The Trouble With Sheep

The hot weather we've been having recently seems to have affected the sheep. 

No, not heatstroke, our flock decided it was high time they took a holiday.  This was instigated by the top ram, Kai, and his second-in-command, Flake, who decided that their field, well it was OK, but just look at the neighbouring wheat field!  And that vegetable patch!   There, it seems a sheep could be free to truly enjoy the summer.



Kai in the vegetable plot (hand-sheared by Ian!)

Time and time again we herded them back into their field - from the neighbour's fields, from the vegetable patch and from the back lawn of the farm, but each time the boys tested our workmanship, leaning on the fences until they found a new weak point, and then with a wriggle and a flick of a woolly tail it was over, out and off. 

An emergency workday was called.  For several hours we reinforced fences, added tension wires and knocked in extra posts, until the perimeter of the sheep field bristled like a wonky pincushion of wood and wire.

For the rest of the week the sheep watched balefully from the confines of their enclosure, but, happily for us, they remained enclosed.

Until Saturday.

It seems almost planned that the boys would wait until several farm members were around for a Saturday workday before staging their latest escape.  Like Steve McQueen before them, they knew that a watching audience (if not a video camera) was the essential ingredient for turning a regular escape into a great escape.

Just before elevenses (we model the frequency of our snack breaks on those expected by Winnie-the-Pooh), someone working on the vegetable plot shouted over that Kai had once again escaped.   By leaning his weight on the fence he had caused it to sag in the centre, leaving a gap between the fence and the new tension wires above which was just enough for him to wriggle his way through.  As we gathered to watch sheep after sheep followed Kai into the adjacent field (luckily, ours), bleating joyfully.

The breached defences.

After much joking about the consequences of us all counting sheep jumping over a fence, it was decided to leave the flock where they were.  While it may be true that the grass always seems greener on the other side of the fence, in this case the sheep had grazed their current field to the extent that the grass actually was greener in the next field and the sheep were due to be moved there in the next few days. By all squeezing through the fence, the sheep had saved us the trouble of herding them all through the gate.

All apart from one that is.  Little Lamb, the, ahem, littlest lamb of the flock, wasn't tall enough to hop over the fence and stood at the perimeter bleating pitifully.

Little lamb was born unexpectedly a few weeks ago to a yearling mother who wasn't supposed to be pregnant. As the flock was newly-bought earlier this year, it seems that Kai must have snuck into her field, or perhaps she into his, for a fleeting night of sheep loving before the flock arrived on the farm. 

If Little lamb's arrival into the world was unexpected for us, it was downright alarming to her mother, who is no more than a teenager in sheep years and who initially dealt with the situation by denying all responsibility towards her tiny runt of a lamb, headbutting her viciously when she wobbled over to feed.  This behaviour earned her mother some time in a head restraint, to prevent her from taking a sufficient run up to do real damage to her baby.

Several hours after her birth the mother was still keeping her distance from the newborn and Little Lamb was beginning to flag. If she was to survive the night it was vitally important that little lamb took on some colostorum substitute.  Ian and I took a bottle and sat with her.  It was an agonisingly slow process as the exhausted lamb sucked weakly at the bottle. Happily, Little Lamb showed a surprising amount of resilience for such a tiny creature and after a sleepless night for Ben, who stayed up to continue the bottle feeding, the mother sheep decided that she did want to get to know her baby after all.



A scale shot- Little Lamb and Ian's legs

Ian as 'Mummy Sheep'





Unfortunately, it seemed that motherhood was an easily forgotten role for this particular sheep, because once in the new field on Saturday she studiously ignored Little Lamb's bleats in favour of stuffing her face with fresh grass.

Alone in the field, Little lamb began to panic, running frantically up and down along the fence line. 
It was clear that we were going to have to move her ourselves.

Three of us slowly approached Little Lamb, smiling reassuringly.  She tensed, her whole body moving in time with the rapid pattering of her heart.  We reached for her, friendly arms trying to lift her over to join her mum.


Little lamb on the run

Unfortunately from her point of view I suspect we were a terrifying group of two-leggers trying to back her into a corner while showing their scary omnivorous teeth. 

She ran for her life to the opposite end of the field. 



We gathered reinforcements.  Six people were now spread across the field, three carrying hurdles to make a temporary pen around Little Lamb.  Or that was the plan anyway.  What actually ensured was 45 minutes of hot, bruise-inducing charging around the field, each time cornering Little Lamb only to have her spring away from us at the last second and race away at top speed.  Finally, in what I can only image will go down as the worst rugby tackle in history, I managed a slow motion dive between some thistles to grab hold of Little Lamb. Seconds later and she was into the next field and trotting happily towards mum, leaving a team of sweaty farm members stood in the empty field. 

Elevenses had most definitely been earned.


And she definitely didn't say thank you.