Wednesday, October 31, 2007

AI weekend

Well the AI weekend in Ottawa, IL was a success! It was such a great pleasure to meet Mr. Martin Dalley who did the AI'ing. He is one smart guy, and a sense of humor to boot! Many thanks to Chris and Alan Green for opening their home to me and for the great meals! I truly appreciated the talk about fleeces and knitting with Chris and Gail Former. Gail was a great gal! She brought up a group of potential sheep for me to see (I wanted a musket and an Ag grey). Gail is truly a wonderful person to sit down and talk to and is so knowledgeable of Shetlands and with fleeces. I also was able to finally meet Maureen Kock and her brother Johnny. There wasn't much time for chit chatting as they arrived late (like 2am) and we were all up and out of the house getting ready for AI early in the morning. Hopefully I can sit down and chat with Maureen again sometime soon! I was very surprised and EXCITED to see Juliann Budde arrive to assist in the AI procedure!!! She and I were both first timers with the AI and I know we both learned a lot! Juliann's ram lamb she picked up was sure a cute thing too. Have fun with him Juliann!

Saturday after the AI, we went back to Chris and Alan's home and I had Martin, Juliann and Maureen go over the potential sheep for me to purchase. I value their opinions and it was Gail's idea, so I jumped on it! I knew who I was leaning towards and they were all in agreement with me as to who I should take home with me :) I left quite happy! Thanks to everyone for a great weekend!

On the way home I decided to pit stop at Cynthia's farm to visit my three girls that are staying there for the breeding season. It was really nice to see how my gulmoget ewe lamb has grown up and to see how the AI lambs were growing so nicely. Very impressive and uniform group of girls Cynthia! As always its so nice to sit and talk sheep with you and go over breeding groups and fleeces with you!

I came back late sunday night after spending the day with a college buddy of mine in Tomah and started the work week in full swing on monday morning! Monday night I did worming and hooves and put the rams with them on tuesday morning. April 1st lambs! I'd hope to have them all lambed out before I go back to work in the spring!

1 comment:

Juliann said...

Hey Garrett,

It was GREAT seeing you at the AI, it was an exhausting day, wasn't it? It's always fun to hang out with other Shetland nuts, eat pizza, and talk sheep.
Can't wait to see you again!

A long time coming!

 It has been a long time. Too long in fact. We lost access to our farm website and ebonwald website when WEBS.COM was closed by VistaPrint. ...