Bucket Head
August 29th, 2013 · 1 Comment · Posted in farming
Sometimes when I move the sheep to new pasture I take a bucket of grain with me to entice them to follow. I wish I could show you video of what happened when I tried to move them into a narrow little paddock and one of the ewes ended up on the wrong side of the temporary fencing.
I dropped the bucket at one end of the paddock and ran back to the other end to retrieve the stray ewe. Only the rest of the sheep came running behind me and started leaping the fence. Then I looked back and noticed that one ewe was now wearing the 5-gallon bucket on her head and stumbling around aimlessly until she backed right over the fencing as well. It was a complete madhouse.
Soon, all 22 of the sheep were loose and marching completely in the wrong direction, back toward the house. Fortunately, my wife and brother-in-law Todd, who was visiting after dropping his daughter off for college in Burlington, VT, spotted me out the living room window. They didn’t know anything was amiss until I shouted for help. The three of us were able to get the sheep pointed in the right direction and safely corralled.
But if you thought nothing like this could possibly happen again, I was making my usual rounds yesterday afternoon and noticed the sheep’s water bucket turned over on its side on the wrong side of the fence. How could it have possibly gotten there? Then I saw one of the older ewes lying in tall grass not far from the bucket–also on the wrong side of the temporary fencing. What the heck!
The best I can figure, the sheep must have emptied their five-gallon water bucket. The old ewe reached her head to the bottom trying to get the last of the H2O and ended up wearing the bucket on her head. She, too, must have been stumbling around blind and lumbered over the flexible fencing.
Apparently, buckets as head gear are the fashion for sheep these days.
Funny story! Even funnier the thought of Todd corralling sheep!