Sheep shelter and getting plans changed

With the automatic waterer in the corral for the sheep we have a nice place for the animals. However, Juan thought we are missing some shelter to provide the sheep with shade. That’s a good idea. We have a number of scrap material and so we set up to find a few pieces to build something new out of it.

We made a wooden frame and attached the roofing sheets to it with regular roofing screws.

Then we put four metal posts into the ground and attached the roof with wire to it. Done!

There is so much fresh gras - let’s get the sheep there!

We had mowed around the house before. That triggered a lot of new growth and all of a sudden we had a large amount of good sheep food there. You can see in the picture that the gras in the foreground is lush and green while the much taller gras in the background is already drying on top.

So we put up an electric net around the house and took the sheep there to eat. Much better have someone eat it instead of putting in the work to mow it.

But then the sheep figured something out. Underneath the house there is quite a bit of crawl space and it’s cool there. So they decided that the house provides a much better shelter than the one we built them.

There is no plan to confine the sheep to a small space such as a the corral. We made the corral in order to have something where we can keep them safe without relying on the electric net. Over time we’ll figure out grazing systems - and thus spaces and infrastructure - for sheep, horses and also for some cows.

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