DreamCatcher Farm

Just because it's winter doesn't mean things screach to a stand still. There's still just enough winter activity to keep pretty busy in the barn. And the weather has been pretty nice the past few days- right around 32 degrees and even some sun! The dogs have enjoyed their outdoor romps in the snow through the woods. We just put two new feeders in with the rams. They are wonderful! Now the big ram can't bully the others out of the grain pan! Hopfully they will waste quite a bit less hay as well. If all goes well we may need to acqure a couple more.

It's also almost time to start breeding does. I have my fingers crossed for the first week in February which would give me early March bunnies. I keep getting inquiries for sale rabbits- I just have nothing available! I am growing out less than a dozen Mini Rex for show rabbits and probably close to twice that number of Polish. In a couple more months I can probably offer a select few individuals for sale. I don't even have anything for brood stock available as I cut down so hard that I didn't keep any "extras".  If I can get my does bred in a couple of weeks, then hopfully by June I'll have some additionals for sale.

For those waiting for Shetland roving- I haven't heard a peep from either mill I sent fleeces to yet. As soon as I get the boxes in my possesion, I will post some fiber on the sale page.

Applications are closed for the 2010 DCF Mentor program. Six girls (all from Wisconsin) were selected to participate for this year. I look forward to working with this varied group of fantastic youth kids for the 2010 show year!

Here's to hoping the weather stays above frigid and everyone is having a great winter!

I can't start any post without and huge congrats to my little "sister" Jennifer and her wonderful husband Kevin on the arrival of their second child, Avalon Jane! Avalon arrived last week and thus far is being a wonderful baby. Her big sister Autumn is loving her to death...for now.  What a super early Christmas gift for the Whaley's!

On the home front, we are currently in the midst of a blizzard. It's hard to tell how much snow has fallen due to the crazy wind! Enough that my llama poked his nose out of the stall door into the paddock this morning and quickly pulled it back in with a resounding "Heck no!"

For those Shetland breeders looking for some outcross lambs this year, I am offering three bred ewes for sale. Two are spotted ewes bred to a spotted ram for, you guessed it, spotted lambs! The third is a very pretty fawn ewe out of my favorite old ewe, bred to a very nice moorit ram. Pictures and information are available on the sale page. For additional information, please feel free to email me direct.

Yesterday I actually went to my first rabbit show in about 5 months! Had lots of fun catching up! A BIIIIGGG Congrats to Morgan Vogel for her Best of Breed win in youth show two with a DCF white doe. I didn't show mini rex myself as I had just nothing to show. I did bring a few Polish and won BOB & BOS in show #2 under judge Dave Cardinal with a nice pair of blacks. Unfortunatley it will probably be another long stretch of time before the stars aline and I hit another rabbit show.

The good news is the Polish are producing well and I have lots of Polish babies coming up to go through. The mini rex haven't been as productive, but hopfully I have a few does bred now for some late fall babies. I have my fingers crossed anyway!

More exciting news came from the ARBA Convention in San Diego. DC's Cyrus (BIS winning black Polish buck) was BOSV black and Centerstage Diego (RIS winning broken blue buck) was BOSV  broken! The entire Amelse/Whaley entry (except 1 rabbit) were all National Top Ten or better! As long as all goes well, Diego will be making an appearence in WI this spring, just in time to breed does for 2010 convention juniors! Photos of these two exceptional boys should be on the website soon. Jenn is working on pictures....and is due with her second child anytime, so she's allowed a little leeway!

Wow! I can't beleive it's been this long since I updated. I'm usually more on the ball than that! Living in the northern part of Wisconsin, I opt to plan my sheep breeding so my ewes are lambing in April- which has slightly more predictable weather than March! This means, of course that I'm putting my breeding groups together next week. This year I'm using only two rams. One of which is my grey/wt flecket ram lamb from this spring, DreamCatcher Harlem. I'm going to try him to two spotted ewes for some nice spotted lambs and also to my well built, although somewhat crazy, emsket ewe.

The second ram is a rather last minute addition- a super moorit ram. The remainder of the girls are going to him. I was really torn as there are a couple I would have liked to seen how they crossed with another ram lamb I really like- DreamCatcher Archer who is a fawn katmoget and a full brother to Charm. I like the way he's coming along and he has a lot of chrome to make him stand out. But, with the way my paddocks are set up right now....it's much easier to use two this year. So they are all going to the new boy.

If you're interested in seeing how the breeding groups are divided, check out the Shetland page- they are all written out in detail there. Also, I have posted a couple of ewes that will be offered for sale bred starting in December and running through March. After March first, they will be lambing here. I'm hoping to have a good variety of color. I will definatley have some moorits, whites and most likely some shades of grey and black. There's also a possibility of a katmoget lamb drifting around as well as spots.

