Sheep Journal

After a hot day lolling in the shade of a tree the hungry sheep begin to graze when the sun goes down.

I think of Ramadan when Marrakech came alive at night after a day of fasting.  The fireflies are kif pipes lit in the dark  and narrow ways that puzzle through the souk as the sundown horns shriek from the mosques to send the faithful and hungry rushing home for harira,* a thick, peppery lamb soup to break their fast.

Salman Rushdie captures the vibrant Arab night well in The Satanic Verses.

*Harira: lamb shoulder browned in olive oil with salt, garlic & onion added to lentils & water with Harisa, saffon, cinnamon & coriander on low heat until it thickens.  One of many ways to make it; no matter the recipe, it's always better the next day.

The new man, a girl really, shyly walks away from the camera following her mother.  She was born at pasture 3 days ago in the midst of 300 ewes; a surprise, as her parents were 7 month old lambs at the time of her conception, "too young to breed," but I guess they didn't read Ron Parker's The Sheep Book. 

I came upon mother and her newborn daughter during an early evening sheep check, lambing ewes are easy to see as they separate from the flock to lamb.  I went back to the barn to get an ear tag and the tag pliers; 479 is small for a lamb, but she is getting along and growing as she stays close to her mother who feeds her well.

When the day is over, their bellies full from grazing, the lambs come up near the barn where they repose for the evening and I'm reminded of that Randy Newman tune about the 'promised land' with the line "You'll just sing about Jesus and drink wine all day" as I watch them dreamily chew their cuds. 

But they want no church and they need no bar. 

Lambs lounge under a shade tree next to a runoff pond that would appear as it is, algae green, if it were not back lit by the sun getting lower in the sky.

The lambs are under the trees near the pond after a shower.  One sees colors like these only at this time of year.  The greens of Summer are drier and more brittle even after a rain while those of the Fall are darker and silent.

Today was the day. We had to get the lambs down the hill from the lambing barn to the paddock of green grass we'd fenced for them to begin their Summer of rotational grazing.  The grass was getting tall, taller than the smaller lambs; and it was starting to loose some of it's nutritive value, I feared.  The way down was unfenced and the tall grass would trip the smaller lambs so with a 5' rotary cutter behind the old Massey I cut a 15' swath, a path wide enough for the 200 plus lambs.

But they needed a leader. From the lower farm, we took a yearling ewe; we haltered her, tied her down in the back of the truck, and for insurance Sarah rode with her holding on as I drove up the bumpy hill to the lambing barn.

We got the ewe off the truck and in with the lambs, so far so good. 

In theory, Sarah was to shake a grain bucket to tempt the ewe with feed who would follow her and the lambs would follow the older ewe—or so I hoped—as would never the lambs follow us for any reason.  After a couple of  playful lamb revolutions in the yard with the chasing dog (that made me doubt my theory) we got the ewe started down the path following Sarah's bucket, the lambs  began to follow the ewe down the hill—it worked—and I brought up the rear with Poem.

When I saw this shot in Lightroom, I realized these two rams (walking side by side, heads down) look like they'd been drawn by Bruce Eric Kaplan (BEK) for a cartoon in The New Yorker. 

Then I had to come up with a caption and I'm not very good at that so maybe you can help me.

Hats for Haiti

Get a free skein of worsted yarn to knit or crochet at hat when you suggest a caption to the photo above. We'll sell the hats you make at the stand and send all the money to a  worthy charity in Haiti in the name of the knitters, the buyers and the sheep.  

The work of rebuilding Haiti has just begun; they need our help now.

Click the "Add a comment" link below to leave your caption; I'll  contact you and  provide you with a skein of yarn for free.

§

It's 10 AM, Wednesday.  It just started to snow.  It's  relatively warm, just below freezing; this is a wet, Spring snow with 6 more inches expected.  The wind picks up as the day wears on; most of the snow should blow away on the flat where the flock is quartered for the winter. 

