We have 4 new additions to the farm and more coming in the next weeks! We’ve acquired 3 sheep (destined for my freezer and dinner table) and a goat as of yesterday. It was an adventure getting them home since we don’t have a stock trailer, but one trip to the junkyard did the trick. We found some metal mesh in the form of one of those cubes that holds the square water tanks we see alot around here. It was in 2 pieces so we chained it into the back of the truck and drove out to pickup the animals. Because of the shape of the mesh and where the attach points are in my truck, we had to lift the animals into the truck. We’re really feeling it today as 250 lbs of squirming sheep is not even remotely easy to wrestle into a truck even with 3 adults lifting. Here are some pics of the critters in the truck:
On the way home, the goat slipped out of his halter and decided to lie down for a more comfortable trip as did the smallest sheep though he was still in his halter. As we didn’t have store-bought halters, I had to make some out of some rope we had lying around. They worked well except I didn’t get the one on the goat tight enough or I should’ve put an extra loop around his horns, since he is obviously smart enough to escape from it. Thankfully none of the animals attempted to jump out of the truck on the way home.
It took awhile to get a non-slip ramp built when we arrived home, an then twice the time to untie all the cam straps that were holding the mesh on top of the cage in the truck, which was merely there to discourage them from jumping. We took out the metal caging and then untied each animal in turn from the cross tie I had setup in the truck. One at a time we walked each down the ramp (which was our atv ramps plus a 4×8 sheet of plywood and carpet on top of it) and then showed each sheep the water trough before removing the halter.
It was during the unloading of the 3rd sheep Darren got stung by 2 wasps. I guess he won’t be wearing the really bright yellow shirt out in the yard again!! Here’s some pics of heading to the trough, blurry since my blackberry doesn’t do a great job of motion shots:
Once we had the animals unloaded, we got hit with a nasty thunderstorm complete with lightning and 90 km/h winds. That wasn’t the sort of welcome we had in mind for the animals, but they did ok and took shelter in our trees. I checked on them again later once the storm had passed and we still had all 4 accounted for and doing fine. Checking this morning we still have all four of them happy. I think they drank from the water trough, or it’s slowly leaking I’m not sure so we’ll be replacing the plug in the bottom if it drains faster than it should.
It looks like next weekend we are getting the rabbits we’ve been waiting for too, as I found someone selling the exact breeds we want which are a New Zealand buck and Flemish Giant does. We’re building the cages this week to house them and should be getting underway with starting to breed fryers for our freezer within a week of their arrival! We are also waiting on some laying hens too and will also build a chicken tractor this week to house them. Looks like we’ll shortly have all our protein needs accounted for, at least for the winter!
