Thursday, June 08, 2006

the BEST of intentions....

Sorry for not finishing the story of Dream's first halter lesson, yesterday. By the time I got home from work, I was too tired to play with my lambs, let along (alone???) write in my blog. I got off work EARLY today and am feeling MUCH better! In fact, I just came in from mowing what used to be the 'nursery' pasture. I'm getting it ready for next month when I'll use it for the lambs at weaning...

In the meantime: Yes, I did it. I finally put a halter on my spoiled little princess lovely, little "Dream". To make the experience less frightening for her, I also haltered her twin sister, "Wish" at the same time. Wish has already had her first lesson, so this was old hat for her. That's Dream with the turquoise halter (Wish's is black so hard to see).

I've found that it's less scary for the lambs if I let them free with the halters, at first. That gives them a few minutes to get used to the feel and drag it around and adjust to the rope "following them around". It seems to help. It also helps that my lambs are all "into" animal crackers when I start halter training. That makes life MUCH easier. If the lamb begins to balk at the halter, I can usually get them moving forward by offering them a 'cookie'.

Within 10 minutes, both girls are following the cookie leading nicely. I walk them around with frequent stops to pet and snuggle and an occasional cookie as a reward. About 15 minutes is long enough for the first lesson. After carefully removing the halter (so the lamb doesn't bolt) I give them each another cookie so they learn to stick around when the halter comes off. I always try to end each halter lesson on a positive note.

Dream says.....I don't know what all the fuss is about ~ I already follow her everywhere!

1 comment:

  1. What I want to know is how you get the cookies to the babies? When I bring cookies into the flock I get MOBBED by the ewes demanding that they get the cookies. Even if things settle down, the minute a cookie appears or they hear one being crunched they're BAAAACK......

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