Shari’s Gone Country

As note earlier, Saturday was “Sheep Roundup Day” at our neighbor’s little farm. She has graciously hosted our ewes for the last month, so her ram could do his work. While there, she’s fed them, watered them, etc. When she asked for help with the roundup, it was kind of like… we owe it to you! Of course we’ll be there.

So, yesterday with the temperature just above freezing and a north wind of better than 10 mph, we got into our farm clothes and went on a sheep roundup.

Now, Cindy and Bev and I have been pretty “citified” over the years, but with them being ex-cops… rounding up and taking down sheep for a last check before dropping lambs shouldn’t be too hard.

I’ve caught my share of wayward rabbits during my years in the rabbit business, so figured I could be of some use.

Well…

The roundup went fairly well. Only our big ewe and one other one decided that the small pen wasn’t where they wanted to go. After a few minutes of working them around (or was that them working us) we had everyone in the pen.

That’s when Dixie explained the next step.

We’d capture each ewe, check to see if she’s pregnant, clip around her bags and “private parts”, check the ear tag, and then put her back to pasture.

Total ewes: 12

Total rams: 1

Total women: 4

Game on!

With 3 of us working to isolate a ewe, one watching the ram (he’s not real crazy about Dixie), here’s how it went down.

Dixie would kind of identify one… or say just catch whichever one we can. I would try to turn or head the ewe back. Bev worked to slow one down by grabbing a couple hands full of wool, while Cindy was the “dogger”.

Her flying tackles were accurate.

The one time I actually lassoed one, the rope was so short, I was on my butt before I knew what happened.

Wouldn’t you know it. The very first ewe we caught was the ONLY one not bred. Silly us, we left it in the small pen, and in the melee caught that damn ewe three times.

Once down, the ewe’s were pretty quiet, only an occasional kick if Dixie got too close with the shears. Here’s where we really got a good education.

We found both our ewes are pregnant. They’ll be due sometime in July. She patiently explained what the “gunk” was… that’s wax and it’s how the lambs find the teats. There’s also a waxy plug in the teats. Ewe’s have two teats and they may or may not show much of a bag (to us that means milk) before they drop (give birth to) their lambs.

As you can see, we sometimes had to flip the Merino ewes as their wool is black and we couldn’t see what we were doing. Of course flipping put the dogger under the lamb in the snow.

After all 12 ewes were clipped, checked and turned to the right pen/pasture, only one step remained… docking a lamb’s tail.

Ok, before you go getting into a tizzy… we dock tails for sanitary reasons. You see, lambs are born with long tails, which collect manure, which attract flies, and all kinds of disease… so they have to be removed. All lambs, whether they’re female or male, get their tails docked.

We use a banding system that slips onto their tails about 2 inches from their butt. It’s quick, virtually painless, bloodless, and very humane. Any little boys that are marked for the meat market also get their little testicles banded. After a quick vaccine this little guy was done, and down running around.

Round up done, it was time to head for home. We loaded Chiquita and Merino into the back of the truck for the half-mile ride home.

Here’s Cindy with Chiquita just before the roundup started… and then me with her in the back of the truck once we got home. If you look carefully, Merino is hiding behind her.

Remember a few days ago when they forecasted snow, and it was a big “ho-hum”?

Well, they weren’t whistling Dixie about the next one. Yesterday it wasn’t worth going out for pics… here’s what we look like today.

With a forecast of low 30’s for the high temp and near zero for the low temp… I expect this will hang around until the week end.

Oh, and Saturday morning we’re helping a neighbor herd sheep. She has a small flock that has to get to the lambing pens. It’s already too late for one ewe who dropped her twins in the pen. This should be a real adventure… just hope I stay on my feet as I’m not sure I want to wallow in sheep $h!t.

Here’s a long look at Dusty’s new round pen. When the weather abates, we’ll set to work getting him trained. So far, he’s had his halter on a few times, and has let us place a blanket on his back.

He responds favorably to a “carrot stick”, but has such a high “play drive” that it’s a challenge to keep his attention.

This is the area where the two-gate system works. We open the gate to the round pen and then open the gate to the corral. That lets Dusty go from place to place. This space also gives us direct (as in truck) access to the manure pile and we can back a trailer in when he has to go to the vet.

