Simply Sheep

[Beekissed]

Everything is part of their guard world that belongs on "their farm & flock". They know their place and job but, you are included -- they just feel you may be more able to recognize a threat than the sheep. It's the surprise, or attack situations to which they will intervene to assist you. Seems they are alpha for their animals but, will be the backup alpha with their humans. As it should be.

He's a lovely dog, by the way. I like his coloring.

That's a soothing view into those trees. Is the meadow area on the rise behind them also your property?

The wooded area between us and that field is ours but the field belongs to a neighbor.....unused for many a long year, he has to pay someone to brushhog it each year. I'm going to propose he let me do it for free with some hair sheep when the flock is big enough.

 

[Beekissed]

Working on fence today and God gave us a spectacular day for it!!! Hallelujah to the King! Should complete this paddock today and that will give us a rest on fencing until towards fall/winter when we fence in the back of the land.

Also will devise a bale roller today, just a temporary measure until we can build a proper one.

The sheep are eating down brush in B paddock, back where it's shady and cool, with plenty of wonderful things to eat, trees to rub on, fresh water and ready minerals. Almost time to move them onto clover and browse combo again, which they will love even more.

 

[Mini Horses]

Love your girls! Congrats on having some back in your life again.

B -- you know God didn't make everything perfect but, everything had a purpose. So these ladies will provide lambs for meat, milk for drinking, cheese, butter, etc. Really -- what else could you want?

My goats have been good to me. They live with purpose and are personality plus. I do not dwell on their tiny imperfections but, improve with next generations. Their milk is lovely, welcome and so nutritious. I praise God for them!! Just as you do your sheep. Everyone, everything needs a home & love.

 

[Beekissed]

Love your girls! Congrats on having some back in your life again.

B -- you know God didn't make everything perfect but, everything had a purpose. So these ladies will provide lambs for meat, milk for drinking, cheese, butter, etc. Really -- what else could you want?

My goats have been good to me. They live with purpose and are personality plus. I do not dwell on their tiny imperfections but, improve with next generations. Their milk is lovely, welcome and so nutritious. I praise God for them!! Just as you do your sheep. Everyone, everything needs a home & love.

Amen to all of that!!! At first I was a little disappointed, as I had wanted Kats that looked like my last one, very fat and of great confirmation. But, then I realized what you have said here....every one of us has a purpose and God directs our paths, both mine and the sheep. They came here for a reason and I'm going to have fun discovering what that reason is. I wasn't even prepared to get sheep but God had other plans...and His plans are always, always better than my own, so I'm for it now.

My little grandgirls already love them, especially Aliza...and the sheep reacted to her like they've always known her. She has a way with animals, that one. I figure I'll have a very hard time selling and butchering lambs with those little girls coming and going here.

 

[Beekissed]

Make sure to name them lambs after your favorite supper dishes, lol.

Yah, that don't work. A friend bought 2 bucket calves and named them Roast Beef and Sir Loin. Just so his city-girl wife would NOT forget that they were for the freezer. No luck, by the time they went to the butcher, she cried for 2 days; he had to sell both of them - we bought a 1/2 from him; AND he had to buy a steer that someone else had raised for their freezer. He raised his Wisconsin style - on good, managed grassy pasture and a little grain. What he got in his freezer ate Colorado native grass for graze - and no grain at all. Pretty strong tasting beef with not much fat.

Yeah...I can't say that I like grass fed beef all that much unless it's finished a bit on grain. My sister gave us some of her grass fed beef and even the dogs wouldn't eat it! And they would eat anything. Tasted like nothing, tough as old shoe leather, no fat to be found.

Around here it's raised on grass, finished on grain and it's the best meat you'll put in your mouth besides deer tenderloin.

 

[tortoise]

I have two lambs that are grazing on my grass every day. Not pleased, can't wait until market day!

 

[Beekissed]

I collected 14 rotten round bales last month to roll out in areas where I would like to have better grass. The farm I got them from had GREAT hay fields and these bales have plenty of seed.

