I would like to wish you all a warm Good Monday Morning! For a lot of you, it is the first day back to work for the new year. Many of our long time visitors have found that work is one of the best places to read OPOD. In order to maintain your good standing with your employer, we suggest that before you open OPOD, you have a spreadsheet open. Then open OPOD in front of the spreadsheet, and listen for footsteps. If you hear anyone coming, pop the spreadsheet back up to the top of your computer screen. Also, be cognizant of any reflective surfaces behind your computer screen, which might show a reflection of what you are looking at. With these simple techniques, you should be able to enjoy all the wonderful pictures, while still at work. Just a little way you can stick it to the man.
But I digress. Lets get back to Goat Roper week. If you are going to have sheep, you are going to need a good way to count them periodically. Shown above is a way NOT to do it. Standing in the middle of a flock, waving a burlap bag rarely results in an accurate count. The way sheep are counted is to put them in a pen, and then let them out of a narrow opening, one at a time.
I have found this to be the ONLY way to get an accurate count of a flock of any meaningful size. It looks like this guy is just counting them as they walk out, which will work, but it is easy to lose count. I have seen others who had a long cord with knots in it, and as each sheep goes by, they move their hand up past the next knot. Then, after all the sheep have passed by you can calmly count the knots you went past.
One of the things you will find is that sheep, especially lambs, have a tendency to jump when being counted, which can make things more confusing. As one sheep is leaving the pen, the one behind him will jump over him, potentially throwing off the count.
This next picture looks like the man outside the pen is potentially a buyer, and sheep are being let out and counted to be sold to him. Note again the jumping sheep right at the gate.
We will be examining more advanced sheep handling procedures, but today, I wanted to start with the basics.
