Sheep in prison

I didn't mean to do it.  It was an accident, and I felt bad about it.  In the morning, after I'd fed the sheep and milked the goats, I walked back to the house. Later, I went off to work for a few hours.  When I returned home mid-afternoon, I spent some more time inside, since it was raining on and off, until time for the evening milking.  That's when I discovered that I'd left the sheep locked in their pen, without food or water, all day.

It didn't hurt them any.  It was only ten hours, and they're fat and healthy enough to fast for that long. However, it can't have been comfortable or pleasant for them.  They were uncomplaining, happy to see me, normally behaved.

Here's a difference between goats and sheep.  I could never have locked the goats up for the day without knowing about it, even if I spent most of that day away.  The goats would have screamed bloody murder out there.  They would have smashed the barn apart or leaped the partitions, or tried hard, at least.  The sheep just accepted the situation and waited for me to let them out.  Not every stereotype about goats and sheep is true, but this one seems to be.

Shearing the Sheep



Olive, before shearing starts

The easiest way to shear sheep is definitely having a professional shearer do it.  With his expertise and electric shears, he does it in under five minutes, and the cost is low, somewhere around $10 per sheep.  However, we only have one shearer covering the entire vast Cariboo region.  I have only three sheep needing shearing (the fourth ewe is a hair sheep who sheds in the spring) and no-one close to me raises sheep.  The shearer won't come all the way out here during his busy season.  I either have to truck my animals to him or wait until the end of the season, watching my ewes suffer from the heat while I wait.

Therefore, the easiest thing for me to do is to shear them myself.  This year, I'm late, mostly because of the cool, rainy weather, and I've just finished.  I'd probably do a better job of it if I bought proper equipment and took lessons, but I can't be bothered.  I just head out on a nice day with my best sewing scissors, catch a sheep, tie her to a post surrounded by clean grass, and start snipping. 

At first, it's very pleasant.  My ewes love to cuddle, and they're sick of all that hot wool, so they enjoy themselves.  They stand quietly, soaking up the attention and relishing the cool air on their skin.  I'm having a good time, too, kneeling in the shade, admiring the sheen and sparkle of the clean wool, feeling my hands grow smooth and soft from all the lanolin.  I feel like a sculptor, removing superfluous material to reveal the emerging figure of the animal.



"Sculpting" Olive, halfway finished

Michaelangelo's "Captives"

About halfway through the hour-long procedure, my fingers are getting sore, even though I tape them to avoid blisters.  The ewe is becomming bored and figety, which makes it slower going if I don't want to cut her skin.  By the time I'm finished, we're both mightily relieved.

A couple of days later, I shear the next one.  After a week or so, I have three bags full, and I can send them to the mill for spinning into a winter's knitting.

Olive, after shearing (but still needing a bit of trimming on the belly)

A Cougar Brings Us Sheep

Signs of spring:  This morning, when I stepped outside, I heard a crowd of little birds twittering in a tree.  I couldn't see them and don't know what sort of bird they are -- likely one of the many warblers or sparrows that migrate through here -- but I know that I hadn't heard that sound all winter.  To me, that makes it official:  spring is starting.


The rancher sprang to his feet at the sound of furious barking.  What he saw made him go for his gun. Loading it and rushing outside, he glanced at the carnage in the sheep pen on his way past, following the dog.  Down the hill, splashing across the creek, Rover was hot on the heels of a cougar, and the cougar had something white in its jaws.

By the time he caught up, his dog had treed the big cat.  It was on a branch, twenty feet up.  He aimed carefully and fired.

  

The lamb fell first as the cat dropped it.  It fell near the rancher, the cougar thudding down a second later.  He bent down to find, unbelievably, that the lamb  was still alive.  Carefully, he scooped it up and carried it back to the house, laid it in a box, and picked up the phone.

We'd been living in the valley for four years by then and I guess we had a reputation for being both caring and careful with our animals.  When we arrived at the ranch, there were three lambs waiting.  Two more had been found injured.  Their mothers were dead, but the lambs, it seemed, had received a quick shake to break their necks, and it hadn't quite worked.  They were obviously hurt, but could move all their legs, so we decided to take all three home and see if we could nurse them back to health.

We installed the patients behind the cookstove on a bed of papers and hay.  We treated the two with the injured backs for shock, with warmth and a bit of water with electrolytes.  Charles started clipping the hair away from the wounds on the third lanb's rear legs.  Both legs had been torn wide open, but the tendons were intact.  As he clipped, he found more cuts, then more again, and after lots of careful work, he'd pretty much shaved the poor little guy from tail to head.

Over the next few weeks, all three seemed to be making progress.  We moved them into a pen in the barn and rigged up slings so the two ewe lambs could begin to exercise their legs.  Unfortunately, the progress these two were making only went so far, and in the end, they didn't make it.  The little ram who had been up the tree with the cougar thrived, though.  We named him Sammy and turned him into quite a pet.  He'd trot around at my heels as I went about doing my chores, and he loved to be cuddled.

Sammy grew into a fine young ram.  He was a breed called Katahdin, and had hair rather than wool.  We bought him a pair of ewes and started our flock with these three.  When Sammy was two years old, he turned mean -- not with the ewes, but with people.  For the next eight years, we couldn't turn our backs on him, and I was very sorry that I'd raised him as such a pet.  He was beautiful, though.