Our Sheep Disappeared For A Week!

Our Sheep Disappeared For A Week! Read along as I tell the story of how our Katahdin ewe escaped and disappeared for over a week!

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Stories like this usually start with me saying, “hey Luke! We should get some more sheep!”.

We have had Barbados sheep for awhile now, and I even grew up raising them. Anyone who’s owned Barbados knows that they are wild. They don’t stay in fences particularly well. And unless you have one that’s tame and will come for grain, you’ll never catch them again.

My sheep YouTube playlist.

So, this summer we decided to try switching to Katahdins. We had heard they are quite a bit calmer than Barbados, stay in fences better, and they’re also substantially bigger for harvesting for meat.

That was our first mistake.

But on to the story…

We found a lady locally that raises hundreds of Katahdins. She has amazing breeding stock, all bred for color and size. And we committed to getting a mama & ewe lamb pair, an extra ewe lamb, a ram lamb and a whether. She even was willing to deliver them to us!

We had sold all but our tamest Barbados ewe a couple days before. We were all in. Committed to switching over!

Day one of owning Katahdins

The first day they were here went great. We had them all fenced in along the driveway to eat down the weeds with a triple strand electric string. It all seemed to be going perfectly! We were obsessed with their coloring since they all look different, compared to Barbados that are all the same.

The next morning is when it all went wrong.

I walked out on the driveway to check on them, and the mama and baby pair were out in the wrong pasture.

Ok, well at least they were still on the property, but they clearly didn’t respect the electric fences. Not good.

Me and Luke went out there to try to get them back in the right area. We quickly realized that everything we thought we knew about herding sheep didn’t apply to these spazzes. They went sprinting in the absolute opposite direction then we were intending every time we tried to move them. We would circle around behind, and they would run PAST us the wrong way!

Then the worst happened. They just waltzed right through two more electric fences and got out on the road.

Our hearts just sunk.

It’s bad enough when the whole flock gets out, and we can use a bucket of grain to get them to follow us back. But these ladies hadn’t been trained to a grain bucket yet, and they had only known us less than 24 hours and didn’t trust us yet. Not only that but they didn’t see our property as home base yet, AND they weren’t bonded to our other sheep! All factors against us!

The chase begins.

They just take off down our road heading west.

Luke quickly took the truck and tried to go around the loop to head them off before they decided to head to our busy road, where we were worried they’d get hit by a car.

He got around them and tried to get them to head back down the road to our place. But instead they darted off into the neighbors yard.

He got them out of the yard, back onto the road, and they walked in the right direction for approximately 8 steps…then darted the opposite way off the road into the other neighbor’s huge 20 acre pasture.

And they just kept running.

I was sitting on the road, in the truck with all the kids, just watching Luke and those two sheep run back and forth, slowly getting further and further away.

No progress was being made.

For the next three hours.

They ran through all the surrounding cattle pastures. The cows would see them and stampede, trying to chase them down. Luke would be running alongside the herd trying to keep the sheep in sight.

The Ranchers

They continued to head South, in the complete wrong direction, no matter what Luke did. Eventually they made it to a particular cattle rancher’s pasture, and he comes speeding out on his quad.

The rancher and his son, on their two quads, help corner them. The sheep were so tired at this point that they were letting the quads get really close. So the son jumps off and tackles the ewe lamb.

Success! One had been caught!

I figured at this point the mama wouldn’t leave far because her lamb had been caught.

But nope, she sprints off still heading South.

The two neighbors continue to help us, which was great because at this point Luke was exhausted from chasing these freaks for 3 hours, and I couldn’t leave the kids too far to help chase.

The ewe went a little further south and got in their cattle pasture, which was super muddy and swampy. This is the point it all goes downhill even further.

It gets worse.

Cattle seem to have an intense fascination with chasing sheep. Once those cattle caught sight of the ewe they came charging. During the stampede on this marshy ground, one of the calves trips and is trampled by the adults. We found out later that it broke its leg.

Annnddd…you guessed it. She just kept heading south. Even with now me, Luke, and three neighbors chasing her around trying to catch her, she was ever elusive.

