Jewel and Jezebel Go to Jail

All of our older lambs have been weaned for nearly a week now; all, that is, except for Jewel and Jezebel. No matter how tightly we build the barriers between them and their mothers, no matter how much distance we put between them, they seem to find a way into the ewe pasture and nurse.

This has been going on for nearly a week now. Every morning, I wake up to a beautiful view of our pastoral ewes grazing, and - WHAT?! - there are two lambs out in the ewe pasture! Once again, after a careful perusal, I realize that it is Jewel and Jezebel. Somehow, they have found a way back to their mothers - again!

So this morning I decided to take matters into my own hands.... Rick has been helping me catch the lambs and take them back every evening. No more nice shepherdess! I am determined for them to wean so that they can go to their new homes and greener pastures! That won't happen unless I can keep them away from their mothers. There is only one thing left to do - jail them!

So, when I saw them out this morning, I got the rest of my chores done and went to work building some kind of a container to house these two escape artists! I know that Jezebel is a jumper at her young age.... Many lambs will jump when this young and then later never leave the ground - Jezebel is likely one of them, since her mother, Gianna, was too. Whatever I built would have to have a top on it to keep Jezebel in.

Jewel's trick is to find any small opening and squeeze her nose into it, letting the wedge-like shape of her face open the space to allow the rest of her to follow. Her structure would have to have openings or spaces with limited ability to expand - otherwise, she would find a way out.

I headed to the barn and got creative. We still have panels left that were used to build lambing jugs. Most of them are currently being used to reinforce the board fences during weaning, but I had five four-foot panels left unused. With a little ingenuity and a lot of carabiners (those colorful little clips you can see in the photo below), I assembled a jail to house the errant lambs.

I am hoping that they won't have to stay in their little jail long.... I hate having them separated from the rest of the lambs, but I could think of no other way to ensure that they would stay out of the ewe pasture. At least the pen is housed in the area where all of the other lambs come to eat. I am hoping that a few days in the pen will convince them that there is no use in trying to make a run for it - and that they will then stay with the rest of the lambs. I guess only time will tell....

Squawkers shows his true colors

Every few years, our chickens get old enough that they essentially stop laying eggs, and we know it's time to replace them. We drop the old chickens off with some friends of ours in October, and in the spring, we get a box of day-old chicks in the mailbox from McMurray Hatchery. We only order hens because we want the fresh eggs, but McMurray always throws in a free rooster with every order. When our order came last year, we had some school-age girls here to help get the chicks settled, and they named the rooster "Squawkers" because every time they touched him or picked him up, he would squawk.

Well, Squawkers grew up to be a fine looking rooster (see photo at right), and we had high hopes that he would live here for many years, alerting us when dawn broke and just generally adding his own personal flair to the chicken yard. Oh, we had no idea then of what was waiting in that little package!

Squawkers is now a full-grown rooster and he does, indeed, let us know when dawn breaks with a "cock-a-doodle-doo" that carries throughout the neighborhood. He also lets us know that the sun is out, in general - and I mean it! He cock-a-doodles the entire day, from sunup to long after sundown! If there is any light sighted from the chicken coop, he will let us know!

But worse than that is that Squawkers is not a friendly rooster.... He knows that I will check for eggs at least twice a day, and he lies in wait for me. As I come near the chicken yard, walking towards the gate, he walks along the fence with me, strutting and pecking at the fence. He lets me know that he is up for a fight, no matter how big I may seem!

Yesterday, when I went to collect eggs in the late afternoon, he was nowhere in sight - and I thought I might be able to sneak up and get into the chicken coop without his seeing me! As I opened the chicken-yard gate, a flying beast launched itself at my head from around the corner of the coop, claws and spurs extended! I don't know if you have ever seen the spurs that roosters grow on the back of their legs, but his are over an inch long - and very sharp! I ducked out of the way, but he got my arm on the way down - and I still hadn't made it to the coop for the eggs!

