When the sheep first come onto new pasture, there’s a bubbling energy in the flock. Some of the sheep seem to have the idea that there’s one perfect blade of grass, and they have to find it before someone else does.
Travels with Musti
Dogs, nature, photography, and the meaning of life, with apologies to J.S.
Posts tagged “Hollow Oak Farm”
Today I picked up my third ram, a big black Katahdin named Angus, from a farm in Effingham, NH. Ever since the silly Dorset ram jumped out of the barn window, I’ve had problems with ram logistics, but Angus’s arrival pushed it into must-solve territory. The chain of complications went something like this:
- Need to give deworming medicine to the new ram, but he’s out in the big field and I can’t catch him.
- The dorset and cheviot ram are eating the scarce grass that should be going to the recently-lambing ewes. I should move the rams into the barn, but I can’t catch them.
- I want to unify the 2 flocks, but there are a bunch of fertile ewes in the lower flock, so I can’t have them in a group with the rams. I should move the rams to the barn, but I can’t catch them.
- The new Katahdin ram has arrived, and he and the other two rams need to get acquainted in a physically constrained setting that keeps them from killing one another.* This requires moving the cheviot and dorset into the barn, but I can’t catch them.
The astute reader will have discerned a pattern. Normally, I would use Cass to push all the sheep into the handling system, at which point it would be very easy to grab the rams, put halters on them, and march them down to the barn. With a field full of tiny lambs, though, this doesn’t work. The mothers are extremely protective of the lambs, leading them to stand their ground and attack a herding dog rather than moving as they usually would. And if I did get the sheep into the handling system, the tight quarters would almost certainly lead to lamb-trampling. So I was left to trying and failing to catch the (very astute and rather quick-reflexed) rams in a big open space. Bill would normally make quick work of a problem like this, but he’s been completely maxed out by a new job, house move, and caring for his parents. Instead, my tractor guru Bob came to the rescue; though he’s never been much around sheep, he grew up with cattle and hogs, and his livestock instincts are still sharp. We also deployed my new almost-secret** weapon, a cleek.
With one of us distracting the ram with a bucket of corn, the other could hook a back leg, and then we’d both tackle him. Once we fitted the ram with a halter, we could march him into the barn. Mr. Fancy Ram was the first to succumb.
The Cheviot ram is older and more savvy, so it took us much longer to grab him, but desperation breeds patience (and Bob is a really good friend).
Finally, we backed up my truck and lured Angus into the barn with a bucket of corn.
The last step was to make a bit of an obstacle course so the rams couldn’t get a running start and inflict damaging blows to one another. Bob’s collection of tires-awaiting-recycling was perfect for the task.
At last check this evening, the rams seemed to be tolerating one another.
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* I learned when I was picking up Angus today that he may have killed a younger ram last year. He and his partner ram, Captain, were in a paddock with some young rams, and one of the youngsters developed a nasty broken neck when no one was watching. This gave me added motivation to ensure that the rams’ temporary home was inimical to acquiring momentum.
** My cheviot ram normally won’t leave me alone, following me, nuzzling me, gesturing toward butting me with his head. But if I walk into the field carrying the cleek, he becomes very wary and won’t come within hooking distance. Sheep have a wholly undeserved reputation for dim-wittedness.
After the recent days’ drama, today I’ll again take refuge in cute lamb photos. This is the last pair of twins born this season, with mom in the background.
Tagged: Barb Eriksson, Bea, blach and white, Border Cheviot, dorper, ewe, Hollow Oak Farm, lambs, north country cheviot, twins
I’m very happy to write that reports of Lefty’s demise were greatly exaggerated. Last night, Bravo was slow coming down for dinner, and when he showed up, his legs were covered in blood. The last two times this happened, it meant the demise of a lamb, and when I took an inventory of the flock, I couldn’t find Lefty and assumed that he was the third to fall. This morning, though, I found him in the field with his mother, alive but missing the bottom part of his lame leg.
I bandaged him and shot him up with some penicillin, and he didn’t seem too much worse off than before — he’d been unwilling to use that leg since his encounter with Bravo on the day he was born. My charitable interpretation of what happened is that the leg had become necrotic, and Bravo felt compelled to do something about it; the medical repertoire of a Maremma is understandably limited. Regardless, I don’t think I’ll give Bravo another crack at Lefty any time soon, but I’m a bit reassured that, absent extenuating circumstances, Bravo will probably behave himself with the rest of the young lambs.
Tagged: alive, amputation, bravo, gimpy, Hollow Oak Farm, lame, Lefty, livestock guardian dog, maremma, not eaten, Romney
I put the sheep to work on the rapidly-growing lawn below the Fortress today.
I’m thinking that the days of gasoline-powered lawn mowers are behind me.
Tagged: back yard, grazing, happy, Hollow Oak Farm, lawn-mowing brigade, pasture, sheep, tall grass
Today the last of the pregnant ewes gave birth to twins. It seemed fitting that my first and last lambs were black.
Now that lambing is over for 2017 (barring mystical events), here’s a first pass at documenting what happened.
- Of my 27 adult ewes and one ewe lamb, 24 gave birth; 4 ewes didn’t get pregnant for some reason.
- 36 lambs were born between 3 February and 20 May, and 30 are still alive.
