As some of you know we have seven sheep, that are 8 months old.
They arrived September 10, 2010 in our horse trailer and came from Rick Dolinger in Rugby, VA. The sheep are all ewes (female) and are hair/meat sheep, Katahdins. They do not have wool or horns. And are very hardy and parasite resistant, and great mothers!
I hope to be able to breed my flock this spring for a fall lamb crop (it takes five months for the lambs to grown inside their mommas.) In the mean time my dogs are herding them and helping me do up the chores in the evenings as that is when I feed the sheep.
I have named one Belle, she was the first to wear a bell round her neck. I have two other sheep with bells, one is named Katty the other AT. And am looking for suitable sounding bells and names for the rest of the flock. I so love hearing the bells at night it is so soothing and pretty sounding.
Amarillo and BOO stay with the flock at night in the pen next to the sheep. They are good guard dogs and like their job, and let me know if anything is wrong.
We are working on special woven wire fencing for the sheep so that they will be able to be out in the fields during the day. But my plan is to all ways have them up safe at night. My one strand hot wire we use for the horses is not adequate for the sheep.
When I go down to the pen the sheep talk to and greet me and are quiet a vocal bunch especially AT. All the sheep have such pretty eyes and they look me in the eye and study my face. I have read that sheep like for their people to smile at them so I do, and they seem to search my face and understand my mood. Their noises are small and black and cute, the ears are set up high on their heads and stick out while bouncing along with their movement but they seem to flow out. A really cute thing they do is wiggle their hinny and they can spring straight up from a stand still and defy gravity! I think they are just plumb pretty!
The sheep are teaching me so much… about my dogs, sheep and even myself.
This is a very interesting journey indeed!