The sheep have 3'' of fleece.  They are warm and their wool protects them from the wind.  We will shear the flock on March 1, 2 & 3, two weeks before lambing begins.

I always take Poem to the sheep at dusk to work her as I look over the flock over before nightfall.  This afternoon the temperature is 20°F and a 20 MPH northwesterly wind blows ice crystals across the plain.  The sheep seem more comfortable than I am.  I put my gloved hand up to break the wind cutting my face.

Since Poem has been staying at the farm, her demeanor around the sheep has improved.  Rather than charging into them as she would often do, she now works calmly and adopts slow, moving postures (she is a grave mime) in relation to the sheep, anticipating their movements, frightening them, offering them an escape only in directions of our chosing.  When moving sheep, there are rules we observe: sheep always go toward other sheep, they never go toward people,  they prefer going uphill rather than going down, and so on.  When she understands my intention, Poem positions herself to pressure the sheep away from her; their angle of flight has to do with where I stand, where the flock is and the direction it moves.

Poem has an innate geometry that she lets come forth when she moves in relation to sheep; she is a silent cue ball banking off the green cushion for the "click-click" of a perfect carom.  A dog at work is uncanny to watch; and to be in the midst of this play of vectors is special.  We call a herding dog's talent instinct, a word to describe a part of being that either we do not share or  that we can not rationally explain.  It is something that simply is.

These two mallards flew in last week; they waddle after the sheep everywhere they go; and like the sheep, they don't like the dog.

Dominique sits in the bucket of the tractor holding a ewe who was found cast, meaning she was over on her side; down in the slush, she couldn't right herself being in full fleece.  A wooled sheep on a slope with its back lower than its legs, can not get its feet on the ground to get up; even the slightest inclines like those around woodchuck holes in the Summer cause problems.  A down sheep will die in several hours; its rumen begins to malfunction and that affects other internal organs and processes. 

When you stand a cast sheep up, it lists and circles to the same side it was down on and falls; you continue to stand it up until it can remain standing on its own.  

This ewe was wet and cold.  She had been down in the slush for some time and she couldn't stand for long; she was shivering so we gave her a ride up the hill to the barn and offered her dry hay with some oats (she was hungry which is a good sign) to warm her up.  Later, she was able to stand and will rejoin the flock tomorrow. 

A shepherd must keep looking at her flock.

Foolish me—trying to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear—and what a fine sow's ear my dog Poem is.  Not a go-to-town gal, she's a down-on-the-farm dog, a sheep herding Australian Kelpie.  Her predecessors in my life, Miss and Shade—mother and daughter—are gone now; they were Kelpies who lived in the house and went to the sheep with me.

Poem is different.  She is not a house dog (we tried; she would work Jet & Stripe, the house cats, hour after hour to the detriment of her training) she is not a companion animal in the traditional sense but we are becoming a team when working sheep.

She now stays in her kennel at the farm and seems happy there. When, twice-a-day, I come to take her to the sheep, she is happy to see me, as happy as I am to see her.  We need the distance, we need a  reason to meet, a reason to be together, we need the sheep.

When she and I were together all the time (this truly can breed contempt), I had to shout commands to her, over and over, as if she were deaf.  I tired of yelling.  I now speak quietly to her, "Go round, come behind, easy, down..."   In the clamor of moving sheep, her big ears listen for my voice, she attends, she minds me.

Poem you are my dog, but my dog your way—I'm learning—proof you can teach an old dog new tricks.

When the pasture growth slowed as the days got shorter and the daytime temperatures dropped, the ewe flock (~200 hd.) was fenced into an acre and a half.  Not only do we manage the sheep to keep them well fed but we manage the pasture to keep it vigorous by protecting it from overgrazing.  A healthy pasture is a varied ecosystem; it has many interdependent species growing in it; some  of these plants, like the grasses, the sheep will eat and other plants they will avoid because these plants contain toxins that are harmful when consumed in quantities sufficient to provide adequate nutrition to a sheep. 

