toddlers

I tend to forget, from year to year, just what a handful lambs can be. They turn the farm upside down for a few months. Much like toddlers, their boundless curiousity and limitless energy gets them into all sorts of scrapes.

Yesterday, we put up the electronet fence to get the ewes onto some new pasture. The lambs have to learn to respect the electric fence, and they take turns chewing on it (just like babies) and then jumping backwards as it shocks them. Generally, after two shocks, they get the idea.

Once they decided to leave the fence alone, they turned their attention to the closed gate keeping them out of the adjacent pasture. They soon discovered that they could squeeze their little bodies through the gate and into the pasture—and then out the green back gate, which we had not lamb-proofed, thinking that they wouldn't have access to it.

The little black one is on the wrong side of the orange electrified fence, and would really like to be back with her mother and sisters. By the time I put on my boots and headed out, she figured it out herself, but then I found another problem.

The ewes were so distraught at the lambs being where they couldn't get to them, they lifted the gate off the hinges. Yet more proof that sheep are smarter than we give them credit for. Evidently they can lift those gates anytime they want (even though we have nails above the hinges to prevent this problem), but they choose not to unless they have a good reason.

The gate remains off the hinges, at least until we move the lambs and ewes to a different grazing area. They have been quiet today, plotting their next move.

Just like human babies, their cuteness works in their favor.