Prairie Shepherdess

06/04/2026

Icy & her twins are happy to be let out after a few days penned up due to rain 🤍

06/04/2026

06/03/2026

Ever heard of egg tanning?

Egg tanning is one of the oldest traditional methods used to preserve animal hides. It uses the natural fats & proteins in egg yolks to tan the hide. When a hide is worked with the egg, the fats pe*****te the fibers. As the hide is stretched on the frame, the fibers stay separated instead of drying stiff and hard. This is what gives their soft, flexible feel they acquire

Egg tanning is a very hands on process and is done by hand from start to finish, hence why each hide doesn’t turn out the same and is unique and full of so much charm & character

All eggs for tanning are sourced from my families flock of chickens right here on the farm, and the hides are hand tanned by myself from start to finish with lots of love and so much gratitude for the animals that these hides came from. As someone who’s very passionate about whole animal usage, honouring the animal, and natural processes, egg tanning has become my preferred tanning method and I’m obsessed with every stage

You can shop my egg tanned hides by heading to prairieshepherdess.ca, or clicking my link in bio

Couldn’t be more happy to be able to share such a beautiful process with all of you and help honour more beautiful animals ❤️

06/02/2026

And that’s a wrap for lambing 2026!

Icy was my last ewe to lamb of my group for this spring and welcomed twin ram lambs on May 30th closing out lambing season. With some assistance with a ram with large horn buds, followed by a breech ram Icy became a mom and these babies made their debut onto earth side

This year ultimately brought a few assists, some rams with huge horn buds, 2 breech lambs, some coming out with one hoof back, but all in all it was a steady, smooth lambing, and I’m very proud of all the ewes and how well they’ve done with their lambs. 5/11 bred were first timers in this group and they’ve all have done fantastic, all twinners, almost all unassisted, and have been super attentive mothers. Nothing more I could have asked for

Total counts for 2026 :
20 lambs
11 ewes bred
1 open ewe, 1 abortion
9 sets of twins, 2 singles
12 ram lambs, 8 ewe lambs
12 from Gunnar and 8 from Ragnar

Now that all the ewes have lambed the focus is now on getting everyone through the summer of grazing ahead, and looking forward to watching the lambs grow these next few months before they head off to their new homes

Glad to be done 🤍

05/29/2026

A few photos of the lambs from this evening🤍

05/29/2026

Loki 😍

05/29/2026

Onto the June ladies!

Ida welcomed twin ram lambs sired by Gunnar last night and these two are the sweetest boys

Down to just one ewe left to lamb for the year with Icy due in the next couple of days, so close to the finish line now 🫶

05/26/2026

Gunnar 🤍

05/20/2026

Love the lamb locks after a good dump of rain. Freyja’s already got some gorgeous locks coming in 😍

Gwyneth x Gunnar ewe lamb