Today was our annual visit with our veterinarian to review our flock’s health.  He worked on the teeth of our two donkeys as well.  He checked over our goats, sheep, pigs and cows.  After he left I went to move the cows to a pasture with a shelter as the weather was atrocious. And then I noticed in that short amount of time Rory had gotten caught up in some barbed wire that he much have rubbed off the fence.  It was wrapped around both of his horns and two of his legs.  It was a terrible mess.

I got Tom, and we were able to move all three cows into the alleyway by the barn.  Tom was able to use the sheep hook to loosen some of the wire and then gradually was able to loosen the rest.  It was pretty scary, but Rory did well.  Now we need to remove all of the barbed wire from our property so this does not happen again.

But the other thing that the vet and I decided was that Ewegenie should be put down.  She has been thin and arthritic for a while.  But now she is not eating as well, will not take her arthritis medicine, and has taken to laying out in the rain when there is plenty of shelter available.  So I had to say goodbye to her today.

She was born in April 2007 to our Jocko (a mioget ram) and Jenny (a black katmoget ewe).  She was mioget katmoget, and her twin sister was Jewel who was black katmoget (and just died in September).

Here is a photo of Jenny with her two lambs.

Here is Ewegenie as a lamb.

Ewegenie is actually featured in the header photo for my blog with other lambs born that spring.

I sold her, two other lambs and three goat kids to a man I thought seemed fine.  But then 5 years later I was contacted by an animal rescue organization that these animals had been abused and neglected and could I take them back.  I first got the two surviving goats back from a goat rescue but then had to go to this man’s property to rescue the sheep.  Unfortunately only two of the three had survived, Ewegenie and Madonna.  Beautiful Shauna had died.  This was one of the worst days of my life.  But we were able to get Ewegenie and Madonna home to take care of them.  Here they are that difficult day in the trailer and then back home.

The next step was to shear 5 years of wool off of them.  Here is Ewegenie before shearing.

And both of them afterwards.

Neither of them were friendly, but that is not really expected given what they had been through.  We had stopped breeding our sheep and goats after that experience so they never had lambs.  But Ewegenie in particular made really nice wool for me.  Her rare coloring and markings gave her a lightly golden fleece that was really pretty.  Here she is about to be sheared in 2015,

And later that fall.

Her full sister who is 2 years younger (due to an escaping ram) looks almost identical to her.

Here she is being sheared in 2017 and in 2018.  I was always enthralled watching the wool come off of her.

Here is what her wool looked like that year.

Here is her shearing in 2019, her wool that year and then her that fall.

Here is her being sheared in 2020, and then her and her sister after that shearing.

I rooed her wool off last year and increasingly tried to spoil her as she was clearly aging.

But she increasingly dwindled and today was time to say goodbye, particularly with snow in the forecast.  It is the end of an era. But I have been actively plying and skeining yarn from her and her sister so will have that as a memento.  Plus I do still have her younger sister Jemima.

Rest in Peace Ewegenie.