Sheep Shelter

Introducing Sheep

Part I: Build sheep shelter

Jess and Dave rolled up with a small trailer that neatly stored exactly everything we needed to make a sheep shelter -- nothing more, nothing less.  It was as though Ikea got into farming.

We set up a corral by tying fences with metal wire.  For water, a large water tank sat on three pallates outside the corral that hooks to a float.  A float is essentially a box with a hinged bottom suspended in the trough.  Its purpose is to release water when the water gets low.  We will fill the troughs and install two trailers for shelter tomorrow, at which point I can take photos of these contraptions.

The corral is a shelter that the sheep stay in after dusk and until morning.  This area provides protection from predators that will be most interested poaching sheep during the night.  During the day, the sheep will be able to roam in a designated area and eat plants in the field with a supplement of alfalfa flakes, a luxury for animals.  We confine them so they thoroughly clear the field and don't run away to other pastures.  


We demarcate the section of the field they stay in with electric fencing.  Does the electricity hurt the sheep?  Not significantly.  The voltage is low, but provides a mild yet shocking surprise to indicate to animals to stay away.  If sheep are well fed, they don't look to leave and avoid the fence.  We set up the electric fence with SmartFence, which went surprisingly smoothly.  I borrowed the SmartFences from Trevor, who in turn borrowed them from his former employer.  The condition for borrowing these fences was that we'd untangle three of the five fences.

I'm not sure it's a fair trade.  SmartFences have four cables strewn through holes along fence posts.  Each cable wraps around a spool that makes recoiling wires easy-peasy.  For some ding-dong darn reason someone wrapped the uncoiled wire around the posts.  What perplexes me the most is how they managed to wrap one wire clockwise and another counterclockwise around the posts!  I spent two hours untangling wires and, when a snip was necessary, using my knot know-how to reconnect wires that would have to pass through tiny holes.  It's a good thing I finished immediately before the rain started!

We noticed that the area unaffected by the fire had great, grassy forage whereas the burned area is dominated by a short, flat weed.  We found it surprising that the grass wouldn't be resilient to fire and wonder if it's not a native grass.  The sheep certainly like this grass, but we're not sure they'll take to this flat weed.  Pragmatically, it means I have to feed the sheep more hay bales than if there were natural forage.  Le sad.

Yummy, not fire adapted grass

Khaleesi Targaryan grass that I hope the sheep will like