I quickly dove towards the coop door, but not quickly enough because Squawkers came back for another assault - this time, at my legs. I was wearing heavy jeans and I kicked back, figuring that a moving target would be harder for him to hit, but by the time I made it into the chicken coop, a circle of blood was slowly seeping through the denim. So much for the protection of heavy jeans!

I slammed the chicken coop door so that he would have to go around to the other side to enter the smaller chicken doors, giving me time to collect eggs. I finished quickly and cracked the door open to see if my path to safety was clear. He was nowhere in sight, so I decided to make a run for it - with thirteen eggs held in sling created from the front of my shirt! I must have been some sight: eggs bouncing in my shirt, my head down and running, closely followed by a crazed rooster with plans of mayhem on his mind. I don't suppose anyone has a need for a "spirited" rooster?

Weaning - or so I thought

Weaning day is always a big event - for the lambs and for us. For the last couple of years, we have split our lambs into two groups - the early group and the late group - and weaned each group at a different time. Because there is a six-week span from the first-born lamb to the last straggler, we thought it might work better to wean the first, larger group last Saturday, and then wean the last dozen or so lambs in three weeks.

There are a couple of advantages to dividing it up like this. First of all, when the lambs are weaned, they miss more than just the milk. In fact, the milk is the smaller part of what they miss, in my opinion. It seems that the biggest problem is the lack of adult leadership and "mothering" from their moms. By weaning in two groups, we leave the later-lambing ewes in with the lambs, allowing them to continue to provide that leadership for the whole group of lambs. That way, the lambs are not out there alone in the dark of night without an adult to assure them that it is all OK.

And, of course, they do miss the milk a bit. By six weeks, though, they are not drinking much milk at all, and what they drink has dropped in nutrition over the weeks to provide very little of what they need - they are actually better off without filling up on the milk, and instead filling up on the grain and alfalfa or grass.

So, Saturday we weighed and evaluated all of the lambs for breeding and pulled out about three-quarters of the ewes, sending them to the south pasture - which is almost as far from our east pasture as you can get. This was important because although we were locking the lambs and the remaining nursing ewes into the barn for the weekend, after that, we knew they would be grazing the east pasture - we didn't want any escapees making their way back to their mothers in the south pasture!

After sending the ewes off to their south pasture to "dry up," we enclosed the area right in front of the barn with sheep panels (42"high made up of 4" squares) to keep the lambs in for the weekend. We gave them bales of alfalfa and dishes of grain and called the job done - or so we assumed!

The first problem appeared within an hour, and it was named Gianna. All of our lambs learn at a very young age that they can get under our high-tensile fences because the bottom wires are not electrified. I actually kind of like this because they can get to very nice grass that the ewes can't eat up, and they always scoot right back when we come along. They never go far from their flock, so I don't really worry about them. Eventually, they grow big enough and old enough that they don't continue their fence trick - they stay within the fences...that is, except for Gianna! She learned the Houdini trick as a lamb and continues to this day to make her way out of the pastures to graze. Like the lambs, she doesn't stray far, and she scoots right back under when we come to "talk to her" about it, so we haven't worried about it much - until Saturday!

Gianna is a very protective mother - the kind we really like. She takes very good care of her lambs, and both she and her lambs always have exceptionally lovely fiber - which is why she is still here! This year, her daughter, Jezebel, is no different: she is our largest lamb with extraordinary fiber, and an overprotective mother! As soon as we got Gianna over in the south pasture, she began making her way under the fence, across the swamp, under another fence, across the pasture, under the last fence, and up to the enclosure where Jezebel waited, calling and calling. You have to understand, they hadn't even been separated for an hour yet!

Thank goodness, we had the foresight to enclose the lamb area within the panels (See the photo at left of Gianna outside the panels with Jezebel jumping inside, trying to get out!) Otherwise, moving Gianna back to the south pasture would have been that much harder! As it was, it took two people and a dog to convince her that it was time to return to the ewes.... And it took three more times before dark, as she kept making her way over to the barn. Finally, once it got dark, her better instinct prevailed, and she decided that it was too dangerous for a ewe to be traveling cross-country alone - but that was no longer true at sun-up on Sunday morning!

