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Having worked with “Heading” and “Heeling” dogs, it would be interesting to work with these kind of dogs. I’ve heard that’s what German shepherds and malinois were bred for, a “living fence” that maintained stock in one area. How do you train them to maintain a specific area?

Things are starting to warm up and dry out around here. These last two winters have been incredibly wet and our sump pumps have been working like crazy to keep water out. My corrals look like a swamp. This year it didn’t get as cold though, last February we had temps down to -33 and it snowed...

I’ve seen that a lot in older sows but never in a young boar like that. How is he other than that? Does he eat? Drink? What’s his temperature? If you don’t have a thermometer, just get a digital thermometer from Walmart that you would put under your tongue. They work great for rectal...

I’m alive!!!! It’s been a long time since I posted, all I can say is life got crazy, then crazier, and I just got to realizing I hadn’t been on here for almost 3 years. There’s been a lot of changes at our place. Horses: I still have old Brolo, my kids love him and I don’t know if I could ever...

Working 6 days a week plus training horses four days a week has kept me busier than I ever intended to be! Some updates for our area. Dolly the lamb is doing great, after 4 weeks of the PVC cast her leg set nicely. She doesn’t even have a limp. Bad part is she’s as bad as her mother now in...

Funny how times flies. It’s been two weeks so today I checked Dolly’s leg to make sure everything was healing as it should and to adjust the PVC cast to allow for a little growth. Everything looks pretty good so I wrapped it it back up for another two weeks. She walks on it a fair amount...

Don’t worry I didn’t take it as critical. Part of the benefit of being on BYH we have this awesome community of people who care about animals and want the best for them. Got some cleaning done today, cleaned out the garage so I can actually get to my stuff and moved some of my animal equipment...

@farmerjan you are right she does need more than rolled oats but I was being a lazy typist. I keep rolled oats on hand for my horses when we’re doing some actual work (lots of riding in the mountains) and I was feeding it to Heart where she was nursing triplets. When Dolly broke her leg I...

I do need the sprinklers to keep my lawn green. We’ve been fortunate to have some rain lately but come June and July it’ll be pretty dry for a while. Even with more rain and snow up this way sprinklers are a necessity if you want a lawn. I just don’t have to water as much. Originally when I...

Sprinkler line is “mostly” fixed. I wound up laying 50 feet of new one inch pipe to get water to the sprinklers in back. We were putting the old line together and kept finding leak after leak until suddenly no leak but no water at the back either. It was leaking directly into the leech field...

I’ve been infrequent so I hadn’t realized no one had heard from STA for so long. Hope all is well. Dolly is looking good, she actually puts some weight on her leg as she walks around her little dog run and grazes. I put it over grass and she seems content. She’s keeping up growing with her...

@Baymule it was inch and a quarter pipe. Once I’d wrapped the leg it was the best fit. @Ridgetop we do have suture needles around but fortunately I haven’t ever had to use them thus far. Maybe unfortunately as it means I’m probably getting rusty. When I was going to school I got to practice...

Got to play Vet today. I was over by the sheep and noticed one of my ewe lambs wouldn’t put any weight on her right back leg. Walked in to check on her and found out she broke her lower leg about midway up. Seems to be a clean break from what I could feel and see, she was being really good...

Today was a pretty nice day. Sun was shining with temps in the 50’s, got some outside work done. When we dug the septic we broke the sprinkler system in 4 spots so I started to put all that back together. Problem is though that when we pulled the pipe we pulled the wiring from the controller...

Australian Shepherds can be hit and miss when it comes to herding ability. AKC bred Aussies have become bulkier and more conformation based which has really reduced their herding ability. They seem to be the more common family Aussie you see these days. My neighbor had an AKC Aussie and he...

I wish the weather would make up its mind. Saturday I was outside in a hammock, cooking burgers on the grill and catching some sun thinking I should probably get my sheep sheared finally and then it gets cold and windy again. Maybe I should quit saying it out loud because I’ve been saying for...

I think you’re on the right track with looking at plug in chargers for sheep. Wool makes it challenging for some solar or other auxiliary (not hard wired) powers units to generate enough of a charge to keep them in. Three wires at varying heights where you would imagine their nose would be in...

I did have to mound it up a little. 6 inches of gravel, 4 inch pipe with 2 inches of gravel on that. 2 inches of straw and 6 inches of topsoil took my to 20 inches but it was slopped on that side and there was plenty of dirt to build up with. It was 18 inches at the lowest point so the part...

Leach field got installed and passed inspection. I could only go down 18 inches because of the water table and the guy that my bishop found us was awesome. Got it dug and installed in a day. When the inspector came out to check it out he asked me who had helped me and when I told him who he...

There’s a lot of variables with electrical fencing. What kind of power supply do you have for that fencing? How many joules will your controller produce? What’s the ground cover like, is there a lot of tall grass that could potentially be pulling power out of your fence? Does it have good...