A Job for All Seasons

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A Job for All Seasons Page 15

by Phyllida Barstow


  Triplets are a problem. Leave them for the ewe to rear on her own and more than likely one will slowly starve, or end up a miserable skinny travesty of a lamb by weaning time. Rear one artificially, and you are condemning yourself to six weeks of tricky, time-consuming measuring, mixing, and administering formula milk, the constant danger of upsetting the lamb’s digestion or letting it get chilled, and even if it survives these hazards you are still likely to end up with a weanling that is fat and thin in all the wrong places, pot-bellied yet scraggy-necked, and scarcely a credit to the flock. It will also be far too tame, and bleat heart-rendingly whenever it sees you. By the time it is weaned, it will have cost most of what you expect to sell it for in powdered milk, emergency medicaments, and lamb pellets – and that is not factoring in the time and anxiety you will have expended in its care.

  Though it makes much the best economic sense, it is psychologically extremely difficult for the shepherd to remove the third lamb immediately after birth and knock it on the head. Looking at the third arrival curled up in the straw, or wobbling with splayed legs as it nuzzles blindly for a teat, you forget all about the time and trouble it will cause and long to give it a fighting chance. This is where the Adopter Box is such a blessing, and why it is worth making every effort to persuade any mother-of-one to accept a second son or daughter.

  All too often, however, there is no suitable candidate to act as foster-mother and, faced with the stark choice between bottle-feeding or euthanasia, you opt for the former.

  The received wisdom is that if you do decide to hand-rear the surplus lamb, you should take away either the biggest or the smallest, the thinking behind this being that the biggest is most likely to adapt to and survive this unnatural method of getting its grub, while the smallest is the least loss if it fails to make the transition from mum’s to powdered milk, and the remaining pair will do better if they are evenly matched.

  Should all three lambs be much of a muchness in size, they may all succeed in getting a fair share of the available milk if left with their mother but the strain of rearing three will take a heavy toll on her, and she will need supplementary rations. This, in turn, means keeping the family separate from the rest of the flock, since the other ewes will otherwise leave their own lambs and swoop on the extra food like a flock of vultures, and there will be much bleating and kerfuffle and chance of mismothering before all the families are matched up once more.

  Ewes are absolutely ruthless about butting away strange lambs who make the innocent mistake of trying to suckle from the wrong udder. It is one of the main difficulties when trying to arrange adoptions. You’d think that a ewe which had lost one of her twins and was bursting with milk would be glad of an orphaned replacement to relieve the pressure – but no, she will try every trick in the book to deny any lamb but her own the use of her second teat. She will kick, butt, and hold back her milk, her struggles so intimidating the interloper that unless the ewe is strictly confined and unable to see or smell him, he will either starve or be battered to death.

  All this flashes through your mind as you try to decide how to handle the question of triplets, but it is one to which I have never settled on the most satisfactory answer

  So lambing and its aftermath looms large in the shepherding calendar as a fraught period, full of known and unknown hazards, and so it has always been. Two thousand years ago, Jesus was describing an age-old scenario with His parable of the one lost sheep who gave the shepherd more trouble than all the other ninety-nine in the flock, but also more joy when it finally turned up safe and sound.

  Seeing a bottle-reared or adopted lamb racing about the field with the rest of its generation after a rocky start is immensely satisfying, but they do tend to be unusually accident-prone. They fall into ditches or wander into ponds. They get caught in brambles, or thread their heads through squared wire fences, pull back in panic, and break their necks. It’s not really that they have a death-wish: they just ain’t been brought up proper. Though ewes sometimes appear to be idle, greedy, downright negligent mums, their vigilance is none the less for being understated, and when they see their offspring in danger, they take positive action.

  This was brought home to me one foggy morning in late March, when from the gate of our biggest field you could hardly see across to the far fence. As Duff set out for a walk with the labrador, he heard barking from the direction of the village, but took no notice. When I went to lead the horses out about twenty minutes later, however, I was horrified to find our younger alpaca wallowing in the trough by the gate, bleeding into the water. Two ewes were upside down nearby, their legs and bellies ripped, and another had her head buried in a hedge, with a large chunk missing from her hindquarters.

  As the mist swirled apart, I saw a blur of movement two hundred yards away by the far fence, where a rangy sheepdog-type had the rest of the ewes pinned in a tight bunch against the wire. It was running in a semi-circle, yapping continuously, while the sheep stamped their forefeet and surged back and forth, trying to escape. Farther away up the hill lay a fat, greymuzzled labrador with heaving sides, which had evidently run itself to a standstill.

  I felt such a surge of fury that it took my own breath away. Hastily loosing the horses into the adjoining field, I lifted and heaved the alpaca out of the bloody water, then ran towards the circling dog, but when I grabbed it by the scruff the little brute snapped at me, wrenched free and took off in the direction of the village. The labrador was wearing no collar, so I tied the horses’ rope round its neck and tried to lead it, but it was so exhausted it was more a question of dragging it along the ground as far as our kennel. I bolted the door, then shouted to Duff, who had just reappeared, to call the vet and the police and ran back to the field.

