The First of Two Busy Days

Yesterday morning we were finally able to organize ourselves to wean the ram lambs.  Right after breakfast we set up the scale in the lower barn and ran the flock through in small batches.  All the ewes were weighed, eye scored and dewormed if necessary.  Happily, not too many showed signs of being affected.  At the same time we caught out all the ram lambs and put them in a holding pen.  The procedure took four hours.  The ewes and ewe lambs were turned out and the ram lambs waited for us to have lunch.  Afterwards we trailered them (fifty-nine total) to the upper barn in three batches.  Once they were settled in and finding their way around the barn's floor plan we walked the fenceline of the pasture they'll be turned into.  A few big tree limbs had come down on the fence over the winter and Andy took the chainsaw to them.  Three posts are leaning but the fence itself is just stretched a little, not broken.  The posts will be replaced as soon as possible but the lambs likely won't bother the weak spots for a while since they have nice pasture to graze.

Then we went back to the lower barn and let the remaining flock down into the farthest pasture.  It's nice and lush so letting them get partially filled up in the current pasture before letting them go there was a way to keep them from eating too much. They knew right away that a gate was opening and there was no problem enticing them down the hill.

After that we unloaded a wagon and a half of hay.  That filled the storage space in the lower barn.  The rest will go into the upper buildings.  By the time we brought them in for the evening the sheep had really filled up and the trudge up the last incline was sloooow.  Holly helped.

We took dinner up to the boys and they seemed a bit confused but not overly alarmed.

I think that's our supper.

Everyone had a surprisingly quiet night.  Let's see what tomorrow brings.