Tag ‘em, Trim ‘em, Treat ‘em!
Our plan for this Saturday morning was to ear tag some of the sheep (and a few goats) who are hard to tell apart, trim hooves (if needed), and worm anyone who was showing signs of needing it.
First, we set up a temporary pen and hooked up the livestock scale. Have I mentioned lately how much I love moveable pen panels? They are perfect for this sort of thing.
Then we ran some of the animals into the pen. Everyone needed to be checked so it didn’t matter who went first. The two Shetland wethers we were able to catch both needed their hooves trimmed. One of them decided just to lie down for it.
While we had them, we put ear tags on them. The tags are bigger than their ears, but they are wonderfully easy to see, even from a distance. I made notes in my Farm Journal of all the pertinent information. When we were finished with the group, they were run back out into the pasture.
The plan would have gone a lot better if I hadn’t sliced into my left thumb with the hoof trimmers [my bad for not wearing gloves], but we did get a few animals . Now that my thumb has (finally) stopped bleeding, we’ll pick up where we left off tomorrow.
In addition to the herd health activities, we also watched Bear and Princess escape from the backyard. This was actually helpful because we were having a devil of a time figuring out how they were escaping! They didn’t go far or stay gone long. Once we had them back, we closed off their escape route.
On that note, we decided to take in some baseball on television. There will be more herd health activities tomorrow morning, and in the afternoon, picking up hay in the field!
I have sliced into my fingers too while hoof trimming, but it is so hard to do it wearing gloves!
I have an escapee whose route I can’t figure out. I have been thinking about installing a deer cam. We have walked and walked the entire pen and we can’t tell where he is getting out, but at the sound of the first thunder he comes a-running.
Polly, here’s one thing you might consider. We have really good fences. High tensile wire stretched tight between either t-posts or pipe that is held into the ground with concrete.
However, because it has been SO dry here, the ground is actually letting go of the concrete in places and the wire is so strong and stretched to tightly that it is shifting the position of some of the poles.
What we discovered is that there are places where those poles have shifted just enough that Bear can push on the wire and it will bow out just enough for him to worm under it without hardly having to dig a hole at all, particularly if a low spot had developed there and the wire wasn’t quite on the ground.
Maybe a similar situation exists at your place. If Bear hadn’t left a tell-tale tuft of fur behind, we might never have figured it out!
The shetland sheep look gorgeous! Do they have names? The one who layed down was smart, just relax and it will be over quicker. LOL!
Owwwww. Sorry about your finger, hope it is feeling a bit better now.
Thank you! These particular Shetlands had names that we didn’t like, so we re-name them as something occurs to us that is appropriate. The one on the left has been renamed Cole Johnson. I had a student last year who asked me to name a sheep after him. At shearing in March, this particular sheep was a real handful, so he earned the honor of being named after my student.
My finger is fine as long as I don’t hit it on anything. The toughest thing about finger injuries is keeping the bandage on!