died on my birthday.

I bought her in 2005 from Kim Kerley as a 2 year old mioget Shetland ewe.  She was a small sheep with double-coated fleece so I brought all of these characteristics into my flock.  

That first fall she was bred to my mioget Shetland ram Jocko (Biterroot Ansel) and the next fall she produced two lambs, a moorit ram lamb Fred and a mioget ewe lamb Wilma.  Fred was sold to my friend Jackie Craw and Wilma I kept and still have.

She produced gorgeous fleeces and even won a blue ribbon at the Spring Puyallup fair.

With the same breeding as before she produced two mioget ewe lambs in 2007, Wilhelmina and Winifred.  They were both sold to Joyce Thomas.

This is Wink in 2009

and here she is sheared in 2010.

That spring after being bred to Jocko again she produced two mioget ewe lambs, initially named Tinkerbell and Pixiedust.  They were sold to John Park and renamed Donna and Vanessa.

In 2012 after breeding yet again to Jocko she produced a single ram lamb named Bambam Too.  The first Bambam had been her grandson but had been killed by one of our donkeys so this was his replacement and namesake.  We had sold him but bought him back, and he is still with us.

The next year with the same breeding she produced mioget lambs, Willy and Wonka.  Willy was sold as a wether to live in Sedro Woolley and Wonka was sold as a ewe lamb to live in Hoquiam and renamed Adair.

This was then supposed to be her retirement as she was 10 years old and a little on the thin side.  However our rams had a different idea.  Bambam Too (her son!) and Lewis busted out of their ram field into the ewes.  From this she had Wendel (a mioget ram lamb from Bambam) and Walda (a black ewe lamb from Lewis).  We made Wendel into a  wether and have kept both of them.

After this she was quite thin.  I had been giving her grain once I realized she was pregnant and then continued to give her grain and bread after.  She had always been a wild, skittish sheep, but I finally was able to get her to occasionally eat bread from my hand.

But despite this she remained thin.  I continued to try to feed her well but in the last week she stopped eating and I knew the end was near.  She was found by our farmsitter while we were away on my birthday.  She was almost 14 years old.  This is the last photo I took of her in November.