All day on Sunday, we had the same problem. Luckily I found that if I sent Coda, my main dog, out to push her back under the fence before she crossed the swamp, that he could do so without my even leaving the front porch. All of Sunday morning, that is exactly what we did..... And then, in the afternoon, I realized that he no longer even needed to go down into the swamp to push her back in - she would go in on her own when she saw him in the front yard, on his way over. Before long, she would pop back under the fence as soon as the front door opened - and then it got dark and we had a reprieve for the night!

I have to add that, during all this time of trying to keep Gianna in, the lambs were doing fine! The ewes called their lambs, and the lambs called their moms for the rest of the day on Saturday, but by Sunday the ruckus had pretty much stopped. By this morning, even Gianna had given up and all was peaceful, so I decided that I could let the lambs and the few ewes with them out onto the east pasture to graze a bit. What a bad move!

As soon as I opened the panels, a whole flurry of lambs ran for the west pasture gate and scooted under.... This was terrible! The rest of them moved into the east pasture as I had hoped - that was the gate that I had left open for them. Those that made it into the west pasture were only two fences and a swampy area away from their moms! What a mess!

I quickly put up panels over the west pasture gate so that no more lambs could get through, and took Coda out to convince the lambs that hadn't yet made it under the first fence that they had to go back. Unfortunately, he couldn't catch them all... six lambs had gotten all the way through to their moms in the south pasture. Grumbling, I hooked up the trailer, and Coda and I went for a "ride" (Coda's word) to the south pasture.

Luckily, the lambs are still young and small enough for me to pick up and carry. I caught each one, including Jezebel (who weighs nearly 50 punds), and put them into the trailer. While we worked, Coda and I had to keep watch for Martin, our new llama, who is now in that field. As one of the sheep's protectors, Martin is not used to the fact that Coda is allowed to work the sheep and is not a threat, so we had to begin that training, too, as we gathered up the lambs. Within about 45 minutes, all of the lambs were in the trailer on their way back to the east pasture.

So far, so good - no lambs have escaped since Coda and I dropped off the six about an hour ago. I can only hope that now, when I say that a good number of our lambs are being weaned, that it is still true, and that I have no more trailer trips in my near future! So, now to begin planning that final weaning group....

Vinnie goes to the vet

Last weekend, when Tom delivered Martin (our new llama) to the farm, he also brought Nick along to shear our other two llamas. It all went very smoothly until Nick discovered a lump on Vinnie's side as he was shearing. Now you have to understand that we haven't sheared our two llamas in a couple of years, so there was a lot of fiber there this year to shear off. There is no way that we could've seen this lump through all the fiber, but now that he was sheared, it was really obvious.

At the time, I kept trying to think whether I had done anything that might have caused an abcess in that place.... I had given them their immunizations for the year, but I knew it wasn't in the middle of his side! I usually give them just behind a front leg, so that the movement of walking will dissipate the fluid of the injection. I couldn't think of anything that might have caused this big lump - it was as large as a good-sized egg!

So, on Monday morning, I called our vet and scheduled an appointment for Thursday afternoon for Vinnie to be seen. Now, taking a llama to the vet is not at all like taking a dog or cat. You can just pop your dog or cat into the back of your vehicle and away you go - the llama, on the other hand, is too big to put into the back seat of the truck. He is even too big to put into the crate that we sometimes put together to transport sheep in the bed of the pick-up. Besides that, how on earth would we load him into the bed of the pick-up?! He must weigh over 300 pounds! So the answer seemed to be our trailer.

This, however, was no minor task.... We had to pick up the trailer from storage, then catch Vinnie out in the pasture and get a halter on him. Our llamas are used to having their freedom, and are not liable to walk right up to you when you are carrying a halter. They are pretty smart - they know the halter is not a good sign. It usually means a shot, or shearing, or any one of a number of not-so-nice alternatives. Yesterday was no exception - Vinnie did not want to be caught! We, on the other hand, had a secret weapon working for us.... We had a bucket with grain in it. Our llamas may like their freedom, but if there is one thing that they actually like more than that, it's grain! And Vinnie, in particular, is a bit on the thin side, so the grain was a major enticement!

