Meet Pippi

Pippi is definitely my favorite. She is the bravest of all the sheep. She was the first to eat out of my hand and is always the first to come over when I bring out the hay. She has no problem eating out of the hay tub while I am trying to put it into the feeder. Her lambs are also comfortable doing this. (I get sneezed on daily.)

Pippi is an excellent mother and has raised 5 healthy lambs since she has been with us. Her demeanor is calm and she is the least excitable of all the ewes. I would also say that she is a bit of a saint with the little ones, even those that are not her own.

Once the ewes had been with us for a while, and I realized that it was highly unlikely that I would ever be able to milk them, I decided to get a Nigerian Dwarf doe in milk. We brought her onto our farm along with her 2 goat kids. None of the sheep had given birth at that point and they were all still very skittish where we were concerned. They tended to stay far away from us whenever we entered the pen.

The new goat mama and her 2 kids, changed the dynamic considerably. The sheep all seemed to calm down and relax a bit which was kind of surprising considering how crazy the little goat kids were. They were running around all over the place and climbing on everything, including the sheep!

When we got the sheep, they were clearly overdue for a shearing. Since we only had three ewes at the time, no shearer wanted to bother coming out because it wasn't worth their time to shear only 3 ewes. All this extra wool made it very easy for the goat kids to jump up and hang on while riding the sheep around. Saint Pippi would just stand there and let them climb all over her. Hopefully all that extra wool padded her poor back from goat hooves!