Introducing Rams

Our ewes are beginning to bag up

which means....

we are getting close to lambing.

We recently acquired a new ram so he has been in quarantine in our barn. 

We need the space for our ewes and he has been separated long enough.

Moving all our rams together takes a little bit of finagling.

We have been slowly building pens for our sheep.
It's been a process to figure out
how we want our place set up
to manage all these animals the most efficiently.

So this year we have a mobile ram pen.

They won't stay in this forever

but

an important lesson we learned last year

was to put rams in a VERY small pen

when you are introducing them or reintroducing them!

{we learned this the hard way}

 Its nice that the trailer is light enough we can pull it around with our quad.

 Backing it up to the barn so we can get it ready for all the boys.

 This works perfect for us because it frees up our barn space and it has a divider in it.

We start by adding straw.

 We only bed down the front half because that is where all 5 will reside for the next couple of days.

 Next we add tires. Also a pretty important step. This prevents them from being able to get a clear run at one another.

 Clifford and Stinky were at the barn so those boys get loaded first.

They are both easy to handle and just jumped right in.

 Then we went and picked up Teddy and Jessie. These guys are pretty used to being trailered. Jessie is a juvenile ram and so he can be a bit unpredictable but he loaded without and issue.

 We closed the middle divider when we were loading Teddy and Jessie so that they other two couldn't escape and they couldn't fight while we were getting them into the trailer.

We then open up the middle divider and push Teddy and Jessie in with the others. We did this same process when we brought Fabio to the barn.

 They will spend at least the next couple of days in these uncomfortable close quarters so that they won't hurt one another. 

This is the shuffle at the start.

We stay out with them for the first bit to make sure everything is okay.

Like the gate in the trailer will hold them bumping.

We then go back out to check on them.

When Dusty went out this last time the had some of the walls on the trailer pushed out.

That's why it takes a couple days.

We will fast them through the day until they settle.

We will feed them tonight and hopefully they are too tired to fight.