Anyway. A few weeks ago, we had roundup. No horses involved, though. No over-night stays on the trail. Really, it only took a couple hours for our little round-up.
It took the whole family, though. We had to employ Addie and Will to walk the perimeter of the holding pen to prevent any sheep from jumping. Some of them are a little wild.
The dogs stood guard as they were a little nervous about their charges being penned up like animals. Oh wait. They are animals. Maybe I should alert Mishka and Sabaka to that fact. (Yes, those are our dogs names. Mishka means bear in Russian, and Sabaka means dog. Since our family is half Russian, it seems fitting to give our animals Russian names.)
Then the wrangling began. Jason pushed, pulled, and carried the sheep one by one into the little chute where they got wormed, weighed, and sent back out into the world.
Several times our employees got a little side-tracked and the boss had to go show them again what their job was. Maybe they knew that the pay wasn't going to be any more than normal....a nice hot meal when the work was done. If the cook had been in the house, that is. She was busy photographing the wrangling operation and the meal was slightly forgotten.
Don't turn around, Will. There's a dog. And your scream might just cause the sheep to jump the fence.
Only a couple hours after starting, the full pen was finally empty. All 60 some sheep had been wormed, many had been weighed....and only two jumped the fence escaping the whole mess.
Fourteen cute little lambs were sorted and placed in the trailer awaiting their trip to market. That's a little too sad to talk about.
When it was all said and done, God blessed us with a ball of fire in the sky that doubled as a sunset. It was beautiful. But that meant that it was nearing bedtime, and supper had yet to be fixed.
And before you chuckle at the homemade holding pen held together with baling twine, go price a professional looking one. It's really not a laughing matter.
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