Snow, Snow, & More Snow (Three Day Recap)

The last three days have been hurried and full of coping with the weather. Sunday night was round one of the storm. We only got around 2 to 3 inches of snow, just enough to warm us up. One Monday, I cleaner out the building. I still had brooders that had to be cleaned out and stuff to bring to move inside. I ended the day by buying, transporting, and unloading 60 small square bales into the building.

On Tuesday, I moved the sheep and cattle down from the hill into glen sheltered by cedar trees behind our house. I removed all the temporary electric fence on the hill (6 sections of 164 feet each) and reset-up 4 sections of fencing . I drug our two port-o-huts (somewhat portable livestock shelter) out into the new pen set-up. I pulled down the waterer, removed the extension cords, adjusted the reel that feeds the electricity to the fencing, and made dinner. As I was headed to bed, Nermal (our tabby house cat) was staring out the window and when I joined him, I saw the sheep in the front yard working through the now trying to eat grass. All you can really say at that point is "crap". I suited back-up, grabbed some corn as bait and brought the sheep down to the coral. I then threw then a bale of hay and headed up to see where the cows were at and find out what happened to the fence. Luckily, the cows had bedded down in the port-o-huts and the sheep wiped out 15 feet of the fence. I set it all back-up and went to bed. In the picture, the cows are in the sheltered grove with waterer (left), hay (center), portable fencing (in front), and port-o-huts (just to the right of the heifer).

On Wednesday, I had to deal with the sheep being way out of position in an area that does not have the best shelter. I decided to move the sheep indoors. In essence, I reworked the insides of the building to accommodate the sheep and dug paths to the garage, cattle paddock, and between the buildings.