Before too long, we had him in the trailer, and Vinnie and I were headed to the vet's. Once we got there, it didn't take long to determine that the lump was not an abcess - it was a tumor. Without cutting it out, there was no way to know for sure what type of tumor it was - benign or malignant. Having just lost Luca a couple of weeks ago, I was not ready to lose another llama! I felt we had no choice but to go ahead and remove it to find out what we were dealing with. I couldn't imagine Vinnie carrying around a malignant tumor without our knowing or doing anything about it.

Thank goodness, the tumor may have been large, but it was benign. Vinnie has a few stitches that will need to come out in a couple of weeks, but generally he is doing just fine. It was amazing how cooperative he was throughout the surgery and the ride home. We need to keep him well-protected by using fly spray for the next week or two, but it looks like our Vinnie will be as good as new once he heals up from the surgery. And let me tell you, I suspect that the next time I show up in the pasture with a harness, Vinnie will likely think twice about whether the grain is really worth it....

Rick's latest project....

It seems like every spring since we started our flock, we have had a fairly major project on the drawing board, and this year is no exception. As our flock has grown, we have had to graze pastures farther and farther from our house in the early spring to find enough grass for our ever-increasing flock. We have plenty of grass for all of them, but the problem is with what we shepherds call "the creep."

Because lambs are growing so much faster than even the yearling ewes (our lambs put on an average of nearly a pound a day), they need a higher level of nutrition than their mothers. To feed them this higher level of nutrition and prevent their mothers from gobbling it all down before the lambs can get to it, we set up what is called a creep area. The entry into this creep area is usually a panel with which we can adjust the size of the openings, making them just large enough for the lambs to enter, but too small for the ewes. This way, we can leave pans of grain and open feeders of alfalfa in the creep area without worrying that it will all be eaten by the ewes within minutes of our leaving.

The problem that we've had these past few years is that our creep area has been in our barn, and when the sheep graze in the more distant pastures, we need to leave all the pasture gates open so that they can move from and to the barn for the creep. When we leave all the gates open, the sheep graze not only the pasture we want them to, but also all of the pastures on the way there and back. This prevents those pastures from regrowing and reduces the grazing we have available for our sheep. It's hard to rotate the sheep among different pastures (to aid in preventing parasites) when most of your pastures are being eaten down by ewes and lambs traveling to and from the barn....

So Rick's project this year was to "invent" and build a creep building that would keep the ewes out, let the lambs in, be light enough for us to transport, and keep the feed inside dry if it rained. That doesn't sound so bad until you try to come up with one! He has been busy, hunched over his design and mumbling to himself for the past month or two - I knew enough not to interrupt his thoughts!

Last weekend was the culmination of all that muttering. Rick borrowed the truck on Friday night to get materials, and then locked himself into the barn for two days, coming out on Sunday night announcing that the building was ready to be moved into position after work on Monday. I was almost afraid to find out what he had come up with..... You see, I am more involved with the sheep than Rick is, and there are times when he comes up with great ideas that just won't work with the sheep because of the way that sheep are. I figured that I would find out very soon how this project would work in practice.

Well, as you can see from the picture on the right, he has come up with a wonderful little building for our creep feeding! It is light-weight enough that one person can move it by themselves. It keeps the creep feed dry from the rain, and allows only the lambs to enter either end via the same creep gates that we use in the barn (see the blue end panel in the photo). It is even tied down via stakes that are pounded into the ground, so we don't have to worry about finding it in the neighbor's field after a storm! It's a wonderful answer to a problem that has plagued us for years!

So now our lambs can still get their creep feed, yet don't have to walk the quarter-mile back to the barn to get it, and we can just fill the troughs in the little building once a day to keep them eating grain on demand. What a great job, Rick! Now, I've got this other idea for a project....