The Great Escape (…Part 3)
November 1st, 2007 - Posted in self-sufficiency, sheep - by Sarah|
Here we go again…
Brendhan and I want to run all our animals completely organically and one of the keys to worms prevention is regularly changing grazing areas. So yesterday morning we were down in the paddock putting up a fence for the next sheep enclosure. We had laid out the sheep netting and were about to start hammering y-posts in when Cardigan scrambled over the fence at the far end of her current enclosure. Instead of running away she stopped immediately on the far side and started eating grass. The lambs then tried to escape too but fortunately could not jump high enough to follow her.
Behind baa’s 
We ran around behind Cardigan and chivvied her back over the fence into her area again. Then we had a quick discussion along the lines of: “I think we should just shoot her” and “She’s too old to eat but I suppose we could use her to make stock”. Finally we decided to give her one last chance and purchase the electric fence we would need for our cow a bit early. I had an appointment next door setting up logos and letterheads for our neighbour’s industrial abseiling business so Brendhan headed off to CRT (one of our local farm supply shops). He came home 2 hours later and $677 lighter with a solar powered energiser, 500m of wire and a load of stakes and fixings. The wire is attached 100mm above the top of the fence and also half way up on outriggers (see photo).
We set this all up yesterday afternoon and this morning all 3 sheep are looking a bit bemused and very wary of the fence. We assume therefore that they have had a few initial encounters with the new fence that fights back! Always ones to tempt fate, we are going to try the new enclosure with just sheep netting and the electric fence instead of adding chicken wire as well. It remains to be seen whether all this has the desired effect of course – part 4 of this story may end with Cardigan soup (and a nice woolly rug).
