We bought a sheep from one of our neighbors, planning to fatten him up for a month and then take him to the butcher. Sheep are easy to raise, right?
As soon as we got him home, he found a hole in the pen and escaped. So ensued a four-mile, two-hour trek back and forth across the valley chasing the darned sheep. At the end, I was herding him down the road toward our house, and he scooted past me and ran at full speed down the road in the other direction. Exhausted, I called Carrie and asked her to come pick me up. Then, to my disbelief, I watched as the sheep wandered into an old, abandoned cattle pen. He was trapped. I was able to catch him, put a rope around him so he couldn’t run away again, and carry him (all 100 pounds) back to the road.
Carrie, not realizing that I might have the sheep in tow, brought her Chrysler Sebring to pick me up. We didn’t want to chance losing him again., so we piled into the Sebring, sheep and all. That’s how I came to be holding a sheep on my lap in the front seat of a Chrysler.
We kept the sheep penned up with our goats for two days, so he would understand that he was part of the herd. It worked. Now he grazes with the goats every day, and comes home with them in the evening. We’re feeding them all corn stalks in addition to alfalfa and grass hay, plus what the graze all day. And yesterday, a friend brought over several bushels of windfall apples. It’s a nice time of year to be a goat or sheep!
