When you have land with animals there are some things that you will need to do. Important tasks when you have sheep is knowing the right time of the year to put the ram out to mate with the sheep. Last year I had a neighbours ram got through the fence to early and a lost a lot of lambs because it was just to cold for them when they where born. Two years ago I kept a black ram lamb that looked like he was going to grow good horns and I left his nuts in him so that I could use him to breed with my ewes.
This ram was trained up to be friendly as he would eat out of my hand. Last year this ram got pushed out of the block by the older weathers and cripped orcards and ended up in the bare land block next door with two one year old cripped orcards ( a cripped orcard is a male sheep that has had its sack removed with a ring so that its nuts are up inside itself so that it can not mate with the ewes.) Just before shearing time I managed to get these sheep back but on the day that the shearer turned up they had disappeared again.
A couple of days later I ran into another land owner on the road who had his grandson with him. Young Bob is fifteen years old and enjoys coming up with his grandfather and going out shooting any thing that moves. The first time I meet him he would have been twelve years old and he had a mate with him and they were shooting one of my other neighbours pet peacocks. When I meet James and his grandfather on the road he could not help but tell me about these wild rams out on the hill.
I was quick to tell Bob that there was only one ram and two cripped orcards and that they were my pets and would eat out of my hand and that I needed the ram to mate with my ewes. As I finished talking Bob started going white and did not say another word. Two days later I found the ram and one of the cripped orcards dead and they had their heads removed with the rest of their bodies left where they had been shot. Which was not even on their property but on the bare land block next door that the neighbour had told me if I wanted to put any sheep on his place that
was OK. I have not seen Bob since to have words.
After this incident I knew that I would have to keep the rest of my male sheep well secured so that they could not get out and also away from the ewes so that they would not get pregnant to early, so I put them in the pig block. But now I had no ram for mating. I had two lucky breaks after this first I knew that there was a lamb that had some how got into the pig block and been miss mothered so I took
Jeff in there one day and caught this lamb and it turned out to be a ram lamb so I left him with his nuts in. the other stroke of luck was when my neighbour mustered his sheep in there was one of mine in with them that was a year old and still had his nuts so these two will be doing the mating with my sheep this year.
Yesterday was to be the day that I was going to try and muster these sheep out of the pig block. I had Craig Hutchinson helping me and we would not be using any dogs because they would be inclined to want to chase the pigs and also I thought that it would be easier if the sheep did not get worked up as they had no contact with people since being put in their after shearing on the third of October.
The sheep were not mobbed up together so we had to try and get them together first. The first two sheep that I found were a black sheep and an ex pet Sonny. Sonny had not forgotten me and came straight up to me. These two sheep followed me out of the gully they were in and up to where there were two more sheep, as Craig and I started pushing these sheep across the gully we picked up another two. By the time we had them up against the fence in the top corner of the block all of the sheep were together. A couple of times on the way down through the block a couple of sheep would try and break out but we managed to keep them heading the right way.
Down at the bottom was always going to be the tricky spot as the gate in and out of the block is only small and the sheep had not been through it before as I had put them into the block from the back of my ute over the fence. So when the sheep were not far away from the gate I shot around through the scrub and opened the gate and also rattled a plastic bag that had sheep nuts in and spread some of the nuts around on the ground around the gate. Every thing was going well with the sheep starting to come out through the gate until the pigs turned up and three of the sheep took to the scrub. Try as we might we just could not get these last three back down with the pigs their and lost them in the scrub. I decided to try one more trick, so I headed down to the dog kennels and grabbed Jeff . As we were walking back up to the block I was talking to Jeff and I said that I did not want him chasing any of the pigs as I wanted him to try and catch the sheep for me. When we got back to the gate there were three grey boars waiting for a feed and as I opened the gate Jeff went straight around the pigs and up to where I had last seen the sheep ten minutes earlier and he worked away but could not find the sheep as they must have bolted away back up the hill.
Craig was very impressed to see how Jeff avoided the pigs to try and catch a different animal Especially after Craig had witnessed Jeff finding and bailing a 135 pound boar at 12.30am that morning. Just to prove to Craig that Jeff was not scared of the big boars I whistled him to go and bail them up and he did exactly as he was told. The main reason that I can get Jeff to do these many different tasks is because my wife and I talk to our dogs all the time so they get to understand some of the things we say. A couple of days earlier I had Tim and his nine year old daughter Ariana up and we were shooting tin cans with the 22 and I was getting Jeff to go and pick up the can that had been shot and bring it back to us.