This is the sheep riot I come home to if I underestimate the size of the flock’s grazing rotation for the day.
Sorry for the shaky video as I walk backwards with hungry sheep bearing down on me….
Travels with Musti
Dogs, nature, photography, and the meaning of life, with apologies to J.S.
Posts from the “pasture” Category
Some posturing and head-butting continued after the rams moved out of the barn, but the three gentlemen finally seem to have made their peace with one another.
I think of my sheep as animals that I insert into a managed ecosystem, but of course the sheep become part of that ecosystem themselves. I found one of my lambs giving a ride to a nursery web spider (Pisuarina mira) that was carrying an egg sac.
The spider caught my eye as it’s better than 2 inches across. The female carries the egg sac in her jaws (sounds exhausting, but being neither female nor arachnid, I may not be qualified to judge) until the spiderlings are about to hatch, and then she builds them a web to hatch and start growing in. This species doesn’t make a web for catching prey, but instead stalks and overpowers its dinner. More tasty spider details here: http://www.spiders.us/species/pisaurina-mira/.
Tagged: lamb, macro, nursery web spider, Pisaurina mira, Spider
I’ve written before about sheep and rose bushes and bad outcomes, but rose leaves seem to be irresistible to my flock. Today my youngest lamb demonstrated that the fraught attraction starts early.
Tagged: 733, ewe lamb, favorite, lamb, rosa rugosa, rose, rose leaves, wild rose
All three competing for my attention. The ewe lamb is particularly persistent.
Tagged: 702, attention, bravo, Cleo, competition, ewe lamb, Great Pyrenees, livestock guardian dogs, maremma, pasture
Yesterday I got home from Boston and immediately noticed that the electronet enclosing the rams’ group was sagging in one area. I spent a moment trying to convince myself that it happened spontaneously (it had been raining much of the day), but my denial muscle wasn’t strong enough. When I checked carefully, I saw that Mr. Balls-bigger-than-brains had gotten himself thoroughly tangled in the (hot) electronet.
I was worried at first that I’d have to cut him free, but Mr. Fancy Ram was very cooperative. Ram and net were both muddy, but neither seemed to suffer any permanent damage.
Tagged: denial, Dorset, electronet, entanglement, fancy ram, idiot, ram
Lots of folks sell wildflower honey, but you never hear about wildflower mutton.
Tagged: buttercup, honey, marketing, mutton, pasture, red clover, sheep, wildflowers
Seven days ago I broke down and turned on the heat when the temperature in the house fell to 56º. Cleo was shivering in the field. Both were a little hard to recall today, the third consecutive day in the 90s. The sheep were not thrilled.
One of the lambs has been studying Cass’s cooling-off strategies, though she seems to have missed the part about the water.
Tagged: Cass, heat wave, June, lambs, pasture, shade, sheep, stock tank, water trough
I found this nest in the midst of the back pasture over the weekend.
My first thought was to wonder what a robin was doing building a nest on the ground — I’ve only seen them nest a few feet up, in a tree or a building. The eggs looked right for robin, though perhaps a touch small, but then I realized that there was no mud lining the nest, a signature building technique of robins.
After some consultation with more-knowledgable friends, we decided that it was probably the nest of a hermit thrush, a close relative of the American robin. Hermit thrushes nest on the ground, the nest was constructed as I’d expect for hermit thrush, and the eggs, a tiny bit smaller than robin’s eggs, were a good match. The catch was that I’d only known hermit thrushes to nest in the woods, in a well-hidden location appropriate to their name, but the Cornell bird bible suggests that they are sometimes more catholic in their choice of location.
I think the maker of this nest chose the site before my sheep came through and shortened the grass. I’ve been watching the nest area in hopes of getting a positive ID, but haven’t seen anyone incubating the eggs; I fear that the grazing hordes were too much and mom abandoned it. Nevertheless, the woods beyond the nest spot are full of singing hermit thrushes (one of my very favorite bird songs!), so I feel reasonably confident in my ad hoc identification.
Tagged: atypical location, Birdsong, border collie, Catharus gutattus, eggs, grazing, Hermit thrush, Luc, nest, pasture, sheep
Electronet without the electrons is a purely symbolic barrier that sheep, dogs, and coyotes could easily push aside. And while I went on at some length yesterday about the physical challenges of setting it up, I’m also adept at failing to get the electrons to flow properly. The trouble arises in the Catch-22 embodied by electonet: I use it to divvy up sections of my pasture, an assemblage of tall grasses and other plants; but if the tall grass touches any of the conductive strands, the electricity flows to ground rather than through the fence.
If I were an optimal shepherd, I would have a lawn mower with me out in the pasture, and I’d mow a strip of grass everywhere I wanted to run the electronet. With no tall grass shorting out the fence, I’d have 10,000 volts of deterrence running through it at all times. Instead, I take repeated measurements until I get a number I like.
The meter reads in kilovolts, and 2kV is about the minimum to get a sheep’s attention through all its wool.
Tagged: deterrent, electricity, electronet, grass, ground, lambs, pasture, sheep, short-circuit, testing, threshold, voltage