After a long, cold winter, we have a beautiful day.  It was snowing, with heavy winds last night, but didn’t stick, and this morning there is a blue sky and bright sunshine. I put all the little critters, except for the bummer lambs, out to absorb a little Vitamin A&D in the form of grass and liquid sunshine. Actually, technically it’s weeds but they are green and Tooney seems to enjoy it.

This week should wrap up Cow Camp, the cows should be off the desert and moving down the road to home and will receive a bit of a push now and then over the next month or so.

 Last year’s weanlings, which wintered here on feed and supplements, are being shipped to another ranch holding, two hours away and in another month, will be shipped from there, to the ranch in Cascade, Idaho. These are the same calves the pups took it upon themselves to seek out and patrol every morning. The pups are now confined to the corrals behind our house so they don’t get in the way or get upset during shipping. I just hope when they DO go looking for them, they don’t KEEP going.  They were gone 6 hours one day looking for them, before discovering the calves several miles on the other side of the ranch from the pasture they had previously been in. I’d much rather they just stick to watching over their OWN critters.

We hotwired the fence in a little area between the rock wall and horse corral which, for the past several years, has been a vacant area where mustard, tumbleweed and goat head thorns grow. Goats and sheep seem to like this stuff when it first comes up, so they are on ‘weed patrol’. It makes them happy, makes me happy, and puts the pups in an area where they can be confined with their primary charges and still see the barn where the lambs reside.

There are some introductions to be made, as well as some relationships to smooth out. The goats are scared to death of the leppy calf, who just wants a friend to hang out with, so they run from him. Cletus is trying his best to gain acceptance from the leppy, who is running from him and trying to catch up with the goats, Bruno is looking on and Tooney and Samby the lamby are just busy eating weeds like they are supposed to.

I strung a different kind of hotwire in the big corral behind our house, hoping to put the critters out there for awhile too. They like to crawl through the fence and get into Dolly and EmmaLou cow’s stuff and the pups melt through the wire and go on patrol. I need to be able to contain them when necessary, like during shipping or hunting season, but give them a bigger area. Cider and I worked hard all afternoon putting in our posts and stringing the wire.

I plugged it back in, but I don’t want to let any critters out there until I am sure that it works. I asked Randyman if he would please go grab it and tell me if it is working or not.

He said “No.”

I'm speechless.