Loading ...I really don’t know how in the blue blazes we are supposed to contain these sheep! After The Great Escape, which you can read all about in this earlier post, we brought forward our fencing plans. The day we retrieved them we bought a role of page wire and ran it around a small area of field, attached as well as possible to the posts that were already in place. That weekend we hired an auger and with some help put in 36 cedar posts. We got started putting up the page wire, but even working every evening after Steve got home, it took us till Tuesday evening to get a field secure. The sheep were very pleased to be able to go back outside on Wednesday morning.
We had three whole days of contained sheep!
We had started to be concerned about our ram lambs reaching an age that could cause us to have more lambs at an early date than we would like. This week we had finally made our decision and had two of them fixed, but that still left us with the two we plan to breed from later on this year. Last night Romulus had started making some moves that left us with few doubts. So we set about separating them.
This involved Steve and I chasing sheep around the barn! Please feel free to laugh, I would imagine for anyone who wasn’t us, it would have been quite funny to watch! Eventually we caught the three ram lambs and got them into a stall. Bertram didn’t have to go in as he is younger and they had been pushing him around.
This morning we got the fencing finished to make for two separate, secure fields. We herded the girls through into the further field and then let the boys out. They were desperate to get through to the rest of the flock. They ran at the fence, and Jack stuck his head through a couple of times. He then took a run up and went straight through the fence! We were stunned. Remus then ran down to the bottom and showed us that the corner of the existing fence had a gap under it that was just lamb sized! All that work to finish two fields and within five minutes two of the four lambs were back in with the rest of the flock! To look on the bright side though it was the two that met the vet and the Burdizo earlier in the week, but it didn’t look like it would be too long before Romulus was through as well. Bertram of course was quite happy just to be around us and so was concentrating on eating rather than fence breaking.
So we convinced Romulus to go back into the barn and asked Bertram to keep him company. We grabbed them a bale of hay and left them to spend a day indoors. We were unable to catch the other two, but put our faith in the skills of the vet; this evening, with some more chasing around the barn the boys are in a stall.
I emailed my shepherding mentor for advice and she suggested we add some electric wire to the fencing. She also said “We have never had the sheep getting out like this”! So tomorrow we will be working on our fencing again!
