Long time followers of the Struan Farm blog will know that our Christmas cards each year involve pet lambs decked out for Christmas. I convince the little darlings to humour me while they are still innocent and trusting, conducting photo shoots out in the paddocks. I usually manage to pull something fun off. Here are some samples from previous years:
You can see the theme. We are creatures of habit here at Struan Farm.
But of course 2020 has been an unusual year for everyone on many fronts. In our case we had a great lambing season, with literally no lambs abandoned at birth, at least ones that survived. A ram from the farm next door breached the perimeter a few weeks before Farmer John put his purebred rams out, which meant lambing happened three weeks earlier than scheduled, fortunately when the weather was perfect.
Pet lamb "Tiger" joined us for bottle feeding three weeks or so after he was born when his mum drowned, but he wasn't the sort of the lamb who was going to cooperate with a photo shoot, let alone with Christmas decorations. He still baas when I call out to him every so often, but I don't really classify him as a pet and he wouldn't call himself one either.
In other words, a Plan B was required for this year's Struan Farm Christmas card. So we came up with one. Here are Piopio's Next Top Models 2020:
Diva of the mob, former pet lamb Rosie, and her first ewe lamb. She's had three sets of twins, all rams, in previous years. Predictably, she was one of two ewes who held out for Farmer John's purebred ram, she wasn't going to mingle with the adolescent from next door. Rosie has her standards.
We'll unveil this year's card closer to Christmas, let the countdown begin!
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