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The Joys of animal husbandry...

jhn.holgate

Entry posted by jhn.holgate

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Was about to get out for a KAP session this arvo when this Border-Leicester Ram appears in my front yard.  Coffee will have to wait, so I puts on the gumboots and try and herd him back up the driveway where I assume he came from.  He started trotting back up the road - with me encouraging him - no problems, but then he decided, no, he wants to be with my ewes. Turns out this bloody ram must have been a hurdles champion.   Over the fence and into the ewes.  Poo.  I have three main paddocks and one small ram paddock with the ram and two black pet sheep in it.  In that paddock are my actual yards which we use for separating sheep and general handling needs.  So, I run around and lock my ram and two black pet sheep up, then call all the ewes up for a feed into the ram paddock.  The rogue ram comes along and I manage to get him into my yards by himself.  Excellent.  For about 20 seconds.  He looks at the railings and says 'hey, I can jump this and off he goes.  Hmmm... let's give it another try.  So after a bit of to-ing and fro-ing, I get him back into the yards again.  Sproing!  Over the fence he goes.  Well then, that's not going to work.  So then I have to try and get all the ewes and their lambs out of my ram paddock and out into the main paddock and leave him in the ram paddock by himself....but with lots of room so hopefully he stays put.  By this time, the best part of two hours has past but finally I have him separated.  I know he can easily jump the fence if he tries, so I'll back off and give him room.  Now, where the heck did he come from?  Ring the neighbor at the back....nope.  Neighbor at the side....nope.  Neighbor down the road....nope  Neighbor WAY down the road....nope.  Anyone lost a ram?  Meanwhile, my poor pets and ram are locked in the yards while this rogue wonders around in their space.  He's got an ear tag and one of my neighbors has said he might be able to track down where the ram came from, so that will have to be my next step.  That's if he stays put.  All my sheep are fairly short and can't jump my yards or the fences.  But this mongrel can so I'm not even sure I can hold him.  So, that's what I did instead of kite aerial photography this afternoon.  Great. (heavy sarcasm).

Feeding_the_sheep_portrait.thumb.jpg.41f

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ssayre

I hadn't been looking through the blogs.  That's quite an ordeal.  Reading through, I was expecting the ram to have horns, especially after seeing the glass broken.  I was pretty surprised when I saw the picture of the ram.

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jhn.holgate

I hadn't been looking through the blogs.  That's quite an ordeal.  Reading through, I was expecting the ram to have horns, especially after seeing the glass broken.  I was pretty surprised when I saw the picture of the ram.

Their skull is as hard as concrete!  I've seen my rams back up and charge each other with an almost gunshot sound when they hit.  Honestly, you could break a 4x2 over their head and they'd just look at you as if to say, what, that little stick is all you could find?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B75WO6c07Qs

My rams are around 100kg - which is not a big ram - but boy, it can take a couple of guys to try and hold one to shear it.  They can bowl you over real easy if you don't keep an eye on them.  As a general rule, I never get in front of them and I never take my eye off them either.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited by jhn.holgate
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rectifier

Hey, didn't know you were a shepherd too! 

My sheep story of the week came when I heard a bleat and looked up from welding broken hay knives to find a quarter of my flock standing behind me in the yard. I moved the entire flock to a newly fenced pasture a mile from the yard last week... apparently these ones missed me, and ducked the old barbed wire side of the enclosure, which I hadn't put electric on yet. I figured I would have a week until they would push any fence at all. Wrong! No matter how thick and tasty the hay, sheep love to sneak out.

Now the pesky critters are in the corrals eating a wrecked bale I had to pry out of my baler a couple days ago. At least that wasted hay is going to some use.

Too bad about the glass. 100kg is a pretty moderate ram but they sure can be powerful... We tried roping some borrowed rams last fall on foot to load them and that turned into manure scudding pretty quick. Those fellas have quite the pull!

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jhn.holgate

Hey, didn't know you were a shepherd too! 

My sheep story of the week came when I heard a bleat and looked up from welding broken hay knives to find a quarter of my flock standing behind me in the yard. I moved the entire flock to a newly fenced pasture a mile from the yard last week... apparently these ones missed me, and ducked the old barbed wire side of the enclosure, which I hadn't put electric on yet. I figured I would have a week until they would push any fence at all. Wrong! No matter how thick and tasty the hay, sheep love to sneak out.

Now the pesky critters are in the corrals eating a wrecked bale I had to pry out of my baler a couple days ago.

Certainly doesn't take 'em long to figure out who the food comes from once you start feeding them.  Once I've fed mine grain for a couple of times, they come running every time they see me.  Does make it easy to call 'em up into the yards when I need to though. 

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Chook

Certainly doesn't take 'em long to figure out who the food comes from once you start feeding them.  Once I've fed mine grain for a couple of times, they come running every time they see me.  Does make it easy to call 'em up into the yards when I need to though. 

 

Border-Leicesters on cracked lupin seed and lookout John. They are full of beans and absolutely unstoppable.

The Ag college I work at has a Border-Leicester stud and that keeps the students on their toes and hones their fencing skills.

I only ran merinos.:derisive:

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jhn.holgate

Border-Leicesters on cracked lupin seed and lookout John. They are full of beans and absolutely unstoppable.

The Ag college I work at has a Border-Leicester stud and that keeps the students on their toes and hones their fencing skills.

I only ran merinos.:derisive:

Even my shortass poll Dorset ram gets pretty agro if I make the mistake of feeding him grain.  If I tried to walk into his paddock with a bucket, he'd ram me for sure!

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jhn.holgate

Had to laugh, the other day I dropped off the invoice for the insurance excess to the owner of our visiting ram and found him (the ram) and his mates in the paddock next to the owners house.  Complete with plastic poly and chains!!!  Looks like these boys have seriously annoyed their owner... not sure where the chain goes - perhaps they are actually chained together.

Rams.thumb.jpg.1f8ddb25f6def1b452b3181bd

 

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jhn.holgate

They are large triangles of black poly pipe???    To stop them pushing through fences????

I think so, Chook.  They were right next to the owners house so I was trying to be very discreet in getting photos otherwise I would have had a good walk around and taken some shots from various angles.  I spoke to the owner on Monday morning to get his address and I gotta say, he sounded pretty unenthusiastic about the whole deal!  Does sorta look pretty funny though....

New window's in and the 'Studio' is back to normal.

Edited by jhn.holgate
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