I desire friendship. Sheep desire NOT THAT.

 So I am trying to make friends with my new sheep.

They come from a fairly large herd and are not dairy animals, which means they are mostly accustomed to being handled if they need medicine or something - so, not great associations. Also the ewes are Soays.

You have nothing we desire, human.

Soay sheep "developed" from feral/wild sheep on the Scottish island of Soay (hence the name), and at that time their experience with humans was "those weird things that come get our wool once a year." They are not even shorn, they shed their wool out in the spring. So they are smart for sheep and have fairly good survival instincts, as well as being extremely hardy.

The survival instincts are becoming a problem, actually, because those instincts do not include "the human and the dogs will keep me safe." Fortunately we were making progress (the secret to sheep friendship is animal crackers), when we had a flood and the electric fence between our pasture and the neighbor's pasture was no longer zappy for awhile.

If I wanted to be in that field I would already be there.

Sheep, it turns out, are stupid enough to continue testing the fence, smart enough to figure out that their wool insulates them once it turns back on again, and filled with desire to trespass. Limu, in particular, is the "smart one" and ring leader.

You offend us! You offend our ancestors!

Things that we have attempted to break them of their crime habits:

1. Keep them off that field for a week so they'll "forget" that they can get through that fence. They did not forget. I spent hours cleaning the wool off the fence wires for NOTHING.
2. Shear Jake from State Farm (who needed it anyway) in hopes that one being trapped would keep them all close. JfSF screamed for awhile and then figured out how to crawl through anyway.
3. Triangle collars made of PVC pipe. Flo removed hers within an hour. By morning all sheep were naked and trespassing. Limu took off her collar IN THE NEIGHBOR'S FIELD.
4. Give up. The sheep vanished without a trace and were found an hour later way down behind the bend of the creek.
5. Keep them off the front field again and just let the goats up there at night, with the sheep on the back, because the goats need more field but also need hay and giving them both at once causes Sheep Crime.
6. Triangle collars PART TWO. With holes drilled in the PVC. And even more zip ties. And swearing. We haven't actually done this yet because I'm tired.

But lady they LEFT ME!

Meanwhile the girls are beginning to breast boobily about the pasture, making containment more important than ever - because if they drop lambs in not my field somewhere I will loose my mind.

Buy stock in animal crackers. We're going through a lot of them.

Chickens are possibly insane.

So today was the day we had scheduled for breaking up the breeding pens and letting all the poultry (except for the grow outs, which live in the tractor) range together.  This will dramatically simplify management and chick sales blow chunks this year anyway (thanks, Rural King!), so it was time.  The birds have never been out of sight of each other - they could see and interact with all the birds through the fences.  So I thought that this would be fairly trauma free.

I forgot about roosters.

First Hendrix had to fight Norris.  Then he had to fight Jones.  Then Jones and Norris had to fight.  Doesn't matter that Jones and Norris had been in the same pen this entire time, during which Norris had been the Boss Rooster from day 1.  No, they had to resort everything.

Did you know that comb and wattle injuries bleed?  A lot?  Like, more blood than you think a chicken could reasonably loose without passing out or something?  So if any of you are around here in the next week or so, please remember that there are no secret cock fighting rings at 4Farthings.  Just a bunch of asshole roosters who occasionally loose their ever loving minds and become psychotic comb biting jerks.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go put Blu Coat on everything.