Tuesday, April 21, 2015

We Need More Room





The sheep were telling me they needed a bit more room today. There isn't even enough respectable places for a young lamb to sleep properly and they have been having to take turns snoozing in the various food pans.

Whenever I have the sheep so close together I tend to haphazardly leave feed pans all around as it makes feeding grain easier. I can toss scoopfuls here and there and kinda head a stampede off before it get's started if I am fast enough. I just don't understand how stupid these sheep get over grain they would trample their own children for a mouthful. The crew even managed to knock me down the other day which is the first time that has ever happened.

Anyway I moved the temporary inside fence back a bit to give the ewes and lambs a little more room. Another two weeks and the babies should be big enough I can start letting them out into the dry lot but until then they needed a bit more space.

The three remaining sheep, 2 yearlings and Sammich, were not happy to have their wide open indoor/outdoor play pen reduced however.




Sammich let me know she wasn't happy with the new space allocation. That little whether of my wife's actually head-butted me when my back was turned too again. The three of them (Sammich, 65 and 61 a ewe I kept) run around head -butting each other and playing all day, it's quite comical to watch but they sometimes try and get me involved in their sheep games hence the friendly head-butt. I dropped what I was doing and put little number 65 back on the ground into the shearing position and he left me alone for a while.

It's all cute and fun right now but as he fills out it can be a problem and apparently one I am going to have to address every few weeks it seems. Sammich never head-butts people but she has started pawing at me with her front hoof like a dog lately trying to get my attention to scratch her ears. She will stand there for hours having her ears and neck scratched.

The poor things really need to get off the dry lot and into some green pasture. They look at it longingly as it grows. Soon ladies... very soon.

Keep Prepping Everyone!!!!!



 

4 comments:

  1. It was not by accident that Christ often compared His followers to sheep - we're just as shortsighted and silly, it often seems.

    How large is 65 supposed to get? I can see where that might pass into sort of dangerous zone.

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    1. TB - I am amazed at how easy it is to lead them around since I feed em and am out with them almost every day. As long as I am not trying to lead them into a box they will almost follow me anywhere.

      65's dad was a big boy or maybe it was his grand-dad I am unsure of his lineage. Either way he could easily top 200 pounds by the time he is full grown and I suspect larger. As his wool grows though it get's hard to tell because they look so much larger than they really are.

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  2. When I was a kid and we had lots of sheep in a pen dad used to send me in as a decoy with a bucket away from the trough so he could feed them easier. I'm sure I learnt most of the swear words I know from sheep feeding time. If one got it's head between your legs then you knew you were going down.

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    1. Kev - The decoy tactic is a damned good one :) I have used it myself. I also used to feed em outside while they were behind a gate and then let them in but I can't do that now since the lambs are too small to go out yet. I did feed em over the temporary fence but they tended to slam into the fence and weaken it.

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