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....

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....