Counting Sheep

These days I have no idea what my husband wants to raise, sheep or goats because we certainly do not have the space to raise both species. Nor the patience. When the herd/flock are taken out to graze, they segregate themselves and the work to keep them safe from roving wild dogs, snakes, and poisonous plants is doubled.

So one Sunday my husband comes back from the grazing and says he’s sold the sheep to the neighbor. Zombie, Fuzzy and the others are gone in a few minutes, leaving us with just the Borrega boys and Zombeta.

With the cash in his hot sweaty hands, we head to Cerano that very afternoon to find a macho for our goat herd. We have lots of boys, but nothing close enough in maturity to fulfill any husbandly duties when the next heat cycle comes around later this month.

We happen across two herds of about 200 goats grazing in a recently harvested corn field. My husband does some tough negotiation and buys this young buck, quite a looker, for our fair ladies back home.

Having some extra cash, he haggles for yet another pregnant goat. He wanted a third, but just didn’t have the cash to complete the deal, so home again, home again jiggidy, jig we went with Macho and Prego.The three little sheep, Borega Boys and Zombeta, were allowed free run of the patio area, even had their own little feed box, so that they could grow up healthy and fat. Of course, this meant that the patio was full of sheep pellets as a result of their ample diet. Fun right?

I thought we were done with sheep acquisition, but NO! Since my motorcycle has been on the fritz and there hasn’t been any gas anyway to fill to the tank, my husband found a buyer willing to trade sheep for it. So in addition to the three little sheep, we now have one pregnant ewe, and one who had recently given birth to twins, so 4 sheep with one on the way, making our grand total 7 sheep (and a half). The poop pellets on the patio were getting out of hand, so my husband went to work at revamping Miss Piggy’s bungalow in the back. The first attempt failed utterly. These are Mexican sheep after all and no little wall was going to keep them from the promised land (in this case, my backyard full of tasty plants). So he had to install barbed wire around the perimeter and that seems to have done the trick.

To keep them shaded, he rigged a wire/branch roof which in a few weeks will be covered in chayote leaves, making a nice little palapa for everyone in the sheep compound. Of course, I’m hoping in a few weeks, we won’t have any more sheep, but you can see how this sheep thing keeps going and going. The mama sheep with the twins has been sickly since we’ve gotten her. Malnourishment and a rough delivery are the probable causes. My husband, Papa Chivo, has been bottle feeding the twins goat milk to supplement their diet and they are more lively. The mama gave us quite a scare when she stopped eating for a few days, but some tempting greens and some olive oil brought back her appetite and she seems to be getting stronger as well.So here we are being overwhelmed with goats and sheep. I actually had to go out and count again how many we have. 2 eves, 3 baby lambs, 8 baby kids, one goat macho, 5 nanny goats and 2 (one sheep/one goat) still on the way. Good grief!