Last year I had spread some hay out on some barren soil in the shade, up by the dog run, just trying to cover the mud there so I could walk across to carry water and such. This spring I had a lovely and tall patch of ladino growing there! The wheels started turning....I had already bought ladino seed and a lot of lime and fertilizer for one area I wanted to turn into pasture, mostly moss there now. Planted all that seed and limed it good to kill the moss....got an initial growth of clover that was smothered by some weed that's taking over this land and all others. Not sure what it is or what it's called.

So, figured, why buy seed when hay bales have a ton of it and I can go get some free mulch hay and spread on these mossy areas instead. The hay can work as a mulch layer to kill what is underneath and also fertilizer for the hay seed already in the bale. Seed I didn't have to buy.

Haven't gotten a chance to spread those bales yet, though some rolled out a little when I dropped them in various places on the land. Here's a pic of what's already growing around those bales and through the layers that fell off the bales when dropped. What's fun is that the chickens are spreading the hay that is rolled out, so I don't have to.

I call that a win/win situation...didn't have to till, buy seed, lime, or fertilizer and didn't have to work too hard to spread the hay. Just need to get those bales rolled out or they will be too rotten to roll at all. Found they also make a nice scratching post for the sheep...who are also spreading the hay each time they scratch against a bale.

See that moss growing in the background? That's all over this meadow in various places...we have very little good grass and some areas of good clover, but not nearly enough and all of that clover was due to me buying seed over the years and frost seeding it.

 

[Mini Horses]

Yep, seedy hay makes great pasture! I used to put the hay out in areas I wanted to reseed. Horses ate, seeds dropped to ground, courser stems as leftovers mulched it. I always tell people, only buy what you want to grow! Have bought some "mature cut", just because of the seed! Cost less than bags of seed. A bale, left out in the rain, will sprout for the chickens to eat in winter. Under cover, throw a little water on it..just a little. The decomposing hay give enough heat to sprout for a good part of the cold season.

You lucked out with that much --and FREE!!

 

[Beekissed]

That's what I said...I think CC was interrupted mid thought? All the while I was growing up, my parents always awakened us with this statement, "Rise and shine!!! We are wasting daylight!" even when it wasn't even daylight yet!

Dad often expected us to work an hour or two before breakfast to "work up an appetite", which was entirely unnecessary...no one in our family ever had to "work up" an appetite.

So, when I got these sheep I noticed right off hand, when the black one was brought into the daylight and out of the darkness of her home barn, her fur just shown and glistened in the sun. It was unexpected in a sheep, as their hair/wool tends to be a little nappy rather than slick and shiny, particularly the black ones.

Rose, on the other hand, had slick hair/fur but didn't shine like the black ewe....but when we tried to move her to the truck, she was the most problematic. She reared up like a wild horse, threw herself onto the ground and rolled around, tried to run through us and away from us...not exactly what one would expect from an oldster like her.

So, when thinking of a name for Shine(and the previous owner said she was the "most shy"...but I didn't want to name her Shy), her name kind of popped into my head....Shine. We have a habit of naming animals with people names around here and I struggle to get away from it but tend to lapse back into it anyway. Shine seemed pretty far away from that...but as soon as I said "Shine" in my mind, my memory completed the word with "Rise and shine!!!!" I'd heard so many times from my youth.

Can't really call a sheep "Rise"...doesn't mean much. So, considering the oldster was so prickly and hard to handle(not because she was as lovely as a Rose, that's for sure...I find her a not very attractive sheep, actually), I was thinking "Rose"...that's acceptable as an animal name, not always used as a person's name and goes well with Shine. Rose and Shine!

Names sometimes have a self fulfilling prophecy type of thing, so when one names a dog Killer or Cujo, oft times that dog is approached with fear by others and it gives a dog a leadership role it wouldn't normally have.... and can turn the dog exactly into what his name describes. A nasty dog.

