Posts from the “Hollow Oak Farm” Category

41

Posted on 10 February 2017

I was in Boston today, so I missed the more dramatic and gory events. I came home to friends Liz Shaw and Jenny Hughes bottle feeding the surviving lamb of the prolapsing ewe on my kitchen floor. The ram lamb was born by Caesarian section on the barn floor; his sister died shortly after emerging. The ewe is alive but not very interested in being a mother at the moment. More over the next couple of days, but now I’ve got to go out and try to get enough milk from the ewe for overnight feedings. I’m grateful for friends who turned their days upside down to cover for me.

Categories: Hollow Oak Farm, lambing

Tagged: bottle-feeding, C-section, Jenny Hughes, kitchen, lamb, Liz Shaw, newborn

40

Posted on 9 February 2017

Cass is a very talented herding dog, but she’s a bit handicapped by the fact that the guy teaching her how the farm works is making it up as he goes along. Bless her, though, she’s getting it. Recently I’ve been working in the barn with her, asking her to hold the sheep in a corner so I can put corn in the feeder without getting knocked off my feet. At first she was having trouble holding her ground as the sheep rushed in toward me, but over a few days of this work, she realized that if she snapped her teeth a bit, the sheep listened to her. Working close together in the barn, I could encourage her controlled demonstrations of strength, and I could also step in if a sheep got aggressive toward her. We’re now at the point where she and the sheep are figuring out the routine, and they respect her authority to tell them to stand in the corner for a moment — small victories.

When I’m working in one of the pastures with the other group of sheep, the distances are too great for me to provide this kind of immediate feedback and support to Cass, and some of our work wasn’t going so well. She was having a particularly hard time keeping the sheep from mobbing me when I put out new round bales of hay. This is a much harder job that the one in the barn, since there are no corners to push the sheep into, and a single little dog cannot make herself into a physical barrier to 30-some sheep. The job has to be done by strength of personality — the sheep have to believe that the collie can enforce the “stay back there!” directive she’s giving them.

This morning, with a big storm gathering force, I needed to get a round bale out before the snow was too deep for the tractor. It was windy and cold and I was hoping that the job went quickly enough that my hands weren’t too frozen to split firewood afterwards. I brought Cass in with me, the first time on this task since she’d mastered the work in the barn. Previously the sheep largely ignored her efforts to keep them away from me, but this time Cass marshaled the presence to convince the sheep to listen to her.

Even when Bravo started bouncing around, trying to sow mischief and chaos, she held her sheep. Good girlie!

Categories: Cass, Dogs, herding, Hollow Oak Farm, sheep

Tagged: border collie, bravo, Cass, herding, Hollow Oak Farm, maremma, pasture, sheep, snowstorm, winter

39

Posted on 8 February 2017

I’m about four months into my life on the farm, routines are falling into place, but my infatuation is still in full swing. Walking with the dogs now means just walking, not getting in to the car to go somewhere to walk. And I keep getting surprised by little bits of beautiful that catch me off guard. I suppose I’ll get to the point some day when I know every tree and every view, but then the light will keep changing… Today I saw a birch tree getting overrun by a bittersweet vine, and yes, the bittersweet is invasive, and the embrace will likely be fatal to the birch tree, but I couldn’t stop looking in the foggy morning light.

Back in the barn after my flight of fancy, Bill helped me figure out how use an ear-tagger and the elastic-band device for tail docking. He warned me that the lamb would likely cry and carry on for a bit, but when she remained stoic throughout, he declared her tougher than a boiled owl. After the nasty work was done, ewe and lamb got to join the rest of the sheep in the barn for the first time, though the mother was still very protective.

Categories: barn, Hollow Oak Farm, sheep, trees, Winter

Tagged: barn, Bittersweet. birch, ear tag, Elastrator, ewe, lamb, sheep, snow, tail docking, winter

38

Posted on 7 February 2017

The weather was bad enough today that the sheep decided to cancel their morning. Just before noon, they were still loafing in the sort-of-sheltered spot where they usually spend the night. I took this as permission to post gratuitous photos of the flock.

Categories: Hollow Oak Farm, sheep, Winter

Tagged: border collies, Hollow Oak Farm, Katahdin, Romney, sheep, sleet, snow, winter

37

Posted on 6 February 2017

When I lived in Boston and heated my house with wood, I congratulated myself on how ecologically enlightened I was being. I was burning firewood from urban tree-trimming operations in an exceptionally efficient wood stove; I wasn’t cutting down forests, and I wasn’t adding smoky particulates into the air.

When I moved to rural New Hampshire, I figured I would be joining a congregation of similarly-enlightened folks. And it’s true that burning wood for heat is nearly a religion in my new home county, but it plays out very differently.

The stoves most people use (and I am no exception at the moment) are older and cruder than the catalytic wonder I had in Boston, and the local topography tends to trap smoke in the valleys on cold, still days. And the argument that I comforted myself with in Boston days — that burning wood rather than fossil fuels for heat was climate-neutral — turns out to be less obvious the harder you examine it. At the moment, I’m trying to reconcile ecologically responsible behavior, the economics of harvesting one’s own fuel, and the primal urge to make wood fires.

