Meet Oscar. Oscar the llama. He's our sheep guardian. He has been around our farm for going on two years now and I love him dearly. I had wanted a llama for years, so you could say he was one of my dreams come true. The problem with Oscar is he loves to take our sheep for long walks across the street to a greener buffet. This isn't just some dirt road you only see one car go down each day... no, it's pretty busy. Not by city standards, but by country standards. I would say at least 10-20 vehicles go by on an average hour. The reason our herd is able to cross this road is because there is one side of our property not fenced in. There are several reasons we haven't fenced it in:1. We're renting here and our landlord says we'd have to leave the fence if we put it up (legally, he doesn't have a leg to stand on, but it's still a hassle we don't want to deal with).
2. Our landlord is trying to get someone to rent the property for grazing purposes even though the property was included in the contract we signed.
3. It would cost a LOT to buy all the posts and barbed wire.
Last year Oscar took the sheep for this walk across the street about once a day and then we'd have to drive over there and chase our herd back. This year it has been more like 2-3 times a week that we've found out livestock across the street, but that's still not good. We got a notice from the animal control saying that we're going to be fined $500 if our animals get caught on the road again! Apparently, even though we haven't actually caught our animals in the process of crossing, someone else has. So, we've decided that since we're not going to be putting a fence up and are unwilling to feed them hay all summer (it's just not worth the cost) we're going to sell Oscar and our herd of sheep. Whenever we have our own place (somewhere where we can grow our own hay) we'll get more sheep and probably another llama. We were planning on making a move like that this year, but it didn't work out. So... goodbye, Oscar.
