thinking spring (projects)!
OK! Happy Monday!
We had another weekend of house projects (well, one house project that is draaaaaging) and planning for farm work once the weather starts to turn.
I have been doing a ton of research on some new equipment for indoor sheep pens. This kind of thing can drive me totally mad. Five different suppliers under consideration - varying levels of expense from ‘pretty expensive’ to ‘…gulp….’. Most of them also involve added freight charges which of up to 25% of the purchase price which is a tough pill to swallow for a person who ALWAYS orders enough of anything to qualify for free shipping. And you can’t see any of the equipment in person, so the situation is basically close your eyes and choose one then just write a big check and hope for the best! Stressful!
We have been making our indoor pens from random gates designed for bigger livestock and lambing pen panels and chains and bailing wire and this absolutely works, but no matter how many chains you have, you always need 3 more, and lambs and sheep dogs can wiggle through the bars and create all types of havoc! Not to mention that with every new pen construction there’s a chance that the whole flock will find a weakness and end up standing in the road at 6 am. Then when I put my overalls over my nightgown to go out and capture them, there’s a very good chance that a neighbor will be driving by and stop to chat about the new fence or the barn paint all while you are hoping that you are properly covered without trying to draw attention to the fact that you were blissfully asleep only 10 minutes ago.
The current indoor pen, built as described:
They were not impressed...
Hopefully now that all of our property is on one side of the road, it will limit the ‘sheep in the road’ problem, and none of the neighbors will need to see me in my nightie. We also have a mile of spectacular fencing going in as soon as the ground thaws, so as long as the gates are closed, we should be pretty secure. Either way, a thoughtfully designed, semi-permanent indoor pen system will make all of our sheep work easier. In the past, anytime we needed to work sheep (trim hooves, shear, weigh, vaccinate, sort, health checks, etc.) we first needed to strategize about how we should set up the equipment and where which sheep should go at which point in the process. Anyone who claims they don’t prefer their own ideas over other ideas is a liar, so this strategizing can become contentious. Once a design is decided upon we need to set the equipment. If it’s summer, it’s already getting hot by now, so I start yelling at everyone to speed things up which always improves morale. Once the equipment is set, then we gather up the sheep. At the old farm, they could be grazing pretty far from the barn, so we could do the human border collie routine, or the ‘pretend you have a bucket of grain’ routine to round them up. Either way, this involves some cardio and it’s definitely getting hot at this point. Once all of the sheep have been captured, they are supposed to move swiftly through the handling system, get whatever treatment they need, and lickety split they are back grazing in the sunshine. What actually happens is that Nosey Parker stands sideways at the entry to the chute and refuses to move or make eye contact and Chris gets super frustrated and starts reminding everyone how much he hates sheep. Now that I think of this, maybe this is why they hate him back… Once this standoff is resolved then work can get started. By now it’s 12:30 and we have been working since 6:30 and the hard part is about to begin.
Tangent below:
At the new farm, we have an actual canine border collie as well as a German shepherd dog who can push sheep, AND we also feed the ewes a tiny bit of grain regularly (we tried this at the old farm, but never with enough regularity to get a result) so they are easier to manage. We started offering grain because they were reluctant to go inside the barn, even after my stepdad and I made them a beautiful indoor pen the way I describe earlier in this post. Maybe I’ll get into this another time, but I am allergic to mold, really super allergic to it. The layman’s term for the allergy is ‘farmer’s lung’ if that is an indication of the patient population. (All agricultural feedstuffs contain some amount of mold, we are not intentionally feeding moldy hay.) Anyway, we really limit the use of hay or straw in the barn to emergency situations like sick animals or exceptionally bad weather, so we couldn’t lure them into the new accommodations by bedding it with delicious hay. Which is where the grain comes in.
Back to the topic:
When two thirds of the sheep have moved through the system, then we stop for lunch. By this point we are filthy, exhausted, and we’ve sweated out all of our fluids. For lunch the tradition is to eat hot dogs, various chips, potato salad and cole slaw if we are lucky, and ALWAYS drum stick ice cream cones which I call Nutty Buddy… because I’m old and maybe because I’m from the midwest? We have this celebratory lunch as a bribe for any helpers who are joining in the fun and also an apology for the yelling that I did around 10 am.
One of the helpers who come for the hot dogs and ice cream.
The last third of the animals to go through for hoof trimming or god forbid, shearing, are the hardest. You forget about the delicious luncheon after the first yearling jumps out of the chute and head butts you in the stomach and then you grit your teeth and finish the work.
Putting in permanent indoor pens and installing our handling equipment in a more or less permanent way is going to mean that we can get straight to work and it will be easy to do half the flock at a time if we have limited help or important social engagements. Also, we can train our wooly grain addicts to move through the system regularly so that on treatment days everything can go faster and with less stress for the livestock and for the farmers. We also will be all under cover so we don’t have to plan for dry weather (unless we are shearing) and we don’t have to worry about sun burn.
In conclusion, I have been driving myself crazy with spreadsheets and diagrams, but whichever system we go with, I am super excited for improving our operation. I like working sheep, I like trimming hooves particularly, and I definitely like hot dogs and Nutty Buddy’s, so this will hopefully eliminate the un-fun parts of working days so we can enjoy the good parts more fully. If anyone reading this is interested in helping on a work day in order to partake in the high quality luncheon, please reach out. wink!
-T