Sheep must be removed from a pasture well before their only eating choices are species poisonous to them, which they will begin to eat if they have no other option. Pastures are vulnerable too; when the grasses and clovers have been overgrazed the soil in which they grow is exposed to seeds of toxic plants that will germinate, and grow to crowd out the grasses diminishing the amount of useable nutrition in the paddock as the years go by.

Until the grass grows again in the spring, the sheep are fed hay harvested on the farm; and a grain mix of whole oats, cracked corn and soy flakes.  Hay in round bales is provided free choice meaning it is always available to them.  The hay crop was poor this year as the summer rains prevented timely harvest; we supplement the hay with 1 pound of grain per day per sheep.  The sheep love a little grain.

Much is being made of "grass fed" (grain free) livestock; like "organic" it has become a brand regulated by the USDA and that troubles me.  As far as I can tell, there is little science behind the grass fed health claims, either for humans or for livestock, and the extant science seems to be primarily anecdotal: Yes, 100% grass  (pasture raised) is better than 100% grain  (feedlot raised)—or any large grain/grass ratio for a ruminant accustomed to  grazing—you'll agree after having read food guru Michael Pollan. His Power Steer cast light on the darkness of feedlots of factory farms; I  laud him for his gastronomic common-sense and pleasing writing style. 

Tell me this, Michael: Is 100% grass fed better than 85% grass/15% grain, or 90%/10% or another similar ratio favoring grass to grain, a ratio commonly fed by most small farms?  Where is the study, where is the science, where is the proof? 

There is none.

Sheep always tell the truth. And if Dominique is not quick to back away from the ewes, they'll knock her into the feeder and there, butt-up, head-down, ear to ear with the greedy ewes—their molars loudly cracking corn—she'll find herself, proof that a little grain is good for sheep.

To move the ewes in the open, Dominique leads them with a partially filled pail of grain singing to them as she walks; I follow the flock with Poem.

What Dominique sees looking backward

What Poem sees looking forward

Here the ewes cross a small bridge on their way to a classing yard near the silos on the far left.  We classed (evaluated) the ewe's 2009 lamb crop earlier in the day and picked stellar individuals as measured by their size, vigor and wool quality. The 60 dams of these elite lambs will be bred back to the same sires we used last year, hopefully replicating the get.

The dams of the lambs that didn't measure up because the lambs were smaller, less vigorous with wool faults (for example an open or not-dense fleece) or generally unthrifty (perhaps too inbred*) to my classing eye and hand will be terminal sired for market lambs this year being bred by our new Ile-de-France rams.  These crossbred offspring will exhibit hetrosis or hybrid vigor; they will be larger, meatier, more thrifty and faster growing than the purbred merino lambs, but they will have coarser wool (Ile-de-France sheep  have medium wool, yet I'm hoping for an average fiber diameter of 21 microns on the offspring which is still considered fine wool) that we will sort at shearing, keeping it separate from the finer  purebred merino wool (16-18 microns) that is to be spun into knitting yarn, and have blankets woven from it.

*Next year I will import merino semen from Australia, sourcing different bloodlines to outbreed the merinos, increasing the hetrosis of my lines while maintaining our noted, ultra-fine wool.

This yearling ewe is the second victim of the dog attack; she almost died even though her original injuries were less severe than those of 313.  I found her two days after the attack.  The body areas, where I'd clipped the wool away,  were covered  with maggots, 1000's of them.  The flies found her before I did; they are attracted to wounds beginning to heal.  I didn't see her when I looked the flock over on the day of the attack; the bites were superficial and hidden by her wool.

She was bitten in the four places you see iodine: the upper flank, the belly, the hock and the dock.  I noticed her during the daily, mid-paddock flock check with my herding dog Poem; she didn't get up when I walked toward her—something was wrong—she looked at me helplessly, then I saw the flies around her dock.  Taking hold of her, I parted the wool over her tail; I saw several maggots, then more squirming away from the light.  I detest flies. Treatment for fly strike is to clip all the wool away from the affected area exposing the maggots, bathe the area in peroxide, dress the wounds with iodine and administer a fly repellant—this took almost 2 hours—I was surprised how far from the dock (where the flies first laid their eggs) the maggots had spread under the wool. 