Here’s the “escape route”… the man-door.

If you scroll back a few posts, you’ll see the “debris pile”. The man-door is just about in the same place.

Sunday morning Cindy and I figured we’d better get the worm bed installed and ready for critters, whenever the weather turns. We left Bev inside to do “house-cleaning”.

Within about 3 hours, we had the big (10 ft x 5 ft x 9 inch) box cut in half to form a 10 ft x 2.5 ft x 1.5 ft bin. We had leveled the ground using the little Mantis tiller. It took several “pulls” to get it started and it wasn’t real happy about tilling frozen ground, but did get the job done in minutes compared to the hours I’d have spent chopping away.

We loaded up a pile of partially composted horse manure and put that into the bottom of the bin.

We’re expecting several inches of snow today, so that will add some slow moisture as it thaws.

In the meantime, we’ve been cutting cardboard into 1″ strips and shredding all the old newspapers. It’s sure nice to have a little paper shredder and small town newspaper rather than a big city version.

Just before we order the worms, we’ll wet down the paper products and add them on top of the manure. That should make a comfy home for our little critters.

Oh, and I’ve still not seen the Key Lime Pies.

Remember those panels we loaded up last week? Well, they arrived late yesterday afternoon. Betcha you can guess what we did today.

That was AFTER we went to a neighboring farm and made a deal for a Merino ram to add to our little flock of sheep. We’ll get him in a couple of weeks, so that means building still more pens as he can’t live full-time with the ewes.

His name is Aljinon… Al for short. He’ll make a very nice addition, and eliminate the long walk across the desert (can you spell “tumbleweeds”?) to deliver the “girls” to the neighbor’s ram.

Upon arriving home from the ram deal, we learned that the kind folks who delivered the horse panels were coming after their trailer if we had it empty. Took us about 15 minutes to haul 13 16-foot panels, a couple of 12 footers, a man-gate, the box for the worm bed and a couple of miscellaneous things.

Of course, once the panels were unloaded, we just had to build the pen. After much discussion, measuring, and more discussion, we set about building the pen.

Mind you, these panels are a wee bit heavy. It takes two of us to carry them any distance (more than a couple of feet). We got enough panels up to make sure our idea about the “double gate” system was sound and then set about cleaning the area of debris.

Now, debris here includes things like abandoned railroad ties, old fencing, pieces of barbed wire, baling wire, and cedar fence posts. That became a 2 hour job even with the help of the truck. At least we could set a choker chain and drag the RR ties to a new location.

Ok, time to set the panels. This many panels makes a 60-foot diameter pen. First thing was to set the outline with a measure from a center post, a 100-foot tape set to 30 feet (the radius), a trailblazer holding the end of the tape (me), and a marker coming along behind me with a hoe (Cindy). We let Bev be the pivot in the center.

About an hour later, we had carried, dragged, tugged, and dug the panels all into place.

Time now to see what Dusty thought about the whole thing, since he’d been watching from his corral.

We first stabled him and tested our 2-gate system. The concept here is to eliminate his options. He can go only from the corral to the pen, and only when we want him to. That all worked, so time to do it for real.

As I was on the short gate side, you can bet I was praying he didn’t want to come my way.

What a good boy! He came directly from his stable, turned left at the gate and very slowly made his way across the 10 foot span created by the gates and entered his new “workout” pen.

Talk about surprised at his pace! This young boy first made his way all around the perimeter, taking in the scents and the view. Then he checked out the interior, pawed a bit and looked for a place to roll. He didn’t find a good place for that, yet.

While Cindy went to bring mom out in the car, Dusty completed his inspection. No sooner did she arrive than he showed his approval, running full speed, bucking, kicking, and rearing in delight. What a sight!

Watching him made all the hard labor worth it.

Play time over, we called him to the stable and with very little hesitation, he did just as he was asked. Good day’s work!

Needless to say, we’re all tired to the bone and ready for bed. Tomorrow it’s time to finish the sheep pen, and build the worm beds.

Oh, and maybe, just maybe we’ll have a Key Lime Pie or two waiting for us.