Hot wire (no not that one)

When I was a kid, I loved to spend weeks in the summer with my Aunt Bibby and Uncle Joe. They had a farm with cows, horses, chickens, a huge garden, and what seemed at the time like a million acres of land. They lived in a big farm house and the entire second floor was used as an attic and man was there ever some cool stuff up there. I could spend hours up there poking around in boxes of Life Magazine and newspapers from the 1930s and 40s. Incredible stuff! I never went home from there without some treasure I'd dug up in the attic.

When I wasn't sleuthing around in the cubby holes in the backs of closets I was roaming all over the farm. Yes, part of the point of being there was to earn some summer cash helping out collecting eggs in the chicken house (imagine the scene from Napoleon Dynamite without the pitcher of raw eggs) but the majority of my time was spent crawling around the barn loft, messing around with the cows, trying to get them to chase me, and basically pretending to be Laura Ingalls Wilder.

Anyway, hot wire. The whole point of getting my miniature sheep was so they could work in the vineyard, eating weeds and mowing grass instead of me having to spray herbicide for weeds and run the mower for several hours per week. In order for the sheep to stay where I want them, I need to have some form of partition so they only work in the rows where I want them to mow/weed and not go running off all over the property. Originally I had thought about using several wires attached to the vineyard posts, about 8 inches apart, forming a multi-wire fence and blocking off the ends with cattle panels or snow fence or something else that would be easy to move, but we're talking literally about several miles of galvanized wire to do the whole vineyard that way. After visiting the vineyard where I bought my the sheep, I noted that they were using a single strand of electric fence to keep the sheep where they want them. When they wanted to move the electric fence, they just rolled it up on a spool and moved it to the new rows. (by the way, that also opens up the potential of never having to mow the yard again).

Back to Aunt Bibby and Uncle Joe's farm. Back in the day, when I was around 9 or 10, I had my first encounter there with electric fence. I happened to reach out and touch it after being told by my cousins, who shall remain nameless, that it was not plugged in. After being knocked off my feet by the jolt, and vowing revenge, (and also crying), I learned a valuable lesson about electricity.

Greg spent part of last weekend attaching the hot wire to four rows of the new vines, which have yet to be sprayed for weeds. He closed the circuit and ran everything up to a battery charged by a solar panel. Neither one of us has had the nerve to touch it to make sure it is working; me, because I know very well what that feels like, and Greg, because he doesn't! We'll know soon enough when we put the sheep out there this weekend. We will both be working out there training the new vines to the trellis and we'll see for certain whether this little sheep experiment is going to work. Based on my observations in the pasture thus far, the sheep seem to select weeds over grass when they have the choice of both. In fact, I've watched them eat some incredibly unpalatable looking stuff, including the noxious, skin-shredding, multiflora rose that is endemic here, as well as the wild gooseberries, also covered in thorns, which we have all over the place. Oh, and they love poison ivy. More about that later...

We still have the grow tubes on the new vines so they are safe from nibbling, and once the vines are mature, any leaves that grow on the trunk and any water sprouts that come up from the base, down low, are fair game for the sheep because they need to be pruned off anyway. We've set the cordon wire (the lowest horizontal wire where the vine's lateral arms grow, and where the fruit develops) at about 42 inches which should be high enough to be out of reach of the sheep. They do stretch their necks and reach up when eating sometimes but I don't think they can reach the cordons. If they can, I'll just move them higher. Once the vines are weighted down with big, ripe clusters of grapes, the sheep will have to be taken out of the vineyard, as the grapes will prove to be too irresistible to pass up, even if it means climbing up on each other to get them. Based on what I've read, until the grapes are actually almost ripe, and full of sugar, there isn't much interest in them from the sheep, or the deer for that matter. Once the ripening process starts, all bets are off.

From the moment I brought the sheep home, I've been using a little bit of sheep feed in a bucket to condition them to follow me. It worked. They practically bowl me over now when I walk into their pen shaking the green bucket. They make an incredible amount of racket over a couple of handfuls of grain. I guess the pellets are sort of like crack cocaine. It's hilarious to watch them inhale their food. The lambs in particular sound like little piglets when they're eating. My plan is to lead them out to the vineyard with the bucket of feed, (they are powerless to resist it) into the hot-wire enclosed rows, dump the bucket, and close the circuit. Based on what I've seen thus far, this should work. I've managed to cause a stampede all the way across their pasture just by shaking the bucket a couple of times. Even Jilly Bean comes thundering as fast as her stubby legs can carry her so she doesn't miss out on the treats. She is rotund and looks more like a hippopotamus than a sheep when she is running. I don't understand it because she runs everywhere she goes. She never walks. She shouldn't be fat at all.

See? That's her on the right!

Shepherd FAIL!

Okay, ya know how I said I fixed the hole in the fence? Well, I did. Only the problem is, there was more than one. One thing I've figured out already is that once all green vegetation has been consumed in the sheep enclosure, anything with chlorophyll outside the pen is more enticement than they can stand. Oh, and they're sneaky about it too.

I put them out in the pasture yesterday afternoon for several hours after I finished work and could be around to keep an eye on things. Still no sheep dog, so as it was getting dark, back I go, out to the truck, to spend another night watching over my flock. I put them back in their enclosure, and they milled around a bit and then flopped down next to their little unfinished shed. They seem to understand what it is for but it doesn't seem to bother them that it has no roof or siding, and offers zero protection from anything. They like it, and go in there to rest whenever they want, and no matter how hot it is, they seem to want to pile right up against each other.