Being alone and having no tailgate on my farm truck, I took her in the cab with me and drove her back to the special care area with my free arm around her neck in a loose headlock in case she jumped around.  But weakened by the ordeal, she went along for the ride; the truck smelled of iodine.

Dogs play with sheep, they chase them and bite them—sometimes ripping the flesh away to expose tendons and bones—and before finishing off the sheep, the dog will leave because it's bored or hungry and go home for a bowl of Puppy Chow in the kitchen.  Playful dogs  kill sheep slowly; their victims are eaten alive by fly larva, death in the warm Summer months comes in about 3 days.  "Where is Puff, Spot?"

A newsletter reader, a dog lover judging from her email address, demanded that I unsubscribe her from the mailing list after the first installment of The Crying Game—she didn't comprehend the unhappy irony of happiness is a warm gun—and I did take her off the list without making comment on  her prayerful advice to me about my fences on my property;  but I must dedicate this to her dogs in hope they never stray from her.

I know all there is to know about the crying game
I've had my share of the crying game

First there are kisses, then there are sighs
And then before you know where you are
You're saying goodbye

Don't want no more of the crying game
Don't want no more of the crying game

The Crying Game, sung by Boy George, written by Stephens, Geoff.

The Monday before last we put the ewe flock (~200 hd.) into a new 7 acre paddock, their last rotation of the year as growth slows this time of the year;  the forage was 4' tall and weedy with golden rod and other late-season growth.  A Cornell Cooperative Extension agent had come out to look at the pastures; after walking through the brushy paddock, she said, "Yes, let the sheep in here, they'll eat what they want and leave the rest."

But what scared me about that paddock was its height; I couldn't see what was in there and when the sheep entered it I wouldn't be able to see them when they moved away from the fence lines that had been cut the day before with a roaring 15' rotary cutter behind a 125 HP John Deere tractor.  I hoped the noise of the farm machinery would tell any unseen predators in the brush that man was coming and they should "be gone!"

Tuesday morning when Dominique arrived at the farm she noticed that 30 odd ewes had knocked the fence down, gone over it and were in another paddock—this meant trouble—inside the brushy paddock, she found the rest of the flock; they were agitated.   She saw  that 313 had been  severely maimed. She called and I rushed over with Poem.  Forensically, I wanted to know what she'd come upon, where the sheep were, where the fence was down, where 313 was bitten, where in the paddock had the attack occurred, and most importantly were there other victims of the attack.

On command Poem gathered the flock to us as she does and we looked everybody over as they milled around us; at that time, we saw no other victims.  313 was off to the side hobbling;  I called Poem away and we loaded the ewe into the back of the truck; Dominique got in and held her for the bumpy ride back to the barn where I could more closely examine and treat her.

Based on the evidence: that 313 was bitten in the hind quarters, that only one sheep was attacked,  that the she had been bitten many times and not killed, that the attack lasted 10-20 minutes I  determined  that the attack was by a dog not a coyote.

Horror of horrors, it looked like we may have fenced a dog into the paddock with the sheep—in the 3 1/2 years on this property this was the first predator attack—there have been no fence transgressions.   My electric fences are considered the most effective  type of fence at keeping coyotes and dogs out; but unfortunately, they would be equally effective at keeping them in, and this is what probably happened as the ewes had been in an adjacent paddock for the last 3 weeks having had no problems there.

The dog was gone when we got there, it probably got out where the fence was down.  I supposed  (hoped) it got hit by the fence while trying to escape and this shock(s) would discourage it from coming back—only time would tell if I was correct.  It was late in the day; I had no place to put the ewes but based on the facts as I sifted them, I decided to keep the sheep where they were.  Yes, this was a gamble, but it was the only bet I had.

