Winds of Change

Larry

April 7, 1944 - December 8, 2011

Avery's Katahdins aka the GOOD BREEDER!!

Unfortunately, my last post about being careful from whom you purchase sheep cast an unfortunate bad light on my friend Dee Avery, and that was IN NO WAY MY INTENTIONS, so I have removed that post from my blog as it was being percieved wrongly, and just causing too much anxiety!!!  Dee has been nothing but supportive, I purchased an excellent ewe and ram from her, that I am extremely pleased with.  Not only that, I received their registrations papers in very short order :o)

Nooooo, the 6 ewe lambs that I purchased in 2010 were from a very different breeder.....'nuff said.

On a happy note, while doing chores tonight I'm almost positive I can see the little beginnings of an udder on one of the 3 girls I had babysitting my ram :o)  I do believe the young man has been busy!

The Girls

Just a quick picture of some my ewes.  I put in a new bale today....they ate the other one down to only a small tractor bucket full of coarse bits.  Cleaned up where the old bale was and set up a new one......this time on its end.  will see if there is a difference on how they eat this one.  Also bedded their sheds with some new straw on top of the shavings.

*THE* best hay feeder for sheep!

For the last several years, I've been forking hay over the fence to my sheep each day, or putting out a round bale for them to eat free reign.  Last winter was ugly, and free reign, a bale was only lasting them between 7-10 days.   It was a less than successful way to feed sheep, but since I didn't have many of them I just "put up" with the mess it created over the winter months, and cleaned it all up in the spring.  This year I have some nice Katahdin ewes, along with a few of my Barbs and I was determined to make my life easier when it came to chores this winter.  I've been researching feeder ideas, and saw this feeder on a website....... I freely admit I "borrowed" this idea from Premier Sheep Supplies, when I built my round bale hay feeder for my sheep. The only difference is I used hose clamps to join the sections together.    I have to say its been a HUGE success!!  They are now on week 4 of the same bale!!  This first bale was put in on its side, the next one I am going to stand on end and then decide which way works the best.

CONGRATULATIONS

go to Will and Louise!   After competing on Thanksgiving weekend at the Canadian Herding Showcase, Will finished the weekend in 3rd spot in the Started class and 11th overall!!  What a heck of an accomplishment for them in their first year of trialing!  The venue was Thunderbird Show Park, in Langley BC and it was beautifully decorated along with the obstacles which were very innovative :o)

Congratulations to everyone that competed or was involved in the organization!

Shay

Reluctantly I am going to look for a new home for Shay.  She is in season right now, and will be spayed once it is safe to do so.  After that we will be looking for just the right home for her.  Shay is a fun, active, very athletic girl who loves her toys!  She is house trained, crate trained, and loves to ride in vehicles.  She does not take stockdog training pressure well, and so will not make a good cowdog........she will however make one heck of a friend for someone with a very active lifestyle.   Shay will be free to the right home........but it must be the "right" home for her before we will let her go.

Contact me for more information on Shay

Brother Will

Talent runs in the family!

   From this tiny newborn.....

to this adorable pup, who was once called "Shorty"........

Emerged, this exceptionally handsome young man named "Will".

Will, who  is known more formally as L Bar J's Redi and Willing, and his partner who is my sister Louise, entered their very first CKC herding trial in June of this year.   They not only earned their CKC HS title, they also earned a HIT Aussie.......and to cap it all off, they are now sitting at #9 Herding Started  in Canada!   Thats quite an accomplishment for a first time trialer, and we are so very proud of them!! :o)

Catching Up

I've been a very bad blogger.........its been months since I posted anything, and lots of things have happened!! Where has the time gone??

Let's see........since my last post in April, we had another wet spring (and so far a wet summer too), and with all that rain came grass in abundance! The cows have all calved, the calves have been branded and vaccinated and all are turned out in the south quarter, there's so much grass they'll be there until fall!

In May a new fellow joined us from Maureen Elgert of MRE Farm at 100 Mile House, BC. Coal has been a joy to raise, he has exceeded every hope so far, and I am SO looking forward to starting him on stock! Coal is like an old soul in a puppy suit, its really hard to believe how good a pup he is......looking forward to some good stuff from this young man :o)

Coal and Shay relaxing on a rare warm day!
MRE's Knight Moves - "Coal"

In June our ASCA club hosted a 2 day stockdog clinic with Sharon Simmons and then 4 stock trials over 2 days, at SwedeLee Farm in Donalda, Alberta. The clinic and trials were hugely successful despite the torrential downpours that haunted one day of the clinic and both days of the trials! The winds were near hurricane force driving the rains sideways! The stores in town did a booming business in rain gear! Chili had an awesome weekend, earning ALL her Open titles (cattle, sheep & ducks) on Saturday, leaving Sunday for us to relax and enjoy the trials.

July came and I am so happy to say that I found a really good young ram for my ewes! I have been working on upgrading my small flock of sheep from my collection of "mutt" sheep that I use to train my dogs on, to what I hope will be a good flock of registered Katahdin's. I expect I will always have some Barbados ewes as they offer a very different challenge for the dogs, and besides I really like my Barbs :o) But I wanted to add some good Katahdin's for meat production and with any luck I'll be able to raise some excellent breeding ewes as well. When I purchased my ram lamb, I was lucky enough to also be able to buy a really nice 2 yr old ewe to add to my flock. (pictured above is the young ram, and beautiful dark red ewe) I'm so looking forward to lambing season next spring, its been a *long* time since I've raised lambs! My ram and ewe came from Averys Katahdin's, www.averyshairsheep.blogspot.com - thank you Dee for the opportunity to acquire such quality animals!

