Tuesday, November 30, 2010

The Great Sheep Mistake

As the fall draws to a close, we're sending the last few animals to slaughter before we have to feed them hay, which is expensive. We spent a morning loading the first six lambs. We backed the trailer up next to their fence, then created a second pen encompassing the trailer. We lured the flock with grain so that they would walk into the back of the trailer and we could send the ewes out the side door while keeping the lambs we wanted inside.

Everything was great and fine and Olivier pulled the trailer out of the field into the barnyard, readying for the drive to the slaughter house. We were set to start cleaning the hay barn (a dusty task, let me tell you) while he took them away.

Luckily, Andrew looked in the trailer and noticed that instead of six lambs, we had five lambs and a ewe. Whoops! We all trooped back into the field to release the ewe from an untimely death and Justin and Olivier captured a new, white lamb. We're really, really glad that Andrew stopped by right then!


Lambs ready to go:


Hauling the new lamb to the trailer:


The ewe escaping her fate:



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