My rifle and hand guns hadn't been cleaned for years; I might need  them now.  I drove to a late-night gun store to buy solvent, oil & patches; and I bought ammunition for my stainless steel .357 SP101 Ruger revolver; I loaded it and drove back to the paddock at nightfall, the time when predators stalk and kill.  I wasn't going there to kill—doubting the dog would return so soon and in daylight—I was going there to make noise; .357 's are loud hand guns.  My purpose was to shoot and scare away all bad guys within earshot.  I fired rounds into the ground pointing the revolver at the points of the compass directing the gun-sound 360 degrees.  The sheep looked at me like I was crazy—round and round I went in my death-defying dance—then with hope in my heart and an empty gun in my hand I bid the girls good night, Poem and I drove home.  I slept well; what would happen would happen, I had done what I could.  But  at dawn when we  headed back to the paddock—getting closer and closer—my heart  began to pound as loudly as my .357.  When I saw them, the ewes were quiet and chewing their cuds with that dreamy look in their eyes; I felt silly, but I felt good like I'd  survived a natural disaster. 

Just driving up to the paddock and honking the horn may have worked as well as firing my revolver there; but I like to shoot the .357.  With the hammer cocked the slightest pressure pulls the custom trigger; it is incredibly accurate for having a 2" barrel and it really kicks. Morning and night, for several days, I went there and shot up the ground, firing in all directions, seeing myself playing drums of the spheres, "POP, pop-POP, pop-POP"  or "pop-POP-pop, POP, pop," I varried my 5 shot tattoo.  The dog hasn't come back, maybe I was right, maybe the fences are still effective, or maybe it wanted nothing to do with the beat of my dancing gun.

Next: Another victim.

The film (by Neil Jordan) begins as a psychological thriller; IRA foot soldier Fergus (Stephen Rea) and a unit of other IRA members, including a woman named Jude (Miranda Richardson), kidnap Jody (Forest Whitaker), a British soldier. They want the release of jailed IRA members and threaten to execute Jody in three days if their demands are not met.

While Fergus guards Jody, they develop a bond. Jody says he knows that Fergus won't kill him because it's not in his nature and tells him the story about the frog and the scorpion: the scorpion, wishing to cross a stream, asked the frog to let him ride his back over the stream. When the frog asked the scorpion how he could be sure that the scorpion would not sting him, the scorpion replied that if he did sting him, it would mean death by drowning for both of them. The frog complies, carrying the scorpion on its back across the stream. Before they reach the other side, however, the frog feels pain and realizes that the scorpion has stung him.

The frog asks, "Why did you sting me, Mr. Scorpion? For now we both will drown!" The scorpion replies, "I can't help it, it's in my nature."

The  sheep asks, "Why did you maim me, Mr. Dog?"  The dog replies, "I can't help it, it's in my nature."  They say a good shepherd's nature is to turn the other cheek; but caring for sheep, my nature had to become different. 

I found the ewe, tag # 313, in the morning; she had been bitten many times by a neighborhood dog; it  gnawed her left rear leg to the bone at the hock;  the attack must have lasted 20 minutes or longer judging by the number of wounds. The dog was playing with her, ripping at her hind quarters as she tried to run away; a coyote would have taken the ewe by the throat and killed her in seconds.  I respect the nature of coyotes, they kill efficiently, they don't mess around, they kill to eat.

I clipped her wool with a hand shear to expose the bites, I cut the torn skin away with a scalpel to expose the flesh preventing infection. I applied iodine to her wounds and I put her on penicillin to be administered IM for 10 days. 

She will recover but  probably walk with a limp. 

Shepherds in Virginia say, "A dog never crosses my property." 

"Happiness is a warm gun," sing the Beatles.

At sunset the rainbow disappeared.

A FAMACHA* color chart indicating levels of anemia

Looking at the color of the mucous membrane of the lower eyelid of a sheep will tell you if an animal is anemic and needs to be treated with a dewormer to save its life.

Why the FAMACHA system was developed

Haemonchus contortus (barber’s pole worm) is usually the biggest disease problem of sheep and goats throughout the warm regions of the world, particularly in the subtropical and tropical areas.  Major production losses and deaths can arise where the worm is not adequately controlled.

