Sheep Rodeo !

I was sooo proud of my fellow sheeps yesterday. The herders - well, the shepherd, the big guy and 2 friends - came out with the intent of moving sheep where THEY wanted them to go. Ha !! When sheeps put their collective mind to it, this can be a real circus. (See healthy girls to the left)

First, they tried to seperate Bevis and Butthead. Butthead will go anywhere that he gets his back scratched or he gets fed. Bevis will go many places where they don't want him to. So, into the fenced partition they thunder, where ideally one will go out the east gate and one out the west. Bevis did us proud - I didn't know he could move that fast since he looks like a barrel of Shetland wool on legs. And Butthead headed straight to the fence next to my department to sniff my girls. Meanwhile the herders managed to panic Bevis enough that he accidentally ran out the correct gate.

Of course, that puts him in with us where the idiot has to bang his horned little head on everyone elses like he hasn't ever seen or lived with us before. That went on for hours until he started in on the lambs. End of project. Bob the lead Genius isolated him on the fringes of the flock for the rest of the day and evening. Its funny - the lambs are a pain at feeding time, but something stirs even in my practical little heart when they are getting beat-up on.

Back to rodeo part 2: getting the three big ewes in with Butthead.

The big girls are running a round a pasture where they could pretty much out strip the Shepherd for hours, but they seem not be able to resist an open gate to somewhere they haven't been before. It took several false starts, but finally the big girls thunder through the gate and into .........yup, the garden ?? Well, that fence needing replacing anyway, right ?

And getting them out of the garden is a bit of a stretch because the garden gate - a homemade fence and 2x2 arrangement - got trashed by a drunken yearling deer a month ago, so it DOESN'T OPEN. It is really trashed now - but Shepherd didn't want to run the sheep back over the fence again, so finally out the gate hole and voila ! they went into the pasture they were theoretically headed for. Herders are breathing hard and Shepherd is muttering Thanks Be To Godde no one got killed.

Now the last piece of work is Butthead - he needs to get into the front pasture with the girls and he - after sniffing every body he could find and taking a swipe at the Big Guy, is ...eating. Can't be bothered. They wrestle him away from a flake of hay and push him through the gate and he looks around and sees - Girls !! He takes off, they run like heck, and the last ring of the circus is on. and on. and on. He gets close to one and you can see his eyes blink as he thinks "I've never seen a sheep this tall !! How in the world.......? "

He'll figure it out - rams always do.