We truly believe that everything being portable on the farm is what's best for the land and the animals.  This allows the animals to move to fresh clean areas of the farm which gives them new forage to eat and moves them away from the potential of ingesting parasites.  Not allowing the animals to run down an area too much is also what is best for the land.  By moving them frequently it allows the land to recover before it is overgrazed or compacted.  It also means that the animal manure/fertilizer is distributed about the farm more evenly.  The big problem with everything being portable on our farm is that we do not have sturdy infrastructure for handling and loading animals.  On many farms, there would be a central handling area with metal panels that form a chute.  Then you just drive the animal into the chute where they have to walk single file until they reach a head gate which can hold the animal still so that you can work on them or the chute may end at a trailer where the animal has no choice but to step on and then you can take them anywhere they need to be.  Well, on our farm we only have portable electric fencing and a cattle trailer. 

The lambs that were born this spring are getting much bigger and some are reaching the age where they may start to breed.  The sheep have been in one flock (ewes, ram, and all the baby lambs) since last fall.  They graze with the cows in a small paddock of portable electric fencing that we move each day.  The chore this week was to separate all of the ram lambs plus our breeder ram from all of the ewe lambs and our breeding ewes.  This way we will stop the sheep from breeding.  Why do we want to stop them?  Well, if any of the young ewes begin going into heat, then there is the potential for problems.  Either our adult breeding ram might try to mount them and could hurt them due to the size difference, or any of the young rams could try breeding them and if this takes then the young ewes could become pregnant at too young of an age opening the possibilities of difficult birthing, poor mothering, and complications in the newborns.  Also, there are potential problems with the adult breeding ewes.  They have been nursing their spring lambs for a few months now, and although the whole flock looks fantastic, their body needs a break.  If they were to rebreed right away then they could wear themselves out.  We think it's better to take the rams out, then reintroduce our breeder ram (with the genetics we want to carry on) back into the flock this fall so that they can make lambs for next spring again. 

We had a plan...and it was a good one.  We waited until the herd of grazers happened to be in a place with woven wire perimeter fencing.  This Monday they were in a paddock at the corner of the farm so we had two sides of their paddock in sturdy woven wire fencing.  This would make a good area to corner them since they can't get through this.  In order to corner them, though, we needed to use portable electric fencing to make a catch pen against the strong woven wire.  The sheep will go right through the electric strands, so we used electric netting which will look to them as if it's harder to penetrate.  We also used the netting to create a chute leading to the trailer, so once the sheep were cornered, the only direction they could go was to walk down a narrow chute onto the trailer. 

We learned something new about sheep behavior that day!  Things went pretty well as Tim and I drove the herd into the catch pen area, then Tim walked behind them to drive them down the chute and I walked on the outside of the electric netting to discourage them from trying to go over or through it.  As they got to the trailer, all they had to do was step up.  If just one sheep did it then the rest would follow since this is typical behavior for sheep.  The trouble was that once the first sheep reached the trailer they stopped.  There was no way they were getting onto that trailer!  No matter how many sheep were coming behind them and pushing up against them, they just would not load up on the trailer.  Tim walked closer trying to squeeze them up even more, but the flock just crowded up into one big ball!  We put some sweet feed on the trailer to try to encourage them, but even this wouldn't get the first in line to step up onto the trailer.  The new behavior that we learned was that our sheep will do just about anything in this situation.  Small lambs began to climb over the backs of bigger sheep to get away, large ewes turned and charged Tim who was behind the group, and some lambs just plain gave up and laid down underneath the crowd allowing themselves to be trampled!

Well, in the end and after 5 hours of chasing and driving sheep, luring them with sweet feed, and wrestling them to the ground and catching them to hand load them onto the trailer, we did it.  The things that we can't explain well enough for you to really know what this was like is the physical nature of this work.  Just a few of things that I can remember in the chaotic day was 100 degree heat, sun beating down, not being able to stop for water and getting dehydrated, sprinting at full speed and trying to turn on a dime to keep up with the flock, slipping in manure, getting shocked by electric fencing, toes stepped on, being kicked and head butt, twisting the wrong way and pulling muscles, overextending arms as you try to stop a sheep running full speed, spraining wrists, fur and sweat in eyes... Well, maybe you get the picture.  The thing is, this is demanding work for us, but we never lose sight of the fact that this is taxing on the animals as well.  They were going through the same things that we were, but also had fear since they didn't know what we were trying to do.  The funny thing is that when it was all said and done.  The ewes went back over to the cows who where watching the whole show, got a drink and began grazing or napping.  The rams, when they were unloaded in their new home, spent some time exploring their new territory, ate a bit, then all laid down in the woods.  None of them seemed to think another thing about it.  Tim and I on the other hand are still thinking about it as we try to nurse our bruises, cuts, and sore muscles.  We also will think about this for months trying to figure out what we can possibly conceive for our environment to make loading animals less stressful.  After working with the cows for over a year we have got them figured out.  We have some cattle panels that we can carry about and interlock and we've learned how to use the electric fencing to separate specific cows from the herd.  Tim can load a cow in a half hour and it's stress free for all.  The trouble is, the sheep can fit through these panels, so they won't work for them.  Before we have to do this again, we will have to get it figured out, but man does it make me a bit envious of those farms that raise one type of animal and continuously graze with a central feeding area so that they can have a place to load and work.  The hardest thought is that even if we do get this figured out for the sheep, next we've got to figure out what to do with the pigs!!