Exactly so, Fleecewife
BH can get hold of any of his commercial sheep with a quad and a collie, or sometimes we use two quads and no collies. Or two quads and my two collies. Whatever will work best - quickest, for least upset to the flock - for the situation at hand.
I don't do this with my 'fleece sheep', which are predominantly primitive types, as I find it more important that they trust me, and chasing them about with a quad, or letting the dogs bring them down, would be counter-productive, in my view. Not to mention that the area where I keep them is very varied terrain, not all accessible to a quad, so they would run rings around us if they wished.
We've learned, the dogs and I, that softly softly is the way with these sheep. Less is more - if the dog puts too much pressure on, the sheep are off and away. So it's a question of patience, letting them make their own decisions, but making sure that the easiest decision is to do what I'm wanting them to do.
I don't have any pens where they are, so if I need to get hold of one and can't catch it in the field (some will come up for digestive biscuits), then it's bringing the lot in to the farm's pens. It takes about 30 minutes - it's a fair distance - but they'll follow the quad bike with a sack of feed being rattled, the older, steadier dog bringing up the rear. I could drive them if I wished, using both dogs, but it's not been necessary to date.
My ladies are now used to the pens and that nothing really horrible ever happens to them, but the lambs take a while to achieve the same level of unconcern.
BH wanted to shed the lambs off when we sheared the adults, so we ran them through the pens as we do his commercials, him leaning over the passageway operating a gate to put ewes beyond, lambs in the pen beside him.
I wished I'd had a video recorder running, it would have been all over the internet by now!
The lambs weren't missing a beat; into the pen,
boooiiinnggggg straight back over the wall and rejoin mum within 6'! BH continued, unaware of the utter pointlessness of his sorting until he looked up and saw me with tears running down my face
So, apart from the lambs which had now boinged over the opposite wall and joined the pet lambs in the orchard, and the ones that had boinged over the end wall and joined the group of commercials waiting to be taken back to their field, the lambs stayed with their mums and I sorted them off as I loaded the mums into the chute for the clipping team. Utter chaos and a lot of fun. And no harm to any lambs - all rejoined their mums once the clipping was over.
I did want to check the lambs, so we kept the lot in the paddock over night, and ran them into the pens the following morning. No shedding, just quietly working my way along. Lambies with their mums, so not frightened, no drama.
I do completely get the point that Porterlauren is making, however, and it is something that I think about.
I do have one pet lamb - Indi - who would, in other circumstances, have been reared by her mum, along with her twin. But on the day Dulcie Grey lambed, and Indi rejected her, BH was fully occupied elsewhere, using his quad bike; my quad bike was out of commission and the loaner bike wouldn't have managed that track with a trailer on, plus I wasn't convinced I'd get DG into the trailer, even following the other lamb. If I'd had handling pens down there, that they were used to using, I could have got them into those and caught her that way. In fact there is a building that we used to use before the farmstead was sold, so I did contemplate opening that up and getting DG and the lamb that loved her into that, then catching her. But given that I hadn't the use of a trailer that day, and penning her inside that building on her own would have been terribly stressful for her, I decided the easier option was to hand-rear Indi.
If I'd had no alternative, and Indi or DG's life were at risk, then of course I would have opened up the building and used it. (And cleaned it afterwards, and apologised to the new owners! )
We do have a mobile sheep handling system; the track down there would make it borderline dangerous to take the whole shebang down there but I have taken a selection of hurdles down in a trailer. The problem with these sheep is that if they are upset, then, like Womble's Manxes, they are fleet as deer, and most of 'em will just jump out of any hurdle pen. It needs to be a fully enclosed space.
With both the commercials and my fleece sheep, there are times when a ewe or a lamb may be limping and we haven't caught it yet. So often these things sort themselves, and the stress - to all the sheep, not just the one you are after - of catching in the field would be worse than the condition you are watching. But if it's consistent over a few days, or worsening, then they'll get caught, one way or another, and inspected and treated.
We still get tourists 'helpfully' telling the staff at the tourist site that there's a ewe limping. Like we wouldn't know that
. We now try to always mark a treated animal, often not for our benefit but so that the staff at the centre can say that if it's marked, then the farmer has been treating it but it's not fully better yet. (I wish I had a magic wand too, but most cures aren't instantaneous!
)
Anyway, back to my fleece flock - ideally I would have some pens where they are, and I may yet talk to the new owners about setting something up. But, as I would hope is the case with most of us, if I had to get hold of one, I'd find a way, albeit it might be more stressful than I would ideally like.
