Ah, I remember that lesson well... I got burned by my first group not long after "moving to the country". Two rams, three ewes. They seemed so calm in those crates...no problem I thought... "I'll just open their doors and let them out into this pen till morning. They'll be fine"...
I slowly opened each animals crate and stepped out of the pen. It was dark but the best I can tell, they slowly eased out together and then.... WHAM! The biggest ram blasted the enclosure wide open and the rest came tumbling after. I stood there in shock while they disappeared into the woods. I could hear them bleating and crashing through the jungle... it was obvious that they were traveling at TOP SPEED....within a minute there was complete silence. It was over... not a trace... not a peep... all gone. Afterwards, when my neighbor got through laughing(he looked and sounded just like the donkey on "HEE HAW") he informed me of rule number one of raising livestock. (spoken slowly with a strong southern accent) Rule Number One: DON'T YOU NEVER... NEVER EVER... unload ANY animals at night, especially their FIRST NIGHT. (at this point you spit if you have any tobacco) I guess it would have been unethical to let the city slicker know this rule beforehand... Oh well, it turned out okay. I managed to recover all of them over the next week, due to some nice neighbors and a TON of luck. Things will get better. :0) Best of luck, Chris B. -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Chris & Eileen Sent: Wednesday, June 27, 2007 8:12 AM To: blackbelly@lists.blackbellysheep.info Subject: [blackbelly] Help! So my intro to BBs. I got 2 ewe lambs last night. We brought them home ~10:30 & unloaded them into a cattle pannel enclosure. One escaped immediately and is gone. The other freaked out, this morning and is loose in the big 1 acre pasture with just hot wire around it. Don't think that's going to do much. So besides putting out water and saying a prayer I am going to go beat the bushes for "Coyote Bait" as she is now named and make one more request for my horses to please befriend this little lost lamb. Any other suggestions??? Eileen PS Beth not sure about that ram at this point! _______________________________________________ This message is from the blackbelly mailing list Visit the list's homepage at %http://www.blackbellysheep.info _______________________________________________ This message is from the blackbelly mailing list Visit the list's homepage at %http://www.blackbellysheep.info