Happy Halloween everyone!

I just got back from the WI Sheep & Wool Festival and the MSSBA Shetland show last night. After the preperation for the show being nothing but problems, I was pleasantly surprised at how smoothly the weekend went once we arrived in Jefferson. Lori Stephenson was the show super and did a wonderful job running the event. She's a trooper and a very nice person to boot. Due to the craziness of trying to find sheep transport etc from the couple of weeks before the show, I opted to take just one sheep to show and a few of the boys for sale. Two boys did find their ways to new homes: Congratulations Jean Estes of Kickin Back Miniature Horses for her purchase of DreamCatcher Hudson and to Michelle Mac Donald on her purchase of DreamCatcher Sully. Both super sweet boys going to nice families. Also congratulations to Angie Hopikins on her winning bid on DreamCatcher Carolina in the auction. Carolina is a beautiful Moorit ewe that brought in a nice price for the MSSBA treasury and I'm so happy Angie and her girls had the winning bid!

I chose to show my ewe DreamCatcher Charm in the show. Charm drew a ton of attention at the show (with many inquiries of "is she for sale???") Charm is more like a dog in personality than a sheep and she will beg for attention and did so with much success judging by the amount of people drawn to her stall. Charm showed in the ewe lamb class, the biggest of the day and was reserve in her class to a very nice little moorit ewe that actually stayed standing still through the whole (very long!) class. Charm was good for about the first half, but then between the heat and the length of the class, I think she was about done with all that nonsense!

All in all, it was a nice trip and I had the pleasure of meeting many nice folks there. I would certainly recommend the festival to anyone who enjoys sheep or crafting with natural fibers (the vendors are incredible!). Charm, on the other hand, wasn't so impressed and is much happier being back out in the pasture with her flock!

My little man turns one year old today. I can hardly believe it. I picked Crash up right after the ARBA Convention last year. It's been a 'hold on to your hats' moment ever since. Crash was, without a doubt, the naughtiest puppy I've ever owned in my life. And perhaps this was excentuated by the fact that Reese had been perhaps the most well behaved puppy I'd ever had. So I knew it was coming.

He did everything a "bad" puppy should: keep me up every night, chew on stuff, eat stuff he definatley was not supposed to...the list goes on.He also ate (and ahem...you know) like no dog I've ever spent company with.  I'm happy to say that things have certainly improved at my house with this milestone birthday. Underneath that naughty puppy is a very happy, intelligent (somewhat hormonal) adolescent male dog. Mr. Doo, as we call him, has proven to have exactly the performance potential I thought he would as a crazy puppy. He is eager to work, freaky athletic and catches on to most things in record time. When I finally make up my mind in which direction I'd really like to take him (obedience or agility) we'll be off like a rocket and I fear it will be up to me to keep up with him! In conformation we've come together as a team and have to have earned the "most improved player award" in comparison to our first shows which looked something like water skiing on dry land. I can only imagine what he could do if he actually had a good handler!

So here's to you Mr. Doo! Have a great birthday...and yeah, you have to share those birthday cookies with your sister.........

For those of you who have sheep, you just read the title to this post and had a coronary. Yep, at least half of my sheep are still wearing wool. I've had an incredibly difficult time getting a shearer to come de-fleece my sheep. There are a lot of wonderful things about living far from city life. The beauty, the peace and quiet, the lack of traffic...I could go on here. However there are drawbacks as well. And one of them is finding a sheep shearer. Shetlands really need to be sheared after Memorial Day (which is rather late in the season compared to other breeds) because of the natural "rise" that happens. The new wool starts to rise up and pushes up the old wool. Shearing before this can lead to a mess with matty wool sticking to the top of the new fleece. Well, no one is up here shearing sheep at that time of year and as I don't have 100 sheep, no one really wants to make a special trip.

I even, in all my desperation, attempted to do a few myself. Not for the faint of heart I can tell you that. And the second thing I can tell you is that sheep shearers are UNDERPAID!! Regardless, I finally found a part time shearer that is coming this afternoon. I will be happy to have the sheep done. I guess I am thankful that we've had such a cool summer!

Finals. Not as in exams. I recieved the exciting news late last week that Reese and I have qualified for ASCA Obedience Finals competition taking place in Colorado in conjunction with the ASCA Nationals!! Finals is a competition for the top obedience dogs in their respective divisions from around the country. Dogs are ranked on their scores at shows during the year. Reese and I showed 3 shows in Novice (the minimum amount of shows...there is no maximum. You can keep showing in order to improve your scores if you wish) and we made it. My next course of action is to figure out what is still bothering her foot. She cut her hock over a month ago and got a small, localized infection, causing her to limp. She went on antibiotic and although it's definatley better, the foot still bothers her, which isn't conducive to good training! Or showing for that matter. I am optimistic that we can get the issue addressed and move forward with our preparations for Nationals. Have a great week!

