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....
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