Breton Meadow Farm
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First Sheep

Friday, May 7, 2010

We finally have sheep in Lincoln, Massachusetts! Six 50:50 Ouessant/Shetland rams and wethers arrived Monday evening, May 3, 2010 after stopping over for the weekend at the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival on their way from Oregon.

We had returned from the festival a few hours earlier to find the electric fence not working. Walking the perimeter, we found a tree had blown down across the fence. The lone willow tree in the middle of the pasture had also been blown down. Apparently a strong wind had blown through the neighborhood just before we returned and knocked down several trees. A quick call to Jim and Nancy, who have been helping us prepare our pasture, brought them over with a chainsaw to take the tree off the fence and a hammer and staples to re-attach the fence to a post from which it had been ripped by the falling tree.

With the fence repaired, we set about putting together a small pen to hold the sheep when they arrived an hour or so later.

Once they were in the pen, we stood around admiring the new additions to the neighborhood. We put out some fresh hay and water and they immediately proceeded to eating and drinking — a good sign. The cross-country trip and stop-over in Maryland seemed to have had little effect.

We called our neighbor, Doug, to tell him our sheep had arrived. Doug is a (small animal) vet we had met recently. He was interested in our sheep and said he would come right over. He arrived a few minutes later and, after observing for awhile, reassured us that they did, indeed, look okay.

Our sheep left-to-right: FriendlyBlackWether, BrownWether, BrownRam, ShyBlackWether, WhiteRam, BlackHeadedRam.

The sheep spent the first two days in the small pen so they could get used to their new surroundings. Thursday we set up some electric netting to keep them off the newly seeded portions of our pasture and after they had eaten their fill of hay, let them out of the pen to eat grass instead.

News

10/12/2015
We are selling mutton and lamb. Read more…

5/12/2015
First 15/16 lamb is born. Read more…

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