Categories: burning wood, Hollow Oak Farm, Winter

Tagged: bravo, Cheshire County, climate change, ecology, Hollow Oak Farm, Mahoning, New Hampshire, pollution, temperature inversion, wood boiler, wood smoke

36

Posted on 5 February 2017

Lamb #1 continues to get fatter and stronger; it no longer seems inconceivable that she will survive into the next day. She (yes, she) is also evidence of my failing grade in Beginning Lamb Observation, Establishing Sex. I took a cursory look at her nether regions the day she was born and convinced myself that I saw male parts. She provided evidence to the contrary this afternoon.

I picked her up to take a closer look and confirmed the revised conclusion.

Categories: Hollow Oak Farm, lambing, sheep

Tagged: barn, ewe, ewe lamb, Hollow Oak Farm, lamb, sex identification, sheep

35

Posted on 4 February 2017

The little guy made it through his first night — 6ºF — with no issues, so it seems he’s on his way to thriving. I’m a little more concerned about his mother, who made good on yesterday’s threat to head-butt Cass. For Cass’s sake, I’m glad the ewe was still in the lambing jug, but she was somewhat the worse for wear.

I was planning to let the ewe and lamb rejoin the rest of the sheep in the main part of the barn in another day or two, but I need to find some way to negotiate at least a détente between sheep and dog.

Categories: barn, Hollow Oak Farm, lambing, sheep

Tagged: barn, cut nose, ewe, head butt, Hollow Oak Farm, lamb, protective, sheep

34

Posted on 3 February 2017

My first lamb arrived this morning with such a minimum of fuss that I didn’t notice the birth until I heard his high-pitched bleating. Cass was moving sheep away from the feeder so I could put out corn without getting mauled, and then suddenly we had a very different project. I had Cass push the rest of the sheep out of the way so I could take a look at the newborn critter and figure out what I needed to do.

I think this image shows the lamb less than a minute after his birth, still covered in amniotic sac. The mother ewe seemed to be paying lots of attention to him, the first and most critical determinant of a successful start in life. However, a couple of the other ewes were showing inappropriate interest in the new lamb (pregnant sheep are apparently prone to stealing others’ lambs, resulting in chaos worthy of G.B. Shaw when their own lambs are born), so I hustled ewe and lamb into their own enclosure, and mom took over from there.

I escorted Cass out of the barn while I was rearranging sheep, as I wasn’t sure how she would react to a lamb or how a new mother would react to her. She stayed right outside the barn, howling in indignation that she wasn’t in on the excitement. After things settled down a bit, I let her take a look.

The ewe almost immediately started stamping her foot and making moves like she was going to head-butt the enclosure, so Cass got only a brief look at first. By evening, I was able to use Cass to hold the other sheep off the feeder without such a strong reaction from mom.

I was really pleased to see how active this first lamb has been today. It seems that he will be able to vigorously advocate for himself, even expressing interest in his mother’s stash of corn.

And finally, since the first-born is always over-documented, a couple of video snippets of the lamb getting cleaned and then finding milk for the first time.

Categories: barn, Hollow Oak Farm, lambing, sheep

Tagged: barn, cleaning, ewe, first lamb, Hollow Oak Farm, lamb, ram lamb, sheep

33

Posted on 2 February 2017

There’s a doghouse in the field for Bravo, but he rarely uses it; perhaps he doesn’t get cold, but it’s hard not to project, since I would. I have a stock of 3-year-old hay left in the barn by the previous owners, and I assume it’s got little nutritional value left, so I mostly use it as bedding. I figured if I put some in Bravo’s house, he might find it more appealing and spend more time there on cold nights. The law of unintended consequences took precedence, though: the sheep find the crappy hay in the doghouse irresistible.

In other news, I got home from Boston to find ewe #132 with a prolapsed vagina once again.

This time I didn’t have Bill to corner the sheep and provide guidance at my side, and I was concerned that I was not equal to doing the deed alone. On the phone, Bill encouraged me that I could handle this mini-crisis on my own, though he offered to come over and help. Thankfully, the ewes are very calm around me in the barn these days, and I was able to catch #132 with little drama and address her condition. I was equally relieved at helping the ewe and not having to drag Bill out here in the middle of his evening. Slowly becoming a shepherd…

Categories: barn, Hollow Oak Farm, sheep

Tagged: barn, Bill Fosher, crappy hay, dog house, ewe, night, perverse sheep, pregnant, sheep, vaginal prolapse, winter

32

Posted on 1 February 2017

The barn is mostly a very quiet place. If the sheep are up and about, you can hear hooves shuffling in the bedding, and there are almost always soft chewing sounds. But if they suspect that someone if about to bring them corn, they erupt.

In the fertile imagination of a new shepherd, corn is the full moon to these weresheep. They are suddenly no longer timid, pushing and jostling to get to my bucket of grain, and then my feet are leaving the floor as I’m borne along on a wave of ewes, and please, please don’t let me lose my balance… And then I get the corn into their feeder and they’re sheep once again.