Having a pig dog training block I also need other animals as a pig dog has to know what to chase and what not to chase. Getting the sheep down off the hill can sometimes be a bit of a mission. My wife, Janice and I have worked out the easiest way to muster the sheep is to first feed them sheep nuts for a while from a plastic bag that way when they her a plastic bag rattle they come running. So Janice was in front on the four wheeler rattling a plastic bag while I walked down behind them. The yards that I have made where done on the cheap but they do the job and keep the sheep contained. The day that I was dagging them must have got to near 30 degrees and I lost a lot of juice. While I was dagging them I was also giving them a drench and putting pour on onto their backs.
There is two reasons that I like to keep my sheep dagged, the first is I like to see animals that are well looked after and the second reason is that if you leave the daggs on them in the hot weather the flies will lay eggs on them and cause fly strike that can kill sheep if not caught early enough.
The drench is to stop the sheep from getting worms and helps to keep them in good condition and the pour on is to stop any lice from surviving in their wool.
While I was dagging one of the sheep it jumped up and hit me right under the jaw causing me to bite my tongue quite bad. This is a good way to loss some weight as I had trouble eating anything for a couple of days.
Once I had finished dagging the sheep I took all of the weathers and cripped orchids and put them up into the pig block to give the sheep a break as they are starting to show signs of coming into season and it is to early to get any of them pregnant yet. A weather is a male sheep that has had his nuts taken out and a cripped orchid is a male sheep that has had his sack removed but still has his nuts high up inside himself. This is supposed to make them infertile but they still want to do the job. One of the reasons that I prefer to make them a cripped orchid opposed to a weather is that if they grow a good set of horns a weathers horns will tend to grow out more than around but a cripped orchids horns will grow like a normal ram. Last year I had a neighbours ram got into the sheep and they had their lambs far to early and we lost a lot of lambs due to the cold weather. The boundary fence has been fixed since and I am keeping the sheep away from there so it does not happen this year.