A reassuring discovery: sheep are not quite as stupid as ducks. I was worried there for awhile. When I first brought my five sheep home, they ran for the farthest, darkest, coldest corner of the goat corral forest, and there they stayed for three solid days. I had thought they would come down the hill for food and water, but after a couple days of watching them up there shivering I decided I'd better haul some hay and a bucket of water to them so they wouldn't keel over.
Luckily we had a dry spell, so I dropped flakes of hay ever closer to the barn, luring them downhill. Unlike my ill-fated runner ducks, who definitely would have rather starved than risk venturing far from their rosebush lair, the sheep took the hint, and began to relax and spread themselves a bit.
These sheep had had some serious harrassment from dogs, where they had lived all their previous lives, so it wasn't surprising that my dogs shocked them terribly every time they chased each other around up and down the garden paths on the other side of their fence. Ty didn't help things by occasionally woofing at them. But they already seem to be beginning to realize my fences don't allow dogs through, and that my dogs aren't fence-running.
The goats are something of a problem, since they are much pushier than the sheep, and refuse to allow them to share their feed rack. Worse, I have no shelter from the rain other than one small barn stall, too small for dominance struggles to end peacefully. So, when it started raining this morning, I had to do some fancy figuring.
I ended up putting tarps over my dog run, installing the goats in it, and then shutting the sheep in the stall, since I knew they'd be too afraid to go in there on their own. In fact, Bonnie and I had work pretty hard to get them in at all. I think it took Bonnie about four tries, and even when finally she had them all squished into the doorway, they still wouldn't step inside until I had the bright idea of rattling a pan with a little grain in it.
When it stopped raining I let them out into the goat corral again, which turned out to be a big mistake. Long after dark, it suddenly began to not just rain, but pour. I knew the sheep wouldn't come in for shelter, and I worried they would get soaked and die of pneumonia (okay, I'm a worrier). Bonnie and I put the goats back into the dog run and went back out in the solid drenching rain and pitch darkness to see if we could get the sheep to come in.
Answer: no. We tried. We tried and tried and tried, but no. I had to leave them out there. In the morning when I could see, and it wasn't raining any more, Bonnie and I managed it. These are sheep which Bonnie could wear along three feet behind, in their former home. Here, their flight distance was between thirty and a hundred feet. I was pleased that Bonnie did understand (mostly) that when I said sit, she'd better sit and stay sat or she'd have the work of gathering semi-wild sheep in downed timber all over again. The skinniest smallest sheep was shivering, but the rest seemed fine, not even wet to the skin after such a rainy night.
Today, my husband and I jerry-rigged a shelter for the goats behind the barn, out of tarps, a funky old E-Z-Up canopy, some scrap plywood and a piece of cattle panel. I don't know how people manage without junk piles! The sheep are locked securely in the stall, where they will stay dry and fed whether they like it or not.
It is forecast to rain indefinitely.