Cass has found a new hobby.
She’s been collecting turkey feathers and carrying them around until she finds the right place to bury them. Sometimes she goes back and moves them. It’s very important that no one see her burying the feather, or she has to find a new place.
Tagged: border collie, burying, carrying, Cass, feather, hiding, hobby, turkey feather
Logistical complication is a great antidote to contemplative thought. This morning, as I might have been ruminating about the morality of sending four of my animals to slaughter, I was totally focused on all the tasks I had to complete in order to get the sheep to Blood Farm before 9am. Things were going quite smoothly until I counted the sheep in the trailer and only came up with three. I widened my focus and saw that #132 was in the driveway, looking unsettled. Cass is still a very inexperienced dog, and finesse isn’t her thing yet; but finesse is critical if you’re trying to herd a single ewe, especially if she’s already on edge, and Cass was the only sheep gathering tool I had at that moment.
By the time Cass had finished “retrieving” the ewe, they were in a standoff at the edge of the woods across the (busy-ish) street across from the farm. Eventually, I was able to get Cass to move the ewe close enough to me that I could grab her, and there we sat, ewe on her backside, sitting between my knees, and Cass intently wanting to help. Eventually, a truckful of DOT guys that I kind of knew drove by, slowed down, and asked if they could give me a hand. Together we half-walked, half-carried the ewe back to the trailer. Friend Wendy showed up around the same time and kept Cass from helping any further.
Once the ewe was back, I took a moment to figure out what had gone wrong. I’m not sure if my shepherding skills are improving, but my ability to understand my shortcomings are gaining ground. I realized that the ewe had jumped over the 36″ panels I was using to guide the sheep into the trailer; my first mistake was not using taller panels. The second mistake was that the chute leading to the trailer took a hard turn before reaching the trailer; a straight-on approach might not have offered up the tempting jump. And perhaps my biggest mistake is that I didn’t control Cass well enough — she was amped up, and transferred that energy to the sheep, who ran down the chute toward the trailer. A calmer dog would have allowed the sheep to saunter through the chute, eliminating the momentum that carried the ewe over the barrier. And I’m quite certain that premonitions of doom played no role whatsoever in the ewe’s escape; I’ll wrestle with the implications of my farming without recourse to the supernatural.
You know the saying — it’s all fun and games until you start killing your livestock. I’ve ostensibly been running a farm whose main product is meat; tomorrow it gets real.
Three weeks ago, before I moved the main flock to Eric and Deb’s place, I separated out the 3 biggest lambs from February, along with ewe #132, the one with all the prolapse problems during her pregnancy. They’ve been living the high life since then, free to roam the 2 acres of the Fortress and eat any plant they want, but early tomorrow morning I’ll load them into the trailer and drive them to the appropriately named Blood Farm, a small slaughterhouse and meat processor in Groton, MA. I have customers anxiously awaiting their meat deliveries, so almost exactly a year after moving here, I’ll see my first income from the farm.
I think I’ve threatened more than once to write a defense of carnivory, but it’s getting late, and I have an early start tomorrow, so I’m punting once again. The preview is that I was a dogmatic vegetarian for more than a decade, and while there are lots of horrors in livestock farming, I’ve come around to believe that well-raised meat animals are a critical part of agriculture. And a Canadian shepherd named Dan Needles makes an interesting argument that the sheep come out ok too. More to come…
Tagged: animal rights, carnivory, Cass, Dan Needles, Farmers Forum, lambs, meat, PETA, sheep, slaughter
These days, Cass’s biggest challenge is finding the right pace when she’s working. Sometimes pressure from the sheep almost freezes her,
and sometimes things move too quickly.
We’re working hard on consistently finding something in between.
Today was the last big outbound flock move of the season, and with help from Wendy Pelletier, Eric White, and Deb Monnat-White, it went remarkably smoothly. We started at Eric and Deb’s place three weeks ago, and their pasture felt like an impenetrable grass forest; my sheep rendered it quite a bit more passable.
Here Cass is holding the flock as I move the fences ahead of loading the trailer for the move.
The new pasture is a huge change — 10 acres rather than 3, much flatter, with less grass and more view. I’m curious to see how fast the sheep chew through this field, as it looks almost barren in comparison to their previous spot. Regardless of the terrain, Cass is happy to hold sheep while I screw with the fences.
