As you can see, Donatello needs to be sheared. in fact, all the sheep need shearing. It was decided at the open board meeting last week that Saturday April 6th. will be the first shearing day. As always, the shearing will be open to the public, for those who want to learn to shear, work with the sheep, or just to cheer us on and pet the sheep.
Weather permitting, we will be starting at the Caldwell pasture at 10am. Contact us to get in the loop on weather cancellations and information on how to get there.
A while back, we got a morning call from the county Animal Control Officer. She was good humored, and confirmed that she could not find a problem. The reason for the call, someone had called 911 saying there was a sheep in our pasture that had a steel rod sticking through them. So, fast forward. One day this last week, I went out to the Caldwell pasture at lunchtime, and guess what I saw. Oats loafing in the pasture looking like he had a t-post sticking through him. Believe me, seeing him from head on, it looked real bad, and gave me quite a start.
When I finished feeding in the morning, it was starting to spritz snow. You know, just the occasional tiny bits that may have come from freezing fog. I headed across town to first service at church. When I came out of church the snow was coming down good in pretty big flakes. Decided I should check on the sheep shelters before heading home.
There was no accumulation on the shelters, but you can see what I saw. Cookie (the llama) was enjoying second breakfast, and everybody else was under the shelter. Everybody except Cady, she was laying out in the falling snow. Maybe it is her breed, I don’t know, her mother for sure was a rambouillet range ewe. They typically live an unsheltered life in our region.
Between the last post and now, we have been posting onto our social media accounts, principally on Facebook. We are turning a new page, and returning to our blog posts.
Today we put in a windsock. This has been planned for over a year, but has not been a priority. This winter has been pretty stable with streamlined daily chores, and simplified rotation patterns, (yes, we have two flocks now). It has been taking just over 2 man hours a day to do all that the sheep need, and that includes the always important scratches and treats. All the parts were prepared over the last two weeks, pipe was cut and threaded, parts were ordered or bought locally. The day was good for the job, until the last few minutes. As the windsock was being attached to the frame the wind came up and it started to hail. I was not sure we were going to get it dropped into the base tube. Eh, piece of cake.
I know some of you are, or live with pilots, What is the wind speed?
We have been wanting to put the windsock in because the only way we could know wind direction or speed was to look at the sheep shelter and look at the difference between the two sides. You can see the uplift on one side of the shelter, and pressure on the other.
I was concerned that the sheep would be freaked out by it, but they do not mind it at all.
We have florescent orange paint for the mast, but with the weather, we decided to wait for a better day to paint.
