Back at that Fence!

I spent the day outside today.  It was a gorgeous day, sun was shining and virtually no wind.  I even opted to not have some form of music playing in my ears while working (unusual for me) so I could listen to the back creek run.  The runoff is very clean and running at a great rate.  We are hopeful the runoff creek will last through June this year.  The longer the better, we can use the water.

I worked on the Barn lot pasture fence today.  I had stretched a 40 foot section this fall but since I did not install sheep fencing the sheep just jumped through it.  So I added a four foot tall woven fence over the barbed wire and tied it all together.  Nice and strong now, the sheep won't get through it.  I took a container of chicken scratch up on the hillside and enticed the sheep off of the rocky hillside down into the barn lot.  They love corn and we have been working on being able to call them and get them to follow us.  It is far easier to catch an animal that will follow you into a small area for food.  A month in the front yard has given us all a lot of time to tame them down.  We were petting them whenever we went in and out of the house.  So far the fence is working, the sheep were still in the Barn lot when the sun went down.  The true test will be if they cannot get out tomorrow.  I am with Annmarie, I think a couple of the ewes are ready to drop babies.
I also restretched one side of the Ram pasture (we use the names for things from when Annmarie was a kid, very confusing if you were not around 30 years ago) and added stays to stiffen the fence and prevent the sheep from squeezing between the wires.  I have stays or posts every five feet on the SE side of the Ram pasture now.

Annmarie and Sarah locked up the baby chickens in their new enclosure over the weekend.  All 11 surviving (out of 24) chickies were out in their new 360 degree wire protected domain, plus one chicken.  They trapped one hen in there with the babies.  So I chased her out and in the process left the door open and now there is a different hen trapped in with the babies.  On the positive side, we thought the first hen was laying white eggs because her mother is a Polish chicken.  Not so, I found a green egg in the baby enclosure.  Not sure who the second white egg layer is at this point.  I had an egg today punctured by a foot.  I need to add some more calcium to the chickens diet.  I keep oyster shells for this and will put some out for the chickens to snack on out in the chicken yard.  In a month or so the babies should be big enough that the cats won't mess with them.  Then I can get more babies!!!  Wooo, hooo!!  I really do want a naked neck chicken.  I also want some more Easter Egger or Aruacana chickens.  Would love to have blue eggs.

I also hosed down a braided rug and hung it over the fence and grape wire tonight.  We are camping for the weekend and use the rugs on the floor of our pavilion tent.  You can never have too many rugs for a medieval tent floor.  So tomorrow I will clean out the pickup and get the trailer ready to go.  We have so much stuff we bought a trailer just for this hobby!  I will get some pictures and post them here.