Working sheep...

This morning we got up early, had pancakes and bacon and headed out the door to worm the sheep. Hubs and I had got the ewes and lambs in last night so they could tromp down the tall grass in the shearing pens and corrals, but you'll notice by the pictures that they didn't finish the job so we had lots of grass to wade through. The picture above shows Eldest and Youngest sons actually worming the sheep with the medicine and a gun that measures and squirts the deworming medicine into the mouths of the lambs. One man douses and the other man holds the treated lambs back in the pen.



We had a few ewes that lambed late so we docked the long tails out of the pen and branded them with red branding paint. That brand is a Lazy Y J



Hubs and the visiting cousin are counting sheep out of the pen once they are done. One thing you learn to do when you live on a ranch is count. You count everything.... ewes, lambs, cows, calves, bulls, eggs and fence posts. Everything gets a number so you best count or measure everything in sight because sure enough, just when you think you didn't need a "count," someone will ask you.

"How many staples ya got?"
"How much paint is left in the bucket?"
"How many eggs did you get tonight?"

Hubs says that his Uncle Edwin counted the steps from the house to the barn and from the house to the chicken coop. I haven't done that yet. Maybe I oughta.



Lambs are all treated and it's time to turn them out with their mothers and herd them on up the hill to Chuck's....the "new" pasture they will spend a few weeks in.



Sue would be glad to take them out to pasture. (And she did) It's important to always turn sheep out to a new pasture after you worm them, otherwise they can get re-infested when they go out to the same area to graze and bed down where their droppings lay. I think it takes about two weeks before the worms in the droppings die.




I found the tally on the side of the pick-up truck.
Final tally: 209 lambs with the newly docked lambs added in.