  The mist was lifting, and the paddock looked like a battlefield. Three injured ewes were in a bad way, and so was the alpaca. The ram was unscathed, but his companion wether’s intestines were dangling round his hocks. All were too shocked to move.

  And where were the lambs? Though the ewes who had been pinned against the fence were bleating urgently, there wasn’t a sign of them.

  The vet arrived in double-quick time, and the police very soon after. Duff took charge of the hunt for the attackers, but they weren’t hard to identify because everyone from the postman to the publican knew who owned them. Sure enough, they were back in his garden, the open gate showing how they had escaped.

  The vet and I carried and drove the walking wounded into the sheepshed, and it wasn’t until after he had treated the worst of their injuries, administered antibiotics and euthanased the poor wether, that I had time to search for the missing lambs.

  Half a dozen were huddled in a narrow, thorny gap between the hedge and the wire fence, four more cowering behind a field shelter, and the rest lying low under the lip of a bank. Despite their own terror when the dogs attacked, the ewes must have ordered their offspring to scatter and hide, and so effective had that command been that the lambs had stayed in hiding ever since. They were all present, and miraculously quite uninjured.

  The owner of the dogs had been at work at the time of the attack, and was surprised and indignant that in his absence some hand unknown had released them from his garden. When convinced that they were responsible, however, he had the ringleader put down, and sent the old labrador to live with his ex-wife in a town, to prevent a repeat performance. He also paid most of the vet’s bills.

  It took four months of daily treatment to heal the big open wounds of the worst-affected ewes, but eventually they did scab over, leaving only dents to show where chunks had been bitten from their bellies and haunches and remind us that though we may regard them as harmless family pets, where sheep are concerned, all dogs are potential killers.

  Watching the antics of young lambs towards sunset on a frosty spring evening is one of my great pleasures. Skipping and cavorting, twisting their little bodies into improbable contortions and making spasmodic high jumps onto walls and banks, they race back and forth in pac
ks. Two or three will start a game of follow-my-leader and, seeing them flash past, others join in until you have twelve or fifteen lambs tearing about in the gloaming. They look quite crazy, but this mad outburst of energy is really just a sensible way of preparing for a cold night. Thoroughly warmed by the exercise, they can maintain their body temperature however low the thermometer drops, each with its mother’s warm bulk as a bulwark against the most cutting wind.

  It is partly as protection against the elements that I leave my ewes’ tails as Nature intended. Within the triangular shelter formed by hind legs and a long tail, the udder is less likely to get chapped and sore, and the lambs have a cosy place in which to suckle.

  All too soon, though, the frenetic evening frolicking gives way to adult gravity, as the youngsters copy their mothers and buckle down to the serious business of filling their bellies with as much grass as they can, while remaining on the alert for the smallest sign that mum is ready to feed them again. Sometimes they misinterpret her signal, and dash over to her only to be rebuffed as she refuses to stand for them. Her need for them is always directly related to the state of her udder, and the vigorous pummelling it receives from the half-grown lambs as an incentive to let down her milk makes one wonder why she puts up with them at all.

  As the summer months pass, the bond between mother and offspring weakens progressively, and gender differences become more marked. Gone are the adorable, vulnerable, animated cottonwool balls. The ewe lambs form gangs, like teenage girls, while the young rams lambs go through an ‘awkward age’ at about twenty weeks. Leggy and gawky, with heads that look too big for their bodies, they also become unattractively aggressive, butting and mounting one another – teenage yobs, in fact – so addicted to fighting that their prominent horns are often decorated with blood.

  This is the moment, before they can turn their testosterone-fuelled attention to their mothers and sisters, that one must grasp the nettle and separate the sexes by as far as the available territory allows. I find that two strong fences, with a field in-between, is the minimum needed to prevent the young gentlemen from forcing their way back to their mums in the first forty-eight hours of separation, for at this stage they are not only splendid jumpers but also very stoical about shoving through strands of barbed wire, leaving strips of skin behind, and once they have discovered a way to get through the barriers, they will do it again and again.

  The ideal solution is to remove them from earshot by lodging them temporarily with family or friends who could do with a posse of mobile lawnmowers. As soon as they settle in their new quarters with no females to compete for, the young rams grow and put on weight surprisingly quickly, and before long another decision looms: is any one of them outstanding enough to sell as a breeding prospect?

