As neighbors go sheep farmers are usually as good as you can expect. They mind their own business and, apart from doing away with neighborhood dogs that pester their flocks, they don't bother anyone. This being said I will expand to say I have neighbors who are sheep farmers and one particular neighbor sheep farmer who sold his farm and is between farms for a while but still owning some livestock approached me about expanding one of my paddocks and supplying hay for my goats and his few head of sheep until he can find a more long term solution. I have have been wanting to add sheep into the mix here at the Hinton Homestead so I obliged him. We spoke little about specifics as I am mainly out to do a favor for a neighbor and in the process learn about sheep. We approximately doubled the size of the paddock, I decided it would be wise to move the goats into a new paddock and shed as they have been showing signs off illness and I did not want to make the sheep sick. I sprayed the old paddock down with bleach as an additional precaution and he moved his flock . The first day we moved them and moved some hay and the fence they seemed to work out well but the next evening, when i came home from work, I found a very small lamb laying cold and limp in the grass and, despite bringing it home and warming it, It was lifeless.
Fast forward a week, the sheep farmer has been steady moving hay and feed and making improvements a hoop house ( an idea he borrowed from me a few years ago) and brought his guard dogs to stay with the sheep.
There is a young wether (castrated ram) with a huge gash on its front shoulder. I have had goats in the barn and paddock for over a year and never a scratch and now this sheep has a life threatening gash in less than a week. I walked every bit of the field and barn and found the offending piece of tin in the barn and covered its edge with aboard to prevent more such injuries.
This past weekend was a bitter cold morning in the low 20s and another ewe dropped lambs , this time they were both alive when the sheep farmer discovered them. I had slept in for once. There was a whit lamb and a black lamb the white one was doing fine bt the black one was weak and shivering and wouldn't stand.
After putting as much time as possible into trying to allow the ewe to warm and feed the black lamb it was decided that he was going to die if we didn't bring him in and warm him up .
We very nearly waited too long but after a few spoonfuls of sugar water , lots of rubbing and working his muscles, drying him off, and a gradual warming up in front of an electric forced air heater he was sitting up and trying to stand. Then after some syringes full of milk and sugar water he finally, shakily, stood up. The sheep farmer brought a bottle and powdered milk, milked out some colostrum from the ewe and we had him fed about 3 8 ounce bottles by the end of the day.
Then the next morning after bleaching, scrubbing, and mopping about 36 ounces of lamb associated urine and fecal droppings from the downstairs bathroom we found him to be a voracious eater. He seems to like people and pooping. He would not try t o nurse his mother when reintroduced and she wouldn't allow him to nurse when I put them together physically. So it looks like we are stuck with him.bottle feeding, in the house, until he is a couple weeks older- it is supposed to be icy and cold for the next 7-10 days. That will teach me to sleep in and not check on the sheep every morning.
But really it isn't too bad aside from the crying and the pooping everywhere. That is all part of farming and part of being a good neighbor. I will try to get up early, even on my days off and check for lamb,s cause it is a lot easier to get them up and nursing then it is to keep them alive without the mother helping out.
This whole sheep raising idea has been a bit of an adventure and I am not entirely sure what the total equation looks like dollars and cents. Dead and sick sheep , feed bill taken over by someone else, and lots of poop in my floor are all things I never would have figured on if I had quoted a simple dollar price for keeping the animals. Livestock gets sick and livestock becomes dead stock that's part of farming. I could have been up at dawn to find the same lambs had been thrown at 2 am..
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