Thursday, January 5, 2012

Putting on the squeeze

I just squeezed in some work today.  I was terrible busy most of the day.  Sally I did work on the ducks today since I had a lesson on them anyway.  Sally was soooo pushy so I just worked her on stopping when she was told and keeping her off of gripping them.  She did better but boy does she need to renew her patience too!  She wants to just keep working all the time...
Abby well I forced myself to take her out even though I was pushing my time limit...  I worked 5 sheep out in the goat pasture and even though I really screwed down hard on her she did nice.  Her drives are much better and her outruns have really been pretty nice.  Its been real interesting figuring her out.  Once we worked the "trial sheep"  I had some chores to do.  I took the school ewes out since they are starting to bag and took them to the front pasture.  Now they can eat Timothy hay instead of coastal and get fatter:-))  Then I just decided to scrap the whole thing and take the young ram out and put him in with the others for my school group.  Thats really where I could tell the difference in Abby's drive!  He is super light and stupid; previously she has moved around so much that a fight broke out because she would'nt stay on balance and walk.  She moved in a straight line, it was not a walk but did a nice job getting him to the barn.  We brought the other 3 rams in and they started to all out fight.  So another change of plans I hobbled all the big rams and locked them up, the small sickly one I took up to the front pasture with the ewes hopefully he'll put some weight on up there with the good food.  So the boys decided to get along by late the evening but I'd sure bet they are sore all over.  For the dogs and I though I think it ended up being a pretty good day.

3 comments:

  1. Hobbles? Please tell me more about hobbles for the rams!

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  2. When I reintegrate rams that want to fight, I put them in a stall with no water and hobbles or sheilds on. Usually only 12-24 hours, these guys only went about 6 hours. This gives them something other than killing each other to think about. I make the hobbles out of hay twine. A continuous piece tied together so that you can wrap it around their front legs (mid way) its a big slip knot so it doesn't cut off circulation. I leave about 2-3inches between the legs. Look up horse hobbles, the old cowboy way was to use soft rope and wrap the legs the same way. Works great!

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  3. I used hobbles on my horse, I just never thought about using it on the rams. Hmmm, something to think about. Thanks!

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