These worms are parasitic blood suckers and they attach to the gut wall; the effects of a heavy parasite burden in non-resilient animal will therefore be evident as a low ratio of red cells to plasma. This is seen in the mucous membranes of the eyes as a visible paleness generally known as anemia. By monitoring anemia, resilient and susceptible animals can be identified.

Due to overuse of dewormers over many years, resistance to these dewormers is an ever increasing problem. On many farms in many countries, there is resistance to all the groups of deworming drugs and the viability of sheep and goat farming is threatened. No-one can rely on the excessive use of drugs alone to control this parasite in the future.
    
While most sheep and goats (especially the adults) are able to withstand the unfavorable effects of Haemonchus, a small minority cannot. In the past, treatment strategies were designed for the minority of animals that did not have the ability to withstand infection.
    
Selectively deworming only those animals that require treatment greatly decreases the development of resistance because the eggs produced by the few resistant worms that survive treatment will be greatly diluted by all the eggs produced by the animals that did not receive treatment.  In contrast, where all animals are treated and moved to parasite-“safe”, or “clean” pasture, only resistant worms that survive treatment will produce all the eggs that form the next generation of worms.
   
Both resistance (the ability to prevent or suppress infection) and resilience (the ability to withstand the effects of parasites) have been shown to be moderately heritable. This means that sheep and goats can be either culled or selected for these traits.
 
Once sheep and goats that are unable to cope with existing worm challenge infections are identified, they can be targeted for special attention without the whole herd or flock having to be treated. In the long term, by culling animals that are repeatedly identified as unable to cope with moderate worm burdens, a more resistant and resilient flock, genetically suited to the environment can be bred.

*FAMACHA is an acronym derived by combining the name of the system's South African creator, Dr. Faffa Malan, with CHA which stands for chart. 

This excerpt is from a paper by Dr. Ray M. Kaplan and Dr. James E. Miller.

Dominique takes the special care lambs to her place; these lambs are weak or are lost or have been deserted—often times they are at death's door.  When they have recovered well enough to join the flock she will bring them back.

With a scourable spray Dominique marked the recent returnees—123 is sprayed like a hot cross bun—so they can be easily monitored from a distance; not that 123 needed to be marked, when you're walking among the lambs, she follows you everywhere you go.

We take a break from the cold while innoculating the ewes with CD/T vaccine.  I go to my idling truck, the heater blasting, to warm my hands and get my camera while Dominique huddles in with the sheep protecting herself from the 35 MPH gusts of Monday with afternoon temperatures that fell into the low 20's. 

Pink grease-marks on noses tell us which sheep have been vaccinated.  When all noses are marked, we let the sheep go to join the already vaccinated on the flats behind us; we then bring another 25 into the treatment pen keeping them bunched closely together to prevent them from moving which is easier on them and easier for us.

Gestating ewes must be vaccinated with CD/T several weeks prior to lambing to pass clostridium antibodies on to their lambs in colostrum, the first milk from the udder.  This vaccination is crucial to lamb survival as the lambs' immune systems don't begin to develop until six weeks of age.

CD/T (Clostridium Perfringens Types C & D plus Tetanus Toxoid) is a commonly used vaccine that is also approved for use in certified organic sheep; it guards against tetanus infection and enterotoxemia (overeaters disease) which is a painful, gastric affliction that is untreatable and causes a lamb's death usually within 24 hours of the onset of symptoms.

I came upon this ewe resting among chewed-off wild carrot greens when I walked into the flock this morning.  She let me approach to get a close up of her; but still, she kept an eye on me. 

The day after drenching, the sheep should be moved to a fresh paddock;  here they are, over their heads in a weedy field that they will devour in a week. 

For now, I hope the only Webster I need is Noah (a school teacher in Goshen in 1782) who defined whitlow for me when I first read The Devil and Daniel Webster  by Stephen Vincent Benét.