So, did you ever play red light, green light as a kid? You know red light means freeze and green light means keep coming? I played that this weekend actually, with my dog. It would've been WAY cooler if I'd actually taught her to play. Seems as though she taught herself.

Reese and I competed this weekend at the Paper Cities Kennel Club show. It was our first time out in AKC open obedience. We did compete at an ASCA show in May in open though (and had an awesome show with a High in Trial and super scores!) so we have a tiny bit of experience under our belts. The one thing I can tell you about my dog right off the bat (besides she's the sweetest sweetness) is that she's incredibly unpredictable. For instance, at this last ASCA show I was just mentioning, our warm up before we went in the ring was lack luster and she seemed sluggish. We got in the ring and had 1-point heeling, it was awesome. She was on like a laser. So going in this past weekend I felt pretty confident that things with Reeses attitude had turned the corner. Saturday we went in the ring and her heelwork pattern was a bit laggy and not very bright, but the rest of the exercises went well and we won our Open A class with a score in the mid 190's. Respectable effort. I wasn't giddy, but I was  decently pleased and looking forward to Sunday, as she usually does better the second day of a 2 day show. I went over in my head the little errors I could improve on and thought playing a game of tug before we went in the ring might jazz her up a bit.

So Sunday rolls around and I'm looking forward to our go in the ring. Got out the tug toy, played a bit right before going in. Seemed a bit sharper...things were looking up. Well....Reese didnt' think so. Her heelwork pattern was probably a bit sloppier than the day before, but I hoped for the same performance on the other exerciese to carry us while filing in the back of my mind that I needed to re-disect (for the um-teenth time) another approach to heelwork. She completed the next two exercises although they were slow and not up to my standards for her. Then came her impromptu game. I threw the dumbell over the high jump. She left with beautiful drive, went over the jump, picked up the dumbell, started back.....my eyes moved to her front position, where I was indeed expecting her within a split second. No Reese. I looked up. She had stoped just on the far side of the jump in a frozen (red light!) position. I waited. Nothing. I looked at the jump and looked at the front position...I suppose thinking she could read my mind. Nothing. So I did what I had to do, I took the NQ and called her to front (GREEN LIGHT!). We went on to the broad jump.....and it was perfect. Figures.

So, we have four weeks until our next show. I had intended on working more agility during that time, but it seems as though I will be working more obedience. It does little good for me to wonder "why" she turns on and off like a light switch. It is far more productive for me to concentrate on what I need to do to get what I want from her. So that's my project....I'll let you know how that goes.

I can honestly say, I've never blogged before. That in itself is a bit new. I thought perhaps it might be appropriate to start a blog for those of you who want to keep up to date with the mirad of things that goes on here. Especially being as I have not, nor will I be in the near future, at many rabbit shows. To quell the rumor mill, indeed I do have rabbits! I have not "gone out" I have simply cut my herd to a more managable level for the amount of showing I'm currently doing. I did a severe cut on my Mini Rex herd over the past two years, which was both gut wrenching and relieving at the same time. By fall I will probably have my best four white brood does (all national/BIS winners) and four opal or b/opal brood does; a small selection of herd bucks and probably a small handful of show juniors. I do plan to do a similar cut on my Polish in early fall, although I have far fewer Polish so the cut won't be the huge amount of animals that the Mini Rex cut was. This reduction is practical for me and allows me to focus more directly on a couple varieties and to hopfully bring them closer to perfection.

Sheep: I am in a similar position with my Shetlands. My hope is to keep my flock at a small, hobby level. And as we are in another in a long line of drought years, my pastures are not keeping up with the sheep! So I am hoping to sell some and only breed a few ewes every year so hopfully my supply doesn't exceed demand. I'm posting a photo of one of my favorite lambs from this year. His name is DreamCatcher Harlem and he is a grey/white flecket (spotted) ram lamb.

Although I enjoy both the rabbits and the sheep, I am becoming more and more passionate about my dogs. I enjoy the training, teamwork and communication aspect of working performance dogs that is not present in the other two ventures. The learning curve is absolutley huge! Combined with my introduction to the conformation (breed) ring this year and the possibility of  entering the breeding game...it's a ton of work, but the rewards are very satisfying. And for a short brag- Reese and I traveled to Oshkosh this past Sunday where we finished her final rally title (RAE) with a win in the Ex B class and a score of 98! We're on to Paper Cities this weekend to debut in AKC open obedience- wish us luck!

This is probably a long enough blog post. My hope is to make weekly posts on a variety of topics, so stay tuned!!