- There were 2 sets of triplets, 8 sets of twins, and 14 singles, a “lambing rate” of 150% (where 100% is all singles and 200% is all twins). Many shepherds try for a lambing rate of 185%, hoping for as many twins as possible with few or no triplets (who are more likely to die of something or other).
- Of the lambs who died, 2 were eaten by Bravo, 1 died after a complicated labor and C-section, 2 died of hypothermia in a May snowstorm, and one died from a combination of cold and maternal abandonment
- My lambing mortality rate was a bit under 17%, while the national average is about 15%. I think 4 of the deaths (the Bravo victims and the hypothermic twins) were ultimately attributable to my inexperience and bad decisions, so if I were an optimal shepherd, my mortality rate might have been as low as 6%.
- The 6 winter lambs were sired by a Texel ram. Of the 8 lambs whose sex I could identify, 4 were female and 4 were male.
- The spring lambs, sired by my border cheviot ram, were 18 females and 6 males. I’m not sure that either group is large enough to draw any statistically meaningful conclusions, but one tempting explanation is that the ram influences the sex ratio of the offspring. I’m very curious if this is borne out with the cheviot’s offspring next year.
Tagged: black lamb, Border Cheviot, dorper, ewes, Hollow Oak Farm, lambs, last lambs, newborn, north country cheviot, statistics, twins
I think the sensible way to find a new place to live is to look for a community you like, and then look for a house, but my farm search was all backwards, since there were so few properties in New England that met my needs — big, cheap, and close enough to Boston. When I found my place in Sullivan, after 7 years of looking, I didn’t feel like I had the luxury of questioning what kind of town I’d be moving to; the farm that worked for me was in Sullivan, so Sullivan would be my place.
I’ve been delighted to discover that I live in a town with friendly, helpful neighbors, beautiful woods and ponds, and unbelievably rich resources for clueless new farmers. There’s the cast of characters I’ve been writing about — Bill Fosher, my grazing guru and general rescuer; Jenny Hughes, neighboring sheep farmer, friend, and advisor; and Bob Jones, master of all things mechanical and extremely patient teacher. But I’m also discovering all these other local folks who get paid to be helpful to people like me.
Yesterday I met with Carl Majewski, from the UNH Extension Office in Cheshire County. His title is Field Specialist for Food and Agriculture, but I think that translates into Soil and Plant Nerd, of the best possible sort. Carl walked my fields with me, helping me understand what was growing and why, and making suggestions about how to improve the pasture. He also gave me an impromptu (and extremely interesting!) lecture on the anatomy and biology of grasses.
I’m beginning to feel like I couldn’t have landed in a better place, even if I had been much more intentional about choosing a community to live in.
The morning after Mr. Fancy Ram arrived I moved him into the barn. I was planning to leave him there for a week or so in quarantine, to make sure he didn’t come with pneumonia or anything nasty like that. Then I’d move the Cheviot ram into the barn with him so they could get acquainted. Rams tend to challenge one another by butting heads after getting a running start; sometimes they kill one another this way. If you put them together in a tight space, they can’t get enough momentum to do real damage, and after a week or two, they generally decide that they can live together in peace.
All these plans were suspended this morning when Fancy Ram defenestrated himself, butting his way through 2 panes of glass and out a second-floor window to the driveway below. I was standing right behind him when he jumped and looked out the window expecting to see a pile of broken ram. Instead, he landed on his feet and took off running. My reflexes were insufficient to photographing his escape, but here’s the aftermath:
Once I realized Mr. FR had survived the drop, I had visions of him taking off for Keene, but instead he headed for some nice green grass next to the lambing pasture. I opened the gate to the Fortress, and Cass and I managed to nudge him into the field with the lambs. I watched to see if he and the Cheviot would immediately go into battle, but everything seemed calm, and at this point my fear of a fight was outweighed by my relief at not having to chase Mr. Fancy all over New Hampshire.
He and the Cheviot checked each other out, but no fireworks.
Tagged: barn, cheviot, defenestration, Dorset, escape, Hollow Oak Farm, jumping, Mr. Fancy Ram, ram, window
I was particularly grateful for the border collies when Musti died. They don’t brook any wallowing, always asking “What’s next?”, and they pulled me through a difficult time. It seems that sheep have some of the same world view (I wonder who learned it from whom…). We lost two lambs during the snowstorm on Saturday night, and the forsaken triplet lamb died some time over Sunday night. But this morning, the Katahdins were back at it, with twins and triplets waiting for me in the field first thing.
These triplets are bigger and more vigorous than the previous set, and the ewe seems to be taking good care of all three. The challenge over the next couple of months will be getting her enough food to nurse all of them without her turning into a bag of bones. The safe decision would be to pen her and her lambs and feed her tons of corn every day, but then I’d never find out if she has the genetics to pull of the trick eating just grass. TBC…
Tagged: border collies, cheviot, Hollow Oak Farm, Katahdin, lambs, Musti, pasture lambing, triplets, twins
We’ve gone from snow and lethal cold on Sunday morning to uncomfortable heat this afternoon… Local friends assure me that this is not typical, but I’m not sure any of us know what typical looks like these days. In any case, part of the flock took advantage of the sinkhole Eversource left after installing a new transmission tower in the pasture last fall. I’m anxious for the power company to fix their mistake, but perhaps not until the temperature moderates a bit.
Tagged: cool ground, cooling off, Eversource, ewes, Hollow Oak Farm, Hot day, hot sheep, lambs, lazy, sheep, sinkhole