Friday, July 1, 2011

Just Work

The other day we noticed a lot of smaller birds yelling and unhappy around the corn cribs.  Turns out this is why.

Click to biggify and look at the corner of the crib roof.


We have quite a lot of the northern harriers (marsh hawks) around and this enterprising individual discovered that there is a squirrel highway from the woods to the cribs.  Ee-Zee Pickins.  He was surprisingly tolerant of us working around the upper buildings.  We saw him for a couple of days and then either the slow, stupid squirrels had all been eaten or he just decided that sitting like a vulture was beneath him.  Now if we could just get a falcon to come pick off pigeons.

We had time to go through the whole flock and weigh everyone, check eye scores and deworm where necessary.

Dewormers, charts, calculator and digital scale head

Every sheep takes a turn getting into being put into the holding box Andy built to fit around the scale.  Stand on the scale, get weighed, get your conjunctiva looked at, get a dose of dewormer if necessary and go on your way.  Repeat in about 4 weeks.   We don't have a dedicated chute area so we have to erect panels and swing gates to make the smaller spaces we need.  We hate to chase sheep and they hate to be chased.  Adults set their brakes and protest being put in, and lambs leap out if you don't hover over them.  By the end of the session we were all tired of the process.

I'm in a box.  This can't be good.


There was an interested audience to the process - this nest of barnswallow babies.

Come closer.  We'll turn and poop on you.  Bwaa-ha-ha-ha!



 And enough time to do a little badly needed yard work.

Halp!


Whew!  Thank you!

And still plenty of work left for another day.






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