasty condition. We have a type of fly here whose larvae will eat living flesh. It's called the screwfly and I'd rather dock the tails than deal with the fly infestations.

Fortunately the whole process is bloodless and appears to be painless.

[schnee]

Yuck, those flies sound nasty. Yeah, I can see why you'd want to spare your sheep that.