Didn't want to call a sheep Shy nor one Thorny, as both of those names have a negative association when it comes to livestock~no one wants a fearful nor dangerous sheep. Would I be expecting Shy to always be fearful, so not expect her to eventually tame down and become more easy to handle? Would I always be expecting trouble from a sheep called Thorny or any reference to her bulky nature or not so pretty appearance? Would I get a different result than I wanted with these negative descriptor names? I'm thinking yes. They say one should picture what they WANT rather than what they currently have, if one is to have success with an animal.

I know...my mind works in convoluted ways and often doesn't shut down, so I'm left with random neurons firing throughout the day and night.

But, that's the origin of those names. So far Shine is still more shy than Rose...but Rose is taming down very well. She's not any more beautiful to me yet but I find myself growing more fond of her by the day. Shine is beautiful to me, but represents a challenge to me to win her over and to have her trust me so that her name fits her in all ways. I don't want her to always be shying away from me.

 

[CrealCritter]

That's what I said...I think CC was interrupted mid thought? All the while I was growing up, my parents always awakened us with this statement, "Rise and shine!!! We are wasting daylight!" even when it wasn't even daylight yet!

Dad often expected us to work an hour or two before breakfast to "work up an appetite", which was entirely unnecessary...no one in our family ever had to "work up" an appetite.

So, when I got these sheep I noticed right off hand, when the black one was brought into the daylight and out of the darkness of her home barn, her fur just shown and glistened in the sun. It was unexpected in a sheep, as their hair/wool tends to be a little nappy rather than slick and shiny, particularly the black ones.

Rose, on the other hand, had slick hair/fur but didn't shine like the black ewe....but when we tried to move her to the truck, she was the most problematic. She reared up like a wild horse, threw herself onto the ground and rolled around, tried to run through us and away from us...not exactly what one would expect from an oldster like her.

So, when thinking of a name for Shine(and the previous owner said she was the "most shy"...but I didn't want to name her Shy), her name kind of popped into my head....Shine. We have a habit of naming animals with people names around here and I struggle to get away from it but tend to lapse back into it anyway. Shine seemed pretty far away from that...but as soon as I said "Shine" in my mind, my memory completed the word with "Rise and shine!!!!" I'd heard so many times from my youth.

Can't really call a sheep "Rise"...doesn't mean much. So, considering the oldster was so prickly and hard to handle(not because she was as lovely as a Rose, that's for sure...I find her a not very attractive sheep, actually), I was thinking "Rose"...that's acceptable as an animal name, not always used as a person's name and goes well with Shine. Rose and Shine!

Names sometimes have a self fulfilling prophecy type of thing, so when one names a dog Killer or Cujo, oft times that dog is approached with fear by others and it gives a dog a leadership role it wouldn't normally have.... and can turn the dog exactly into what his name describes. A nasty dog.

Didn't want to call a sheep Shy nor one Thorny, as both of those names have a negative association when it comes to livestock~no one wants a fearful nor dangerous sheep. Would I be expecting Shy to always be fearful, so not expect her to eventually tame down and become more easy to handle? Would I always be expecting trouble from a sheep called Thorny or any reference to her bulky nature or not so pretty appearance? Would I get a different result than I wanted with these negative descriptor names? I'm thinking yes. They say one should picture what they WANT rather than what they currently have, if one is to have success with an animal.

I know...my mind works in convoluted ways and often doesn't shut down, so I'm left with random neurons firing throughout the day and night.

But, that's the origin of those names. So far Shine is still more shy than Rose...but Rose is taming down very well. She's not any more beautiful to me yet but I find myself growing more fond of her by the day. Shine is beautiful to me, but represents a challenge to me to win her over and to have her trust me so that her name fits her in all ways. I don't want her to always be shying away from me.

Well that makes perfect sense now. I just found it funny you would name the Rose and Shine. Here I thought you were referring to moon shine made from rose hips or rose petals, boy was I ever wrong