Electric Fence Woes
Hey, remember these guys?
They’ve been growing on us as well.
Over the past few weeks, we’ve been feeling itchy to get them outside. Sadly, the grass is not cooperating this year. We have seen more than a few shares on Facebook of what the grass looked like this time last year on the Island. Lush grassy knolls, compared to stumpy bog land we have at the moment.
This spring has been weird. Everything is soaked and farmers are having difficulty planting. (I suddenly feel better about not having my garden fully planted.)
But this past week, a part of our yard, directly behind the barn, dried out enough that we knew we could set up a temporary paddock for our little sheep and goats to go a grazing. Now, honestly, it was and still is a bit short, but if you move the animals through it quickly about a day at most in each paddock, their fertilizer will fall on the grass and help it grow stronger later, so we thought we’d give it a go.
We set up our electric poultry netting (the poultry netting was taller than the goat netting as the poultry was actually taller and we had heard that goats are Houdini reincarnated), and went to lure our sheep within its bounds.
We knew our sheep had never been out in an electric paddock before, since they had been born in January. We knew we’d need to introduce them to electricity slowly. So, we thought we should start with Jane. We figured, if we did them one at a time, all hell would not ensue if the sheep or goats decided to rush the netting.
Guys, this is the WRONG way to do things.
But I digress…
We had our son stand ready at the power, so if our ram should get tangled from a head long rush, we could turn it off immediately and rescue him. Dave brought Jane into the netting, and I stood in the middle, to try to … I’m not really sure what my job was, be there, in case…?
Jane came out into the paddock. Took one look at me, and went to run straight back into the barn to his harem. Unfortunately, Dave was still standing in the way of the door as he had just walked him inside. He ran in a complete circle looking for a way out. Bleated out loud and ran head first into the fence, tangling himself in the wire.
We yelled to Dexter to turn it off. He quickly did and we were able to untangle our youngling ram from its wires and try again.
He stood in the centre of the netting for a moment again as we got the electricity turned back on. He looked around hopelessly, until he heard the bleats of the girls from the other room and jumped outside of the fence more gracefully than an Olympic high jumper.
Losing no time, Dave vaulted the fence after him and tackled him like a line backer. They tumbled to the ground, a tangle of wool, flesh, and limbs laying on the ground outside the fence. If only I had had a camera.
“So, um… I think that’s good for the day?”
We brought Jane back inside and he happily ran over to our other sheep.
We breathlessly decided to give it a few days.
Today we brought all of the sheep back outside into our paddock. We led them out with oats and when they were all inside poured it onto the ground so they could eat while we closed off the fence.
Once they were finished their snack, they walked around calmly, and began nibbling at the grass. Apparently, there is strength in numbers.
We waited with baited breath for the first to test the fence.
One accidentally backed into it and jumped running to the shelter of the other sheep. But she did not rush the fence or try to jump outside the perimeter. Progress.
We stood there with our sheep until we were certain that all of them had had a taste of electricity. We didn’t even have to untangle a single sheep.
It was like the knew.
After 45 minutes we left them to graze. We go back to check on them often, but so far, so good.