Eventually we had to give up the chase because she got into this heavily treed area and hid. Probably dropped somewhere in a bush from exhaustion. Plus we all needed to catch the calf with the broken leg so they could take it to the vet. The guys all tackled the calf and loaded it in the trailer. They were able to splint it’s leg and it’ll be ok, but we insisted on paying for the vet bill since our sheep caused it.

So we gave up the chase. We literally couldn’t even find her at this point, and even if we did she just seemed to be impossible to catch.

Chaos back on the farm

We get back home in the afternoon, after a taxing day of sheep chasing, only to find that the remainder of our ewes and our dog back at home had wreaked havoc.

Hilda, our German Shepherd, had somehow gotten left in the duck yard when we were doing chores earlier. But she had then apparently busted out, leaving the gate wide open for Penny, our old Barbados ewe, to come strolling in looking for grain.

The new ewe lamb had knocked out a fence post jumping through the fence and was in with all our rams. Not what you want to find! If she happened to be in heat (it’s hard to tell) when that happened, we will be having lambs born in the cold of winter.

So instead of relaxing after the sheep chase, we had to wrangle all the ewes that were in the wrong places. Thankfully they were really easy to catch. The ewe lamb let me get close enough to grab it’s leg and then I tipped it over and Luke ran in to tackle it.

After all that nonsense, the three ewes we had left got locked in our small yard with a high fence. Not taking any more risks!

Over the next week we kept getting texts from neighbors and friends saying they had spotted her. But with Luke 40 minutes away at work, and me alone with all three babies, I wasn’t going to go out looking for her. So she was loose for a whole week.

I was sure a mountain lion had gotten her at one point. There had been reports of one in the area, and then we heard that the lion had gotten a goat. Everyone thinks these hair sheep are goats, so I thought for sure that was her.

The impossible happens

It was Sunday.

It had been a week + one day since she made her escape.

Luke opened up Facebook, and this post pops up with a blurry picture of her. She was in this flock of huge wooly sheep and the post said “does anyone know who’s goat this is?”

He showed me the picture and we looked at each other in disbelief.

The lady who posted the photo said we could stop by to see for sure if it was her, so we loaded up. She was only about 5 minutes away. As soon as we pulled up and I saw her I was like “yup, that’s definitely her!” She was looking skinny and pretty scared, but that was her!

She had snuck through their electric wire, and then got closed in with their other sheep in some tall 4″x4″ fencing. Finally a fence she couldn’t blast through instantly! We had a chance!

The three of us cornered her, and since she found she couldn’t push through the fence, she turned around and decided her best course of action was to jump over Luke’s head.

She really went for it! She could definitely have jumped the fence if she wanted to. I couldn’t believe how high she got!

He reached up and grabbed her with both arms as she flew over his head. They both came crashing to the ground and Luke kept his grip! He had brought the beast down!

We loaded her in the kennel and took her straight back to the lady we bought them from. She had told us if we caught her we could exchange her for a younger ewe. I was so worried she’d escape again in the middle of the night that I wanted to drop her off right away before she had the chance.

What a relief that was!

We were able to release her back with her herd, she looked so happy! And we picked out a new ewe (plus we decided to buy an extra one). So we picked out a white with black spots on her face, and a brown and white spotted one.

Now we had 5 ewes total. All the new Katahdins were young and impressionable now, so they could bond to our tame old Barbados ewe. They’ll learn much better how to come to a grain bucket and that we can be trusted! Apparently it’s not a good idea to get older ewes that are stuck in their ways! haha

I’m still a little in disbelief that we actually got her back after she was gone for over a week! Especially with a mountain lion in the area! She even crossed the big busy road several times while she was loose and didn’t get hit by any cars! God was keeping her safe for us!

So needless to say we are taking extra precautions with these new sheep now. We have been working on training the newbies to electric strands while they are in a very secure area before we trust them again. So far they have done great! I think without the influence of that older escape-artist ewe they’ll be just fine.

That there is the story about when our sheep disappeared for a week!

And blessings!

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Our Sheep Disappeared For A Week!