I also brought together the new North Country Cheviot ewes with the main flock for the first time today. I wasn’t sure how the introduction would go, so I was happy to see minimal drama. This is what 78 sheep look like in one bunch:
Tagged: big bluestem, border collie, Cass, fence, moving day, new pasture, north country cheviot, sheep, working
I saw this play out just after sunrise this morning.
The ewe getting frisky with Bravo is #139, one of my flightiest and least friendly sheep, so I was pretty puzzled. As I was watching her (seemingly) flirt, I remembered that this ewe was bred almost exactly a year ago, so there’s a decent chance she’s in estrus again now. I’m wondering if Bravo is her ram surrogate — any port in a storm? — and if so, relieved that she didn’t look to me. If she’s indeed looking for satisfaction from Bravo, the courtship should repeat in 17 days when she ovulates next. Or maybe she just decided he was a good playmate.
Tagged: 139, bravo, dog, dorset-border leicester, estrus, ewe, flirting, inter-species, livestock guardian dog, maremma, ovulation, play, sheep
I was expecting my flock to chew through the grass at Eric and Deb’s place in about a week, but the big bluestem pasture had so much forage that the sheep were still going at it 2 weeks in. At that point, I thought maybe I could stretch the grazing session to 3 weeks, but they ate through the last of it yesterday. I brought them a round bale of fermented hay that should have lasted hungry sheep 2 days or more, but it was completely gone by this afternoon, so I delivered a second bale.
They attacked it like they hadn’t eaten in weeks.
In a perfect world, I’d move the flock to their next grazing spot the instant they finished their current assignment, but the move is an all-day affair, and life intervened this week. The plan is to move them across town on Saturday; in the meantime, I’ve very happy to have the baleage left over from last winter.
(I’ve often seem farmers driving tractors along the edge of rural highways, and I always wonder why on earth they’d be doing that. I was that guy today, in the breakdown lane of Route 9, transporting 1200 lbs of hay to my flock across town. As the commuters whizzed past me, I was kind of enjoying the fresh breeze on top of the Kubota. It’s not exactly like riding a motorcycle, but more similar than I would have imagined.)
Tagged: baleage, big bluestem, Deb Monnat-White, Eric White, flock, hay, hungry, Kubota, pasture, Route 9, sheep, tractor
North Country Cheviot ewe, lookin’ fine.
Bob Jones showed up early this morning with his tractor and five decades of farming experience; not sure how much lime I would have spread if either were absent.
On a normal farm, the lime supplier would show up with a giant spreader truck to apply the correct amount of lime to the fields. But at my place, the fellow from Connecticut River Ag came out and told me that there was no hope of running his 10-wheeled spreader truck up and down my hills — the only option was to get a bulk delivery and spread it myself. The catch is that it’s quite difficult to load lime into the spreader from the big pile with the same tractor that’s pulling the spreader, and that’s the first way that Bob came to my rescue.
I was able to focus on driving around the fields without tipping over the tractor rather than constantly unhitching and re-hitching the spreader.
We were figuring out a good working rhythm when I managed to get the big tractor stuck in the back field.
I tried to turn uphill and discovered that the ground was wetter than I expected. The tractor wheels started spinning, and my half-assed attempts to rescue myself got me wedged at the bottom of the field with no purchase and no room to maneuver. Bob once again came to my rescue, with tractor and chain.
With his tractor chained to mine, we were able to get just enough traction to get moving again.
By the end of the afternoon, I’d made a single pass on all the fields that were navigable by tractor, but we hadn’t quite used up the mountain of lime, so I’ll add a bit more tomorrow. I’m not sure if Bob will be around to help, so I’m hoping I’ve learned enough of the relevant lessons to keep myself out of trouble.
Apparently this is Get To Know Your Tractor Week in Cheshire County. After the fun with urea yesterday, Connecticut River Ag dropped off 22 tons of lime and a lime spreader while I was in Boston today.
Tomorrow morning I’ll figure out how to hitch the spreader to the tractor, how to load it from the bulk pile of lime, and how not to roll over the tractor spreading lime on the steep pastures.
Tagged: 22 tons, bulk delivery, Connecticut River Ag, lime, lime spreader, pasture, tractor
