It's That Time Of Year again. Time to breed the sheep. I had planned to use my ram Robert on the best of the Shetland ewes, and Harry, my White Dorper, on the ShetlandxDorpers and on the rest of the Shetlands.
But Robert couldn't be caught and my other grown Shetland ram, Nikolai, could, and Nikolai is a handsome fellow, so he's getting the girls.
Next part of the job was sorting the ewes into two groups. I have to lure them or chase them into a catch pen, then corner them and grab Nikolai's ewes and drag them ten feet to a gate. When all of Nikolai's ewes were out of the catch pen, the remaining ewes were released into the barnyard.
Then it started to rain. Grabbing sheep covered in soaking wet wool is even less fun than grabbing dry sheep.
Finally I got them all sorted. Nikolai began with the rams on Nov. 6th, and Harry started in on his group on Nov. 7th.
Why is it so much trouble to drag rams to the ewes, which is where they want to be anyway? I just HAVE to save up the money for one of those sheep handling systems. Or maybe Rush Limbaugh could give me one. He bought a lady a car recently, to cheer her up after Obama won the election. I could use some cheering-up, too.
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