When it all Started

Do you remember what you were doing in March of 1992? I have to laugh, because apparently in some ways not much has changed.  Its March of 2026 and 34 years later I am still taking care of Texel baby lambs 🤔.

I still remember the day Tootsie was born, March 1, 1992. She was my very first sheep, her dad was a Texel from US MARC (US Meat Animal Research Center in Clay Center, Nebraska).

She was 50% Texel and 50% Suffolk, that’s where this journey started.  She weighed 2 pounds on our kitchen scale (most lambs weigh at least 8lbs). 

Olivia with Tootsie in 1992 (left) Olivia with Texel Lamb 2026 (right)

My uncle, Dr. Gary Onan-who bought the first Texel ram sold in the US in 1990, didn’t think she would make it because she was so tiny. My mother thought she survived because of how much I loved her.

She lived in a box in the hallway by our bedrooms for quite some time where my sister, Crystal Retzlaff, and I (at 8 years old) took turns getting up to bottle feed her in the middle of the night.

As Tootsie grew and grew she not only thought she lived in the house with us but she also thought she should chase the milk truck with the dog. That’s when my mom said it was time for Tootsie to live like a sheep and move out to the sheep pen.

I do remember one occasion when I let Tootsie out of her sheep pen to follow me around the farm and she ran into the house and jumped into the bathtub….good thing my mom wasn’t in the house then. lol

She grew and grew to a normal size sheep and is the great great great….grandmother of many sheep in my sister’s flock.

This is Tootsie and I in 1993 where I was super proud to show my first sheep through 4-H.