I settled in for another night and after finding nothing interesting on the radio, eventually started nodding off. At about 10:15 I wake up and see Jilly Bean standing over by the leaky fence. She's staring off into the woods and I see no sign of any other sheep. I think the only reason she isn't with them is she's too rotund to fit through the hole in the fence...

I hit the lights, get out of the truck, walk over to where Jill is standing and I hear much crackling and munching but I cannot see one single sheep. At this point I know I need help so I go back to the truck and call Greg on my cell. I'm pretty sure he was asleep but I offer him no options and just tell him to get some sheep feed in a bucket and get down here and help me rustle up some damned sheep. He comes straight away, and we start looking for the hole in the fence while shaking the bucket. Well, it's been less than a week and those little buggers know the sound of feed in a bucket. They all come running and crash directly into the fence. I can't get them to go through the little hole they managed to escape through so I have to cut the fence to get them back in. They pile through and I dump their feed into their little tubs on the ground, and while they're busy inhaling their favorite thing in the whole world, Greg and I quickly fix the fence where I cut it, and fixed the "new" hole they had most recently escaped through.


These things are not user friendly!


I need to get a couple of bales of good alfalfa/grass hay so I can throw some in there at night so they'll have something to munch on in their pen and they won't be so determined to sneak off into the woods at night.

It's not like they're starving though...


See?

Getting in touch with my Inner Shepherd

One thing I forgot to mention in the last post is that since bringing the sheep home, I'm sleeping in the truck next to their pen. Yep, last night was night #5. See, here's the thing. Sheep are food in most parts of the world, both for humans and animals. Since my guardian dog hasn't arrived yet, I'm responsible for making sure these things don't get eaten by something. Our biggest problem here is with coyotes and stray dogs. We also have occasional bobcats which will definitely kill a lamb if given the opportunity. Anyway, I've parked the truck so I can flip the lights on and see the entire sheep enclosure. They understand that I'm watching over them and they sleep next to the fence close to the truck. Thus far, we have had mostly uneventful nights, although I'm really getting about half of the amount of sleep I normally get. I head out there at around 9:30, just as it is getting dark, and come in the house at about 5:00 am, when things out there start waking up. I wake up at least once an hour, and of course anytime they make a noise or I hear something that might be an animal creeping around near the pen.

Sleeping in the front seat of the truck is not exactly the lap of luxury but it isn't all that bad either. In fact it has been pretty peaceful both temperature-wise and bug-wise so except for sleep deprivation, it's not so bad. It is firefly season so there are literally thousands and thousands of green blinking lights in every direction. Hard to describe.

Anyway, over the past five days, I've actually learned a lot about the behavior of sheep. They do not sleep straight through the night. They get up, graze for a while, meander over to the water bucket and get a drink, lie back down next to the fence, burp really loudly, and then commence to chew their cud, just like cows. Oh, and they head butt each other. Often. This cycle is repeated over and over through the night.

Well, up until last night that is...

I was in and out of sleep, and was awakened at about 1:00 am by the sound of something crashing around in the thick brush to the north of the enclosure, on the neighbor's property. I figured it was a deer since they use that area a lot, but to make sure, I yelled out "Move Along!" a couple of times. Then I hear "maaaaah-maaaaah" and I realize one of the sheep is on the other side of the freaking fence.

&#%$&*%!!!!

I get out of the truck, turn on the head lights, count four white sheep in the pen and realize it is Cocoa, the black lamb, Gone Missin'! Craptastic!!! I can hear him but I can't see him and now that the lights are on, he wants back in the pen but he can't find the hole where he made his escape. At this point he is continuously bleating, more frantically every second that ticks by, and I'm imagining every coyote and dog within a mile thinking dinner is just about ready. I walked back to the truck and got the wire-cutters out of Greg's tool belt in the back seat, took my flashlight and tried to coax him back into the pen by stretching and holding up the fence high enough for him to squeeze under it. No Dice! He WILL NOT go near the section where I've lifted it up and he is way too fast for me to try to grab him. As if that isn't enough to deal with, the other four sheep are now bleating back and forth with him at this point, louder and louder'; I guess trying to encourage him to come back inside the pen, and he's not smart enough to realize I'M HOLDING THE FENCE UP FOR HIM, so he head butts the fence several times and then dashes off down the fence line into the night. Okay, on some level I know this is funny but I can't seem to think about anything other than my little black sheep disappearing, and the horrible fate that awaits him if I can't get him back into the pen.

At this point the lights in the truck go off so it's almost pitch black except for my mini mag light which gives off about the same amount of light as a cigarette because the batteries are almost dead. Oh, and I've also ruined my night vision after turning on the truck headlights so I'm basically fumbling back to the truck like a blind person. I get there and start the engine and turn the lights back on so they'll stay on, wondering how I'm going to catch this sheep in the dead of night. When I turn around to assess the hole in the fence, I see that Cocoa is now back in the pen, casually eating grass like nothing has happened. I went up to the house and got a piece of scrap fence and covered the hole enough that he can't get out again, and then settled back in for the night. I'm pretty sure I put my hands in poison ivy when I was fixing the hole in the fence. It's all along the fenceline.

Lesson #1...Sheep are like mice, they can squeeze through a pinhole. I have some more work to do on my fence.