News Letter: Spring 2004
Puppy Update and the Bond Flock Progress

The puppies are nearly seven months old now. They have been spayed and neutered at six months and so are ready to grow up and become full guardians, well sometime in the next year. I had read that sometimes at around five months, they MAY begin doing some guardian work. As it happens, it was as if a switch was flipped. Almost to the day, the puppies began going everywhere with the ewe flock.

They blend in quite well with only their tails as flags to show where they are in the flock. Their style has become for one of them to stay with the head of the flock as they move and the other follows with the last of the sheep. As the sheep graze, they will station themselves on small hills or rocks and lay and watch. Then as the sheep began to move on, they go with them.

One afternoon not long ago, I heard a lot of barking in the south woods and as I watched, the sheep all came up out of the woods as a mob with the puppies "driving" them towards the house and barn. We have had endless pressure from the coyotes, and it must be that a coyote had moved in too close to the flock? After some milling, the flock was quiet again and went back to grazing. This sort of guarding behavior is not taught, it is either there in the breeding or it isn't. It is such a relief to have the dogs go with the sheep and be on the alert. We sincerely hope that the puppies don't have any overwhelming encounters with a predator before they are better grown. Its our hope that should there be a problem, their barking will bring Badger and Marley. The four dogs do already work as a pack when chasing down coyotes.

Jack following the sheep.

Jack and a ewe.

There has been speculation over the winter that sometime in the near future there will be wolves moving into Colorado, down from Yellowstone and Wyoming. Last month, a tagged wolf from Yellowstone was found dead on I-70, south and west of here. So, the wolves are here now in Colorado. Just for fun I looked this up ... Yellowstone is 2.2 million acres or 3438 square miles. Rocky Mountain National Park is a mere 414 square miles. If wolves can't be contained (have enough range) then what chance do we have here in Colorado? People think of the land out here as being wild and empty, only it isn't. There isn't anywhere in Rocky Mountain National Park that people don't go or have access to. There are still places in Yellowstone that they can keep the public out of, but not much. The land isn't empty and hasn't been for 75 years ... there are literally people everywhere now. Not like downtown New York City, that's not what I mean ... I mean, people are now spread out on 3 to 35 acre parcels all over the front range of Colorado.

Yes, there is BLM land, but what people also don't seem to know is that a good deal of the land that falls into National Parks and National Forests, etc is privately held land. Our west 40 acres falls inside the Roosevelt National Forest. This designation only means that the Forest Service has put boundaries on Survey Maps defining areas of surveillance and interest surrounding the government held forest. The only true wilderness left is in Alaska and Canada. Wolf packs will just add to the already considerable predator pressures in our area. There are now so many people in Colorado that there can't help but be problems between wolves and people.

The number of Bond sheep continues to grow slowly in our flock. We now have 10 ewes and rams in addition to the original four brought in from Australia. We have sold an additional two breeding rams and have another three ram lambs that will be available. There are also many 3/4 blood Bonds now and next spring we will have our first 7/8 ths blood Bonds, which we will consider to be "pure". Our numbers will be much increased then.

Bond ewes and lambs.

Bond ewes and lambs.

Of late, this past month of June we have had rain! Almost 4 inches total. This is about one third of our annual rainfall all at once. While its great to have the rain, the first cutting of hay has been delayed in the cutting for about three weeks now. If the delay is much longer, there won't be three cuttings of hay this summer? For now the river is running and the fields are growing and we are happy for that. As always, our best wishes to you all! Come and see us at the farm if you have the time.
Joanna & Keith [an error occurred while processing this directive]