Chili Sorting Heifers

This is a little short video of Chili that Lill took, while we were sorting some heifers thru a gate. This was the first time that Chili had done any real work for about 4 months....winter was just to brutal this year to do much of anything, so only the necessary things got done. I was really pleased with her, considering she was in near standing heat!

http://youtu.be/p5IAEebdJT0

We took a few video clips of Lill's dog Tray as well......you can find them on YouTube on my channel at 1234jholmes

enjoy!

Lots Goin' On

Wow...its been a while since I posted! I think I went into a hole somewhere, the late winter/early spring weather really got to me! The sun finally came out, actually the better part of April has been pretty decent, not very warm, but at least its warming up now and the snow has all but gone! I even see some bits of green starting to happen :o) The calves started arriving about a month ago and we're 2/3 done now. I love seeing spring calves :o)

Something else exciting happened......PJ our filly finally went to be started! She is at our neighbors ranch, and Cody has, in a very short period of time (less than 10 days) given her a very promising start as a good ranch horse! He's been moving pairs with her every day, and although I'm sure it doesn't feel like it to Cody, she LOOKS like a seasoned ranch horse already! I"m really looking forward to some good things from her.

On Good Friday I went north to my friend Lill Roth-Lee's farm, for a couple of hours of working dogs with Lill. It was sooo good to go and have some fun and laughs with Lill! We were dog breaking the heifers that we'll use for our clinic and trial in June. I'll add a short video of Chili in my next blog... helping me sort heifers

Grumble Grumble - Bitch bitch

SUCCESS!!
Well....I have just about had enough of winter, and the whole of next week looks like its going to be more of the same! To make matters worse, the power went off at 9:00am this morning just as I was sitting down with my cereal and a hot cup of coffee. This is a very rare occurance here, and I expected it to come right back on.....nuh uh, it took a good 3 hours before it came back on and in the mean time, to add insult to injury a strong south wind blew in. This combined with some rediculously cold temps equaled 2 frozen waterbowls and 40 cows plus 16 heifers and a couple of bulls that thought their world would come to an end if they didn't get a drink RIGHT NOW. Luckily it was only the top float assembly on both bowls that had frozen, they hadn't been without power long enough for the freezing to keep going south. Kya came with me and while I worked on the waterbowl, she gathered cows and pushed them back out to the field.....much nicer than having cattle breathing down your neck while you're trying to operate a wrench :o)

Completed Project

Jaime....not real happy with this turn of events ! :)

Well here it is......my grooming table is complete! I've wanted a grooming table for a long time, just because it makes it so much easier on a persons back rather than bending over to groom dogs, or find an available "something" to put them up on. This design is from my friend Pat who owns two grooming shops and it works really well, its nice to have a shelf underneath the table to keep your tools handy! My dogs are pretty sure I've lost my mind, and are not very enthusiastic about this new addition to their routines, but with regular use I'm sure they'll learn to live with it :o)

Happy Birthday Old Man

Yesterday Hawk turned 11 years old! I ran out of time yesterday and didn't get it posted.......and didn't even manage to get a new picture of him, so I'll post ones that are from his youth! He really doesn't look or act any differently now, except he's a little grayer in the face. Still a goofball tho :o)

Happy birthday old man we love ya :o)

Done!

My website has at long last been updated! Thanks to Cherie Corrigan of Dream in Design web services! I hope now with Cherie's help to be able to update my website on a little more frequent basis. One day I'd also like to learn how to develop and look after my site myself. Thats one of those "roundtuit" projects tho, and it might be a while!

Stay Tuned

Well I've found someone to overhaul my website!! Cherie Corrigan of Dream in Design has agreed to do maintenance on my site, on an on going basis, Yay!!

It will still "look" the same, because I really do like the format and color pallet, but the information is sadly outdated. SO, we are just in the process of updating pictures and text and adding a page for Shay.....stay tuned..............

Ellie's Birthday

WTCH Westwind's Gale Force RD RTDs DNA-VP

"Ellie"

Ellie was born January 24, 1997, tomorrow will be her 14th birthday. She was an amazing dog to work, and my introduction to good working Aussies. Happy Birthday old girl :o)

Time Passes

Chili working some heifers at home


Below are pictures of Shay and one with her 1/2 sister Chili




I can't believe how time gets away from me! It looks like its been about 2 months since I blogged last, and so I'm really going to try to be more consistent this year! Also my website is sadly outdated, and that is the next thing on the adgenda to get updated.

Early in December we had a nice visit from Noelle Hoorneman. Noelle is from the Netherlands and had been in Canada for a couple of months on a working holiday....mostly working, but she did manage to get in a bit of touring and visiting. We had a really nice weekend visit with Noelle, and also managed to get up to my friend Lill Roth-Lee's place to work some dogs and visit there. Noelle brought a rather nice camera with her, and was kind enough to take some pictures of our dogs working. Sure wish Noelle had been here a little earlier when I needed some pictures of Chili for the ASCA year end Merit Awards pics for the Aussie Times!!