Teresa & Mike CHS - Our journal

[farmerjan]

Yeah, I think @Mike CHS liked the cattle better in 1 lb packages than on the hoof

 

[Mike CHS]

No, I won't have a cattle business here.

 

[farmerjan]

No, no cattle business... but I sure wouldn't pass up the opportunity to have a temporary holding lot for wayward cattle that I can ship out and make some money off of... especially if they have been roaming very long....of course, if they are skittish or wild they can play havoc with the fences too....

 

[Mike CHS]

It is a beautiful Spring day out. We woke up to temps right at 60 and it is 70 now. We are going to work the sheep this afternoon but we spent most of the morning doing paperwork plus we almost forgot to send our Black Vulture kill permit back in for this year. We forgot to send it in last year but the folks that handle that were able to back date it for us.

 

[Mike CHS]

We brought the sheep in to give the last shots to some of the lambs and ran them all across the scale to check weights as well as pull a few fecal samples. Most of the ewes have recovered very well after lambing but two that had triplets aren't quite there yet. When I feed them all in the morning, I bring the two inside the shop (one at a time) while I feed the dogs. I'm always amazed at how easy the sheep adjust to changes. The ewes come inside in the same order every morning and I'm not quite sure how they figured out that it was to be one at a time but they did. I put the morning feed out in troughs and then open the gate. Sadie doesn't bother eating at the troughs so she goes right inside looking for the feed bowl. When she is done, I let her out and Pepper comes in.

 

[Mini Horses]

Same with milking line up here! They know who is next.

Smarter than most people realize. One of mine has learned to turn the door handle to open the door! . Feed room door....had to add another device.

 

[Baymule]

My friendly little ewe lamb, who inexplicably was my best buddy at just days old, has trained me to her desires. She won’t fight the crowd at the feed bunk. Her 2 half sisters jump in the feed bunk, waiting on me. Not Fancy. She follows me wanting me to feed her. And so I do. I give her a couple handfuls of pellets. Then she discovered The Texas Five gets alfalfa pellets and nothing would do but I hand feed her alfalfa pellets. Every Day. She’s so darn cute, how can I resist?

 

[Mike CHS]

Here is an example of how well our older ewes can read their humans. The whole herd was waiting for me two paddocks away from me this morning but I was going to move them to fresh grass rather than give them feed. I was in a paddock about 500' and two gates away and started walking down toward a good span of fresh grass. As I started walking toward the gate, the sheep all started running to me because they knew that a move was coming. I wasn't watching them since they are normally right behind me but when I did look back, they were on the wrong side of the fence we were walking down. I stopped and took a step in the other direction and just said "What the heck are you doing" and my oldest ewe immediately started walking back to the gate they needed to come through to get to me and of course, the rest followed.

 

[Baymule]

That is so funny and sweet at the same time.

 

[Bruce]

Smarter than most people realize.

You might also be correct if you leave off the last word.