Handling Sheep – A New Perspective

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We started this week with docking sheep. I’d like to call myself a well-rounded person who’s seen a little bit of everything, but working sheep is a new frontier for me. The first task of the morning was gathering, which was easy since they were in the pastures across the road. However, it took longer than expected because of some bum-legged ewes. After rounding up the ewe lamb pairs, a lone alpaca (Allen), and kicking up some rabbits along the way, we loaded everything into the alleyway. Most all of the lambs were caught by yours truly, banded, given shots, and got their oral dewormer. After finishing, they were quite happy to be turned back out to pasture.

We then ran the ewes through to be dewormed and treated with a pour-on insect repellent. Catching and flipping sheep, to my surprise, was quite different than wrestling calves. After being marked done and let out into the corral by the alleyway, the ranch host’s nephew and myself ran through the fence below the house. Kevin and Bobbi, the other half of the operation, were wanting to get their new, young sheep dog some time with the sheep, and the fence was in need of a little love. I received a little introduction to fencing with stretching wires, before we got rained out anyway. I thank God for the rain we have been getting, though sometimes it makes things difficult, it’s a good problem to have!

Most of the rest of the week was spent in a tractor as I was either working fields or planting. With all of this rain, it’s a race to get as much as you can in the ground before it gets wet again. We’ve been doing a pretty good job of getting a lot of seed in the dirt as both Gwen and myself have been running tractors and knocking out fields. I finished up the last of the oats and we switched to a grass, alfalfa, oat mix.

At the end of the week, I was able to spend a little time learning the land better and working on remembering names of pastures and sections. I was able to start to slowly lay out projects and any fencing in my head. I also learned where the co-op and feed stores are as I ran to town for seed. We had a little bit of a long weekend with rain coming heavy Thursday night and most of the day Friday. The well appreciated rain, and we felt good too, after getting a good chunk of planting done!

Submitted by: Jaxon Ondracek
Edits by: GrowinG Internship Team