I have promised myself to begin posting again on the blogs as part of my resolutions for the year. Halfway through February, and I'm just starting to follow up on some of my intentions. It is always busy on a farm, even a very small one. Right now I have a few ewes lambing, and nine small ones already on the ground. These lambs are by the Scottish Blackface ram. It is very difficult to find Scottie breeding stock right now, so we've decided to just cross our hair work sheep on Scottie rams and see what we get. So far they are incredibly cute speckled faced lambs with nice boxy bodies and heavier than the hair lambs.

There are four lambs by the St. Croix ram that will be ready to wean March 1st. Then there is another batch of ewes bred a little later, that can begin lambing any time. The Scottie ewes should lamb in March or April. I tried to spread the lambing out so that I wouldn't run out of work sheep, but I hope to get it a little more organized so that I still have some puppy sheep available.

Sandy is due with her foal in mid-April. This baby is by Shiners Dew, a homozygous black Shining Spark/Grays Starlight bred Quarter Horse. Hoping for a grulla filly to join our two red dun mares, and Mouse, the grulla filly we bought last fall.

We are considering breeding the mares to a Highland Pony stallion this year. I have fallen hard for the Highlands, but like Gypsy horses, they are extremely expensive. They are much more rare than the Gypsies, which could make finding enough genetic variety difficult, but I am going to keep researching this and find out if breeding them is a viable option.

Highlands are like small drafts, nothing tiny about them. They are short, 13 to 14.3 hands, but very thick, with great bone, big manes and tails and feathering on their legs. They are considered strong enough to care adults and have a quiet temperament. They excel as driving ponies and trail horses, and have been used as farm animals and pack animals in Scotland as well. They are hardy and grow a great coat resistant to bad weather. And the icing on the cake is that they are often duns! Our special fondness for dun factor horses draws me to these little horses that come in colors like mouse dun, cream dun, and yellow dun.