Monday, June 4, 2007

Another roundup... only Dixie and me on this one

Now that we have all our sheep, it's time to "really" make them ours... You see, to be fully "official" we voluntarily registered our farm (really our flock) with the USDA Scrapies program. They send the ear tags and punch at no cost.

Each adult animal gets their own tag number which also has our "farm number" on it. We are UT1078. If ever one of our animals goes to another farm, or to a processor and has a problem, they can trace back to us.

I do have mixed emotions about mandatory animal ID, but as a part of professionally managing our animals, it makes sense to me that animals have some kind of permanent ID. If they wander or get stolen and then recovered... you can get them back.

Ok, about that round up.

Our big ram, Aljinon took one look at the lead line I offered him and said "No way, homie!" Since he's nearly 250 pounds, Dixie and I decided we'd save him for when there were more of us to handle him.

First up was "Merino", who's curiosity got the better of her.

Next was "Chiquita", who'd follow you anywhere for food.

After that, we were able to tag one of Merino's sisters... "Annie".

Her other sister, Amy had seen this process enough to know that she could dodge us all day. Like Aljinon, she'll wait for another day.

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Posted by Shari Thomas @ 8:14 PM

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