At 4:22 AM -0600 3/22/2004, Clay & Sue McQuiddy wrote:
>Ours will follow me for miles if I ever feed
>them or if I am carrying a feed sack, or a bucket, or if I talk to them.
>>They are eternal optimists.
<G> Yep. And I like having sheep that I can call up out of the
pasture and catch easily so I want them to be fairly tame. Also, our
sheep do not flock, so we have never successfully used a herding dog
with them. Instead we have them trained to come when called. It's a
lot easier to do pasture moves that way because you can't easily
drive these sheep anywhere. Many of the sheep know their own names
and will come out separately for a chin scratch. And yes, they are
optimists about food. <G>
>Do you use a Dog?
We actually have 4 guard dogs for 100 sheep on less than 10 acres.
But the dogs need to be well fenced in too. 1 of the dogs will clear
a 5 ft fence and never touch it so can avoid the electric wires. One
will dig out from under anything and also ignores electric fences and
one will go through or under or over, never have figured out how she
does it, anything even electric netting if there is any thunder in
the area. One dog, the puppy we raised here, knows abut the electric
netting, won't travel and isn't afraid of thunder. But he's only one
dog and we still have to have enough fence to stop the bears and
mountain lions long enough to get out there to help the dogs. We also
have a smart pack of coyotes, they will draw the dogs to one side and
then some will sneak in the other to get a sheep, so we have to have
enough dogs to cover the flock and perimeter successfully. We also
have eagles, and they can be a real problem and there is nothing we
can do about it. Fencing won't help with that problem but lots of
trees in teh pasture does.
--
Oogie McGuire - oogiem@desertweyr.com
Weyr Associates - Multimedia and Web Authoring Services & Consulting
Desert Weyr - CMK Arabian horses and Black Welsh Mountain Sheep
http://www.desertweyr.com/
Paonia, CO USA
