Sunday, October 22, 2006

whatever


Well, the blog masters ate two of my blogs so far....so I will be brief.
The trees have been nice this year, so I took a few pictures.
One of the ewes has already cycled, I wasn't going to breed her, but she was trying to get my oldest and head ram to bash his way through his fence. So I guessed the easiest solution was to let her in with one of the ram lambs down by the barn.
Why do we let them live together for weeks? In about three hours she was tired of the whole thing and wanted out. The ram lamb is really excited by any of the ewes coming close to the fence now...."come on over baby!" I have been putting in gates for the breeding pens, and will have to add some spring clips to the fencing where they have lost some. Hopefully my farmer friend will come in a couple of days to move the hay down to their pens.
I got a call about one of the sold ewe lambs who was down with pnemonia. With the five inches of rain we have had and the colder weather it is a good season for that. It didn't sound good. I use the shotgun approach when a sheep looks sick....Nuflor, wormer, vitamins....maybe bo-se or thiamin depending on how they look. I had one last night. She usually is pushing in to get grain, but was laying down out in the pasture....when I went to check her she walked away. Later I saw her laying down again out by her daughter....after a while I walked out to see what she looked like close up....I checked my records to see if she had missed the last round of wormings. When I got a hundred yards from her she got up and went back to eating. The only thing I noticed was a clicking noise while she was chewing her cud. I'm guessing she had picked up a nut, and was waiting for it to dissolve. But, I will watch for her movements as I let the sheep out this morning. Is she laying down, is she walking OK, is she slower than the other sheep, how are her eyes? her ears? Is she with her daughter or off by herself?
I know lots of shepherds are working full time elsewhere, but once a day, you need to watch the sheepy behaviour, so that you can tell when one of your babies is heading for a problem.
Cloudy and cool this morning, but we expect to be in the 50's later.

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