Monthly Archives: January 2013

Erin came over yesterday in the morning to help me work the sheep and goat flock. Actually, it would be more accurate to say that Erin came over and I helped her work sheep yesterday. It’s very physically demanding and exhausting work.

[I love this picture of Callum. He looks a little bit like crazy and very much like his mama, Feenat.]

The whole flock needed to be checked for parasites loads and de-wormed and a few of them needed their hooves cleaned up. This kind of work can take forever, but Erin and I have been working sheep together for years and we were able to get through the whole flock in just a few hours using the system we have worked out.

Erin has been bringing her Border Collie Ben with her to the farm for the last few months, and it has been a pure joy to watch Ben developing into a proper herding dog.

When Erin got Ben from the Border Collie Rescue last year, he hadn’t really been used as a herding dog very much, in part because he had trouble focusing on commands because he was so excited whenever he was around sheep.

Erin has taken Ben to some sheep dog clinics recently, and worked really hard with him, and the difference was evident when we used him to drive the flock back into the pasture after worming and trimming.

My sheep are particularly challenging for herding dogs because they spend every moment of their lives with our livestock guardian dogs. They can be…shall we say nonchalant with Ben, and since Ben isn’t the most aggressive of herders, it’s a bit the opposite of a battle of wills.

Sometimes Ben does what he is supposed to do and the sheep just ignore him. Very definitely the sheep equivalent of a teenager rolling her eyes and saying “whatever…“.

Ben, who is pretty chill for a herding dog, sometimes responds to this snub by responding with gestures that are the dog equivalent of “Or  not. I mean, you probably know best.“

With Erin’s encouragement, Ben kept at it until he got those sheep to pay attention and go where he wanted them to go.

(Incidentally, Ben never bites or snaps at the sheep to get them to move. If he did, he wouldn’t be allowed anywhere near them.)

By the time the sheep where properly penned where we wanted them, Ben was beat.

Herding sheep is thirsty work.

 Huge thanks to Erin and Ben for helping me yesterday. It’s much easier for me to leave for a two week trip to Texas knowing that my flock is healthy and well-care for.

Last week, we have our first snow of the season, which might have been lovely if it hadn’t come hard on the heels of a week and a half of rain.

Since the flock was already wet and cold from all the rain, I made the decision to move them to the pasture with the biggest shelter in advance of the snow. The only problem was that there was no hay in that pasture. We feed round bales that weigh hundreds of pounds, so moving them is not an option. Where they are delivered is where they stay. Still I figured the animals would be okay for 8 hours and that warm and dry was better than wet and cold.

Moving the animals between pastures isn’t really a problem. They know that an open gate means that their is food waiting for them somewhere else, and without any grass to distract them, it only took a few moments to get them from the back pasture to the front. In an effort to save time, I took the flock across the driveway instead of running them through the gates of all four pastures, which wold have taken at least twice as long. They behaved perfectly, only pausing for a moment to make sure this evergreen tree wasn’t something delicious.

Fresh hay is a powerful draw.

I was just patting myself on the back for my brilliance and efficiency when I noticed the cows weren’t around. Weird. I couldn’t see them in the pasture we had just left, either. Thinking maybe they were in the barn, I walked that way and when I turned the corner, I found this:

Luna was INSIDE the chicken coop.

That’s about 1000 pounds of dairy cow standing in a building designed for 3 pound chickens, y’all.

Once I rousted her from the coop, Luna slowly made her way across the driveway, stopping to sample a magnolia leaf along the way.

She and the steers slowly made their way into the proper pasture. Then the cows caught sight of the fresh bale of hay.

And took off at a thundering run. If you ever find yourself between a cow and new bale of hay, move.

Monroe was in such a rush that he couldn’t stop when he got to the bale. He slipped on the snow and fell. It was kind of hilarious.

Hannah apparently thought so too. I love the look of haughty derision on her face in this picture.

By afternoon the snow had gone.

There’s a kind of magic in snow, isn’t there?