*There was a man named Jabez Stone, lived at Cross Corners, New Hampshire. He wasn't a bad man to start with, but he was an unluckyman. If he planted corn, he got borers; if he planted potatoes, he got blight. He had good enough land, but it didn't prosper him; he had a decent wife and children, but the more children he had, the less there was to feed them. If stones cropped up in his neighbor's field, boulders boiled up in his; if he had a horse with the spavins, he'd trade it for one with the staggers and give something extra. There's some folks bound to be like that, apparently. But one day Jabez Stone got sick of the whole business. He'd been plowing that morning and he'd just broke the plowshare on a rock that he could have sworn hadn't been there yesterday. And, as he stood looking at the plowshare, the off horse began to cough-that ropy kind of cough that means sickness and horse doctors. There were two children down with the measles, his wife was ailing, and he had a whitlow on his thumb. It was about the last straw for Jabez Stone. 

Thursday night was cold, in single digits. To water the sheep 50 gallon tubs are kept ice-free by 1500 watt submersible water heaters. But as expected the above ground water lines (a good grade of 5/8” garden hose) to the tubs froze preventing automatic refill of the tubs as regulated by float valves and water levels when the sheep drink. Sheep need about a gallon of water a day; Friday they were out of water.

There is a secondary line that runs parallel to the primary one so the tubs can be manually refilled when the primary lines freeze. The source for both lines is in the barn 100’s of feet from the tubs. After the tubs have been manually filled, the secondary line must be drained so that it doesn't freeze during the cold spell, which may go on for a day or a week or two. Draining the line is done by walking its length slowly while passing the line over the shoulder to let gravity empty it. This is cold, wet work; work to dread, but do; and feel good about when done. It's about the sheep.

Saturday at market was warm with a high of 43, good weather for selling wool. My cell phone rang about 1 PM; it was Clara back at the farm telling me that ewes from the breeding group were walking out on the frozen pond. When I heard this I saw sheep plunging through the thin ice like children. The horrific thing about frozen pond rescues is that more often than not the rescuer falls in and dies too, or this tragic aspect is what makes it news.

Clara said she shook a feed bucket at the sheep and they came off the pond, but when they realized the ruse, several walked back on the ice again. Clara didn't know what to do. I knew what to do, but I couldn't fence them back from the pond until tomorrow. I wouldn't get back to the farm until after dark.

But what to do now?

Then it hit me, "Break the ice!" around the edge of the pond, I told her, and that should keep the sheep on shore. Use heavy stones, a sledge hammer... She said she would try; I went back to my market customers preoccupied with visions of foundering sheep.

I called Clara back at 3 PM; she said the ice was too thick to break but she was keeping an eye on the sheep and so far they were all well. I thanked her. When night fell, Dominique and I packed up. It had been a good day at market. We got back to the farm about 8 PM detouring around a maddening traffic jam in Jersey.

On the way to the barn we drove past the pond. Dominique gasped, "Look, the ice is broken." My heart sank like a sheep. But when we got closer what we thought to be broken ice was thinner, darker ice near the pond's overflow. The ice on the pond was intact. The ewes were safe. We looked at each other and shook our heads in either belief or disbelief, I'm not sure which.

The day had begun at 3 AM but it wasn't over yet, we had to feed grain to the sheep. We carried pails of oats to the ewes illuminated by the headlights of the truck. When we stepped over the net fence the hungry sheep swarmed around. Their long shadows flashed across the yard disorienting us like a disco strobe.

Sheep being fed are loud and cacophonous; with a pail in hand they will rush you, bang into your knees, knock you off balance then sometimes push you face first into a trough feeder all the while desperately telling you how hungry they are, and butt in the air you will cuss them. It was good to be home.

November 23, 2007

Now that the pasture has stopped growing, the sheep must be fed until the grass grows again in the Spring. Into what are called hay racks or feeders, with the front end loader of a large tractor, we put big round bales of hay that were harvested here on the farm in July; each bale weighs 750 lbs. and will feed about 40 sheep for a week.