More than 99 percent of the time, our electric fencing system works great. Today was not one of those days! Yesterday, we sorted off some finished lambs that we'll have processed this week. We put them in a paddock along side our ewe lambs here in Auburn so that we could quickly get them loaded tomorrow. When I arrived at the ranch this afternoon, they had gone through the electric fence, joining the ewe lambs. I'll get to sort them all over again tomorrow morning! At least I marked the lambs that we'll ship - they should be easy to pick out from the larger group.
From Auburn we drove to Lincoln where our ewes and does are just about done giving birth to lambs and kids. I usually double check all of the fences when I have someone helping me put them up - yesterday I didn't. Apparently they ran out of feed sometime after noon today and decided to explore. When we arrived, we found all of the animals roaming freely. Thank goodness for good dogs; Taff and Mo had them rounded up quickly.
With sheep and goats, we've found that no fencing system is foolproof (and that sometimes we're foolish). The best fence is one that has plenty of feed inside it; no fence will hold livestock if they decide the feed looks better on the other side.
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