We brought the sheep home from Marlborough today. They’d gotten out three times in the last week and attacked their hostesses garden. Clearly not okay. And because it was a fencing issue, I had to go. That’s a 2-3 hour trip, and if I do it too often I lose the contract I’m working on. That’s even more not ok.
Lisa also noticed that Leon was really upset yesterday, so she counted noses, and sure enough, Bill is missing. She called Dave down at Wellscroft where we buy all our fence and offered to pay him to meet us there to figure out the problem. He told her not to bother. It’s coyotes. The Marlborough-Harrisville area is having serious coyote issues this year.
“You’ve got Icelandics, right? Do you have a leadersheep? You’re finding them down by the barn? You know what I think about Icelandics and fences, but listen to your leadersheep. She’s pulling them out of green pasture to hide in the barn. What is she telling you?”
We talked it over. We have no pasture. We’ll be feeding hay, which means we can’t sell pastured lamb. On the other hand, I’ve wasted 8 hours this week going to Marlborough, and if I bill 14 more hours in a month it buys the hay for everyone including Prince and Pearl. So the sheepies are home.
When we got there today with the trailer to bring them home in, it was really clear where the coyotes had gotten in. We are not only down Bill, but also another lamb. We must remember to fix that strand before we try to use it again. Actually, we are really not that impressed with using electronet anymore at all, now that we own a dozen strands.
Lisa is taking a cheese class this weekend, so for now they’re in with the ewe lambs, eating hay. Sunday night or Monday we’ll set things up as best we can and we’ll put the hours we’ve spent traveling to Marlborough into making our own pasture.
This isn’t a particularly good success story for Other People’s Pasture. It was great pasture, and they really wanted our sheep to keep it open for them, but they had no fencing at all, and weren’t willing to even give the sheep water every day, so either we or Valerie had to make the trip three or four times a week.