Boys - OH Boy!

We've had a rather exciting addition to our farm in the past week - Mr. Sheepie.  We did try to give him another name but we called him Mr. Sheepie while we were thinking about it and the name has just-plain-stuck.  Mr. Sheepie is a Shetland Ram - a beautiful light and dark brown mix of kinky hair with curly horns. Remember the horn part - that will be important.

He arrived via an ad on kijiji and was delivered by his owner who was a wonderful wealth of information of which I took full advantage.  In our conversation I also found out he was a long lost relative of the previous owners of this farm - insert - very small world - here.

Mr. Sheepie has a purpose on the farm like all the other animals we raise.  He's here to make babies.  Hopefully really cute babies that will one day provide us with pasture raised lamb.  He quickly made himself right at home and met the girls and Maybe the donkey without incident.  All was well in my little corner of the world until two days later.

The phone rang.  It was my neighbour.  She had never called me before.  A sense of dread came over me...oh are you missing a sheep?  I sure hoped not but after a description I recognized the escapee - Mr. Sheepie.  At this point - no worries - he was safely tucked away in a pen in their horse barn and I could come and get him whenever I was ready.  I don't know what we were thinking but we grabbed a halter and leads with the thought that we would just hook him up and walk him back home.  Oh how naive!

The neighbours took pity on us for underestimating how difficult it was going to be and offered to put him in the back of their jeep and transport him home.  All went well.  We were feeling like real farmers.  We had a problem and we had a solution...until Mr. Sheepie jumped out of the back of the jeep in between 4 adults and took off - towards the stallions.  Sigh...this is where things really go downhill.

We circled around seeing that he was headed for the field of 8 of the hugest horses I have ever seen.  Somehow to him they looked less scary that 4 adults with a bucket of feed so in he went.  The horses sensed the presence of the devil himself and set out to eradicate him.  They grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and swung him around like a dog toy.  They kicked (and thankfully missed) him. Meanwhile I stood back praying he would live while simultaneously calculating the cost of a new Mr. Sheepie.  My neighbours in a show of what it means to be the most-awesome-neighbours-in-the-whole-world went into the field to try to ward off 8 angry stallions.  After what seemed like an hour but was probably ONLY 5 very-long minutes they managed to grab Mr. Sheepie from the jaws-of-death and drag him - still unwilling - under the electric fence to safety.  Mr. Sheepie lived to see the inside of his own stall in his own barn that night. 

Now back to the horn part.  Yeah - you would think he would have been grateful but OH NO.  He has escaped his pen more times than I can count by pounding the walls with those lovely horns.  We have reinforced and repaired every-single-wall.  We would think THAT-SHOULD-DO-IT and he would bust out another wall, jump the interior walls of the barn and head for the open road.  So we've now chased him all over the property, down the road and back into the pen over and over like a repeating nightmare.  Yesterday he was standing at the back door when we came out to do chores.  That was the last straw! 

Tomorrow Mr. Sheepie will meet his match - Mr. Electric Fence.