Teresa & Mike CHS - Our journal

Ringo was close to that way when we brought him home. We just fine tuned him.

Max will be the same way before long though as he doesn't show any negatives and is confident without being pushy.

Ringo loves his scratches. He loves eye rubs too.

OK, I am about to show my ignorance, but it won't be the first or last time. Regarding

Mike CHS said:

creep feeder

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why is it called that? Does it mean it says to the sheep "Would you like to come to my place?" Is it like Miss @Rammy's goobermooch neighbor?

No more ignorance than on my part. I never tried to find out where the term originated but I always used it as: a pen or feeder that the lambs can get to and the adults cannot. In our case we have feeders that the lambs can get their heads in until they are 3-4 months old and after that they can't. The idea in our case for having creep fed lambs is to accelerate their weight gain prior to going to market. We can have close to 90 pound market lambs in time to get them out of the pen before the ram lambs are able to breed without them being castrated.

Creep feeding generally means there is a barrier to keep the adults away from the feeder, with a low or narrow opening that only the juveniles can get thru. It's not a fully direct open to everyone feeder. Most people use a creep gate as entry to a small pen with narrow vertical openings The animals have to 'creep' under or thru the bars to get to the feed...they can't just go running straight up to the feed.

You can buy a creep feeder as a unit, with the barrier already made on to it, but I can state from experience, it doesn't work well with mix sized cattle. The bulls and mature cattle just flip the whole dang thing up on it's side or upside down and eat all the feed that spills out.

creep gates

Pretty typical of a creep gate. Both the Vertical (B) and Horizontal bar (A) are movable or removable to allow different sizes thru the gate while excluding anything larger.

Sheep will tip the creep feeders we use if they aren't anchored. I mount ours on a plywood over 2X4 frame that doesn't tip over.

I've posted this picture before. A lot of these are used with sheep producers in Mexico and are imported for sale here. The lambs can use these till they get close to 60 pounds before they can't get their heads in.

We just came in from working sheep today. We started a bit before 9:00 this morning and quit about 1:30 since we were all tired of sweating. I have this thing going on that if I let myself get dehydrated my blood pressure drops down pretty drastically but I can feel the signs and know when to knock off working. We got 33 sheep hooves trimmed including the 8 ewes that were in the dry lot until today. We still have 12 sheep to work tomorrow so he is coming over around 8:00 in the morning after morning chores so we can finish up.

We had a new young High School Sophomore helper start working with us today and Teresa and I were both impressed. He hasn't worked sheep before but he has worked goats and cattle. He decided sheep were alright when I opened the gate on one side of the lane and walked them across and into the main paddock not to mention, he showed up on time. Jay can still work with us some but his Tech School keeps him busy until 3:30 in the afternoon so by the time he can start working, it's about time to start doing afternoon chores.

Mike CHS said:

He still hasn't figured out that Animal Crackers are edible but I have no gripes about anything else.

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Perhaps he would prefer Froot Loops?

Baymule said:

I walked Ringo and the girls to the pipeline this morning and I kept getting a sheep head up my butt, pushing me to go faster. I looked to see who it was, it was Little Cutie who wasn't being so cute at the moment.

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Better than getting bit in the butt by someone's LGD!

The ewe lambs that we put back with the herd today got spoiled having their grass brought to them instead of having to work at grazing. I would give them fresh cut grass several times a day plus a little feed for the first few weeks. Now that they have to get their own grass, they come running to the gate bawling for food every time I go by the fence.