More additions

I picked up the trailer from Janie on my way home from my lesson at Dianne's the other day. I needed to move sheep from Ann's place to mine. There's only 4: one pregnant ewe, one full grown ewe with a lamb at her side, and a lamb Ann bought from me a few months ago. So we pull up to Ann's with the trailer, but I decided to leave it in the street than try to back it up a loose gravel driveway. We go in and halter one ewe and drag her up the driveway and put her in the trailer. She was not happy about this at all. I know these sheep (other than the lamb she bought from me) have only seen a dog once, and that was when I worked them for a few minutes several weeks ago, and they were as wild as March hare. But ... I grab Zip. Ann and I decide that we will halter the large ewe, the lambs will follow, and Zip will help encourage momma ewe along. Well momma ewe still wasn't all too thrilled and wasn't up for cooperating, but all went well. Zip did a nice job of keeping his cool, knowing all the while all he had to do was flick an ear and the fun stuff would have happened in an instant! We got momma ewe and her lamb into the trailer without a problem. The jersey looking lamb, though, wanted to play hide and seek around the trailer, and Zip was all too happy to accomodate her. Again, he kept his cool, even when she took off down the street, he calmly fetched her back to us, convinced her one slow, small, calm step at a time to back ... herself ... up ... slowly ... and ... get ... in ... the .... trailer. Thank you, Mr. Zippy. Good job, dude.

Got them home, opened the pasture gates, opened the trailer doors and they quickly found their way to their buddies.

The pasture, however, is saturated! Between all the rain the other night, the lack of sunlight and heat to help evaporate the water, plus the scheduled flood irrigation on the already saturated ground ... and my pasture has tons of water on it. I'm thankful for the water because doG knows we need it, but I cancelled class for Tuesday night. I moved (well, I didn't do shit ... Zip did ... thank you, Zip ...) all the lambs to the front part of my pasture, all the ewes to the back part of my pasture, and kept Russ' pasture empty. His is properly graded, so the entire pasture is very well soaked. Both my front pasture and the back pasture are, of course, not properly graded and have high dry spots for the sheep to lay down, etc.

Speaking of which, I have a ewe that looks like she's about to pop! She's huge, she's bagged up, and she's swollen. So any day now. I'll post photos of the little ones (I'm guessing twins) when they arrive.

Happy tails!
JD