Bini Spisak

Yes! I'm still in search of some sheep! I would be more than happy to see if we could work something out. Right now I have an older trained dog who I'm hoping to finish his advanced titles on. He would be able to help train some sheep as long as you don't have any bottle babies in the group. I also have a young dog who is ready to get started. This area is just devoid of sheep herding unfortunately. I know closer to Central Ohio, western New York and more towards Philadelphia area have more opportunities for herding. I am hoping to get more in this area and maybe eventually some clinicians 🙂

I also did take a look at the Ashtabula county fair but it was mostly junior fair and very little in the way of sheep. I guess it's much more horse and cow country around here. I'm going to the Geauga county fair this weekend and hope I might be able to turn something up that way!

Thanks for the suggestions! I can definitely check out the local feed stores. I also decided to try the local butcher place as I figure they might know who the area farmers are. Here's to hoping something pans out 🙂

Hello!
I recently moved out to a part of northeast Ohio, in the Ashtabula area, and have been in search of a place to go to practice herding with my dogs. I've been herding for over 10 years with multiple dogs but this area is a bit of a dead zone for herding and I'm not able to have my own flock at this point. I do have sheep experience and whenever I work with the dogs on sheep I'm very sensitive to the sheep and their needs. I am just looking for a place that I can regularly go to practice. I of course would pay a "rental" fee for each practice opportunity.

I'm trying to find a place to rent sheep from to practice herding but haven't had any luck yet. Anyone have any ideas or suggests of how to go about finding some sheep in my area? I've tried a local sheep Facebook group, craigslist, and emailing some people with fiber farms in the area. I'm not sure what else to try and thought I'd ask the creative and thoughtful people here!

That is just the sort of stuff I was looking for! These are the things that don't get told right up front when you are looking to buy a property. I will definitely look more into these different areas and keep all of this in mind if I do get the chance to move there. Also, feel free to tell any interesting stories all information is useful, even if only for entertainment purposes! This is not quite permie related, but I really haven't had a specific place in mind when just browsing through the information and the little bit of house searching I have done, but I do suppose that I would need to also know about hospitals and any other relevant healthcare information since I would be more than likely working in a hospital, if only at first. I have heard some stuff through others in my career field but that was more second hand and filtered through the people in the field rather than what it is like to actually participate in healthcare out their as a patient, which is always a good thing to know! Thanks so much for all the good tips and information so far, hopefully it will keep coming!

Thanks for the resource! That will certainly give me something to think about and spend time reading. It would make sense that there is less of a carry capacity given that Ohio recieves much more rainfall and is much more lush for more of the year, but an idea of number is helpful since things like more and less can be rather abstract and hard to plan    

I have lived my whole life in Northeast Ohio. I love it here and have learned what works best for this area for my needs, wants, and goals. A couple years ago I took a trip to Arizona and fell in love with it! I didn't think that I would really ever move out there at the time of the trip, but I have recently discovered some potential career changes and information that makes moving out there a real possibility. However, I know very little about what would be required, the pros and cons, of living out there. I love my various livestock animals, horses, sheep, goats, and chickens and would want to continue living with them if I did make the move, so more of my concern is how would you incorporate animals into a sustainable system in that climate/environment. Any tips about plants and energy sources/resources would be great too! Also, I would love, if someone has it, some information about being off the grid in this area. My fiance has been casually looking up real estate in this area but gets concerned about seeing "off the grid". He is completely fine living in a rural area and having things like solar panels and the like. His big area of hesitation has been surrounding water and sewer/septic (I have finally semi-convinced him about composting toilets!) I haven't come up with a solid enough reason or evidence to convince him that we would be okay with animals and not having a city water hook up. He is used to having a well (as that is what we currently have, but says that there aren't wells out there so we would need city water to supply enough water for us, the animals, and plants). Sorry that was kind of all over the place but any bit of information or advice is welcome!

I am not able to separate the males because they all free range together. Plus, as mean as they are to each other if they are not together they throw a fit!

I have looked in to getting more females some how but every place I have seen only sells as straight run, so I would still have to deal with extra males that I don't want unless I was incredibly lucky and got a straight run batch of all females. I also have had some very bad experiences with trading animals, even with people that I knew well and thought I could trust, so I really don't like the idea of giving/selling animals.

I have no problem taking an animal to be euthanized or calling a vet to do it if it is what is needed to prevent undue suffering to an animal, because I agree that if I am to take responsibility than that responsibility includes unfavorable situations in which ending a life is kinder than allowing an animal to suffer. However, if a vet euthanizes an animal then any meat that could be gained is now unusable. If I am going to end the life of a perfectly healthy animal I want it to not be wasted and I believe that using the meat from it would be the best way to do that (even if I am not the one that is going to eat it). BUT that is the part that I am not okay with. I just really don't think that I could kill them myself. I might have found someone that would be willing to come over and do it for me and help me learn how to butcher humanely, which is more and more looking like what is going to happen. I was just trying to give these jerks of birds a chance at living a full life if I could help it since they do still do a good job at eating all the bugs!

I was also trying to get a feel for various options because I was looking into getting dairy goats for the milk, since I still use dairy at our place and I really would like my food to be as homegrown as possible. But I know that if I have goats that are producing milk I am going to have baby goats that I will need to do something with and I know that I will get way more attached to a goat then I would a guinea.

We have guinea fowl that we got for pest patrol, because all the other methods that we tried did nothing to get rid of the crazy amount of ticks at our place. I went with the guineas because we do use eggs, so that wouldn't be a big problem and we have not let the raise any keets of their own. However, we lost some of our female guineas to pneumonia over the summer, so now we have too many males and they are just beating each other up. Strangely enough, the males are not beating up on each other, but rather seriously picking on the females. So I think we need to reduce our male population. However, I had never planned on having to cull anything from our flock because I was very careful in the beginning to make sure we didn't have to many males or to let the raise any excess young. I have to admit I am just a softy and really don't want to kill anything, especially something I raised. I was wondering what your suggestions would be for reducing the amount of males before they hurt the females. I really don't want to kill anything, but if I had to the meat would not go to waste as I know people that would eat it or at the very least our dogs would get it. Suggestions anyone?

I have Pomeranians at the moment. Although I would like to maybe try an Embden, pilgrim or American buff in the future. I have figured that the geese are pretty much their own "people" and do what the want when they want. The 2 yr old ones have just quit laying eggs after having laid for basically a year or so straight. They started laying in December when they were like nine months old and have been laying since then. They went broody this spring, but nothing hatched so I got rid of the eggs when they started to go bad and that has been it. I am interested to see what they decide to do next, especially because I have no idea what made them lay eggs like that to begin with.