I had my right knee partially replaced in December of 2014 after letting it go for several years. The knee was to the point where I could no longer bend it and because it was bone on bone on the inside of the knee, I was walking on the side of my left boot/shoe, wearing out the inner side of my shoes. This knocked my hips, back, neck, etc. out of whack and I was pretty much miserable 24/7. I discovered AFTER surgery while still in the hospital that I am allergic to every pain med they tried. They finally gave up and sent me home with no pain meds and told me to take Tylenol, which does nothing for me. I had an anaphylactic reaction to NSAIDs over 20 years ago and my allergist told me to never take NSAIDs again because they would probably kill me. Needless to say, recovery from surgery was NOT the 3 to 5 weeks the surgeon's office told me it would be! It was 7 or 8 months after surgery before I could bend my knee past 60 to 80 degrees. Because of this, I have not used my treadle spinning wheel since early 2014 - about 3.5 years. I bought a beautiful Hansen electric spinner from another fiber artist who said she never "bonded" with the spinner. Lucky me! I love my e-spinner but just haven't had the time to spend doing much spinning. I need to change that.
We've pared down our llama herd to 15 llamas and that includes our second llama that we purchased in November 1996. He'll be 24 this month. He's slow and has problems getting around but he's in with the chickens and ducks and still has a sparkle in his eye, even if he no longer has a spring in his step. Our second oldest llama is one of our foundation females who will be 19 the end of this month. We're down to our "keeper" herd - our favorite llamas that we'd prefer to keep rather than sell. Last October we put Wheatfield's Spencer in with our females (with the exception of our oldest female - we removed her while Spencer was in with the rest of the girls) and we're hoping we'll have several crias this Fall. Normally we "hand breed", selecting a different male for each female we want to breed, but this time we just put Spencer in with all the females since he is not related to any of them.
We have added milk and fiber goats to our ranch program. I have purebred Nigerian Dwarf goats and Pygora/Angora goats. Last summer we had our first kid born - it was a cross between Rosemary (my Pygora doe) and Skylar (my Nigerian Dwarf buck). The kid was born missing part of her back left leg because the umbilical cord got wrapped around it while she was developing and that leg never developed. Her name is Little Miss Tippy Thyme. She gets around surprisingly well considering her "disability". Here is the latest photo of Tippy, taken a couple of weeks ago.
I sheared her for the first time a few months ago. Here she is just before shearing
And here she is right after shearing - she's black underneath and her fiber/fleece fades to a beautiful silver/taupe color as it grows
She has a little sister named Angel, born in early May of this year. Fortunately, Angel was born with all her parts and pieces and has perfect angel wings and a halo to match!
We had two additional kids born in April of this year - Baby Doe (one of my full Nigerian Dwarf does) had twins - a little brown female I named Celeste and a black male I named Moonbeam - here is Celeste (with her momma photo bombing)
And here is Moonbeam (on the left) He already thinks he's a stud muffin so I'm going to need to wean him soon!
And, we had a little surprise on Mother's Day this year! Last summer we put our miniature stallion (Nitro) in with our miniature mare (Paloma) and 318 days later I went out to do morning chores and found THIS in the horse shelter!
He was a little early so his legs were a bit of a train wreck but he quickly straightened out and is the spitting image of his sire! Meet Remington!
Remington's sire is "Nitro" - Running Creek's Destiny Royale
Remington's dam is "Paloma"
I've been busy with fiber arts here, too, but will save that for the next blog post. See you then!
Thanks for visiting and sharing our amazing life here at Split Rock Ranch!
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