@Bossroo I'm sorry I've been very busy. I had to plan some Christmas events and I had family visiting for some time. One of the sheep dogs also went missing and I've been running myself into the ground trying to find him, and I've had no luck. We haven't been out to the ranch since December 19th and the rancher was not there so I couldn't have talked to him if I wanted too. I did find out though that we have been given permission by him to go out to the ranch and do things with the herders as long as we tell him what days which we have been doing. He said he's fine with it because by improving their mental health they will be more productive and with shearing and lambing coming up good mental health will be important.
I haven't asked anybody to donate money. I had one friend donate a few dollars because he wanted to contribute which was very kind of him. We have a group that does community service and they were very interested so they got bags and bags of clothes for the herders which is great and I'm very thankful for their help. As of right now we are simply working on smaller goals for the organization and herders the previous questions I asked have been worked out and set aside. We have to get these smaller things out of the way before we can work on the big things.
I have been talking to some of the herders on a regular basis now and I've gathered some information. There are currently 5,750 ewes out on the range right now. There are 70 ewes at the ranch and almost all are expecting. Lambing usually starts in April with this operation, shearing is in mid March and I have participated in both. We are improving the way the feed bummers because they usually fill an old Pepsi bottle with formula and put a nipple on it, then walk about two miles down to the lambing sheds and feed. One bottle gets through about two or three lambs and then they have to walk back. So, I came up with a few ideas and we settled on one. We will be buying actual bottles, and a large backpack so whoever is feeding that day will just have to fill them up, put them in the pack and walk down. We also want to make a prototype for something I saw being done with goats which would make things a lot easier on the guys.
As of right now we don't have much going on due to weather and where the sheep are but I think I'll be going out this weekend to drop off some food and supplies. I can give you an update then if you still wish to hear about this now that we have things worked out.
