The spare sheep has settled right in here at Desert Weyr. He hardly even moves now when we go outside. He’s eating the hay meant for the horses and donkey, and we’ve had to move sheep away from where he hangs out. I sure wish he’d move on to someplace else.
The newest batch of chickens is growing well, too. They’re now off the main newspaper litter and on primarily pine shavings. We still put their food and water on paper. Four have died, but the rest are doing well, so we’re back to 100 again.
Meanwhile, it’s time to put the adult rams and ram lambs together into one big ram bunch. We’ve sorted out one old ram who will go to slaughter at the end of this month, plus two who have been sold. They’ll travel together to their new place in a few weeks. The rest of the rams – all 27 of them – are now crammed together in the mixing pen. We start out with a bunch of hay bales in the pen, with the feeders full. The area is small enough that if they all lay down at once, they cover the floor with sheep. The idea is not to let them get a big enough space to run and bash each other. By the time the hay bales are gone, they’ll be getting along much better. Then, we slowly open up the pen, giving them more and more space. In a few weeks, they’ll officially be one big ram bunch.
It take a bit for them to sort out who’s boss, but this method has worked for us for several years. It seems to be the best way to integrat the youngsters with the old boys on our farm.
The ewes, lambs, and replacement ewes are now all in one bunch, grazing together. The pastures are doing well, and the lambs are growing. We should be recording 30-day weights this week, and we’ll officially see how they’re doing then. Just looking at them now, though, most of them appear to be doing well.