  So many males are born each year that only the exceptional animal makes the grade as a stud ram. Looks and pedigree are important in pure-bred animals, but they are not the only requirements; it is not easy to describe, but gradually every shepherd comes to recognise the particular proud carriage and eye-catching quality of a real star, which goes far beyond the usual breed descriptions of desirable attributes such as Ears: inclined to be long and broad; chest: deep, with well-filled brisket; and underline: good, straight, naked; not to mention the all-important testicles. I shall never forget the time I was so carried away by the beauty of a young ram that I forgot to check these and bought a stud with a single ball. It worked perfectly well, but I am sure the seller burst out laughing the moment I drove away with it.

  So if the answer to the breeding-prospect question is No – and it usually is – the ram lambs’ future resolves itself quickly and brutally into two options: market or local abattoir? Personally I prefer the latter. Though it is never agreeable to hustle your home-bred stock down the ramp of the trailer and into the slaughter-house lairage to await their fate, at least you know that the waiting will not be long and exactly what that fate will be. The ram lambs have been given a good, natural life for five or six months. They will die with the least stress possible and, if you find their death distressing, you should not be in the business of rearing livestock.

  No such certainty can be expected if you decide to take your lambs to market. For a start, you don’t know who will buy them: whether they will be run on and fattened for a few more months, or crammed in a lorry and driven hundreds of miles, possibly even exported, before ending up at some foreign abattoir whose standards might be very different from our own.

  It is mid-August by the time we take our ram lambs to slaughter. Since late Spring the ewes will have been shedding their fleeces, looking ragged and unkempt during May and June, when you can often see them lying comfortably sprawled at siesta time with corvids industriously plucking out loose tufts of the kemp for purposes of their own. By July, however, the last of the old fleece has gone, replaced by a sleek, short coat more elegantly smooth than any shearer could achieve.

  Since man-made fabrics have largely replaced wool in the modern economy, it now costs more to pay a shearer than you can hope to recover in the sale of wool, so naturally – shed fleeces are a bonus. It takes three or four generations to transfer the shedding gene from the Wiltshire Horn to woolly sheep, but even then you are apt to breed animals with long tufts of semi-wool along their backs, getting the worst of both worlds, which is why, despite the drawback of the horns, we stick doggedly to pure-bred Wilts.

  After the departure of the boisterous, aggressive boys, the female side of the flock can be left together for another month before the ewe lambs are weaned. They will not have depended on their mothers’ milk for some time, but all the same the parting has to be handled carefully. Again, if you can get ewes and lambs out of earshot of one another the trauma is diminished not only for them but also for humans who want to sleep through the night, but after being separated from their lambs, the ewes must be allowed only minimal grazing for a week at least while you keep a sharp eye on the state of their udders.

  Mastitis can strike with terrible speed, and you have to move fast to counter it. Immediate milking of the affected teat plus long-acting antibiotics usually saves the ewe, though it leaves her unable to rear twins, but you have to act at once. If, while looking round the stock one evening, you happen to notice an animal walking stiffly with her hind legs far apart, or lying on her own in the corner of a field shelter, it’s no good thinking, I’ll get her in and take a look in the morning, because by morning she may well be dead.

  Sheep are social animals who seek safety in numbers, and one lying on her own is always a danger signal. The process of drying-off their remaining milk supply always seems to take an age, but by degrees their udders become paler and slacker until by October they have almost vanished, and it is time to put them on better pasture to build up their fat reserves before the year comes full circle and it is tupping time again.

  October is the prime month for sheep sales up and down the country. The Breed Society sales for pedigree animals are often preceded by showing classes for lambs, shearlings, and older stock of both sexes, with the best animals available on display, washed to snowy whiteness, horns polished, hoofs properly trimmed. Most of them are halter-broken up to a point, and it is instructive to see the judge’s assessment as he arranges the contestants in order of merit.

  Prices can go ridiculously high as rival bidders compete for the prizewinners, but though it is always interesting to meet other breeders and hear the sheep world’s gossip, since we deal in small numbers and seldom have more than ten or a dozen ewe lambs for sale, I prefer to advertise them on the Wiltshire Horn Society’s website and sell them privately. Only by talking directly to a prospective buyer can you get an idea of what sort of home your stock will be going to, and I always take the precaution of asking how much grazing is available to him or her. In October when the grass is long and lush, many smallholders forget what it will look like in February, and miscalculate the numbers they can over-winter without running short of grub.

  It is fascinatin
g to see the different approaches taken by private buyers. Some arrive with a trailer, cast a quick look over the sheep, agree to your price and drive away within an hour. Others start trying to haggle before they even take a look at what they have come to buy. Some stand well away from the pen and show no desire to handle the sheep. Others check every one for teeth, teats, hoofs and condition, marking the ones they want.

  ‘I suppose these are all your rejects,’ said one lofty lady, looking contemptuously at six of my very best shearlings. ‘Well, I don’t like that one – or that one for a start. They’re not what I’m looking for at all. What else have you got for sale?’

  Grinding my teeth, I showed her my ewe lambs, who were still out in the field, and asked if she wanted me to bring them in so that she could take a close look at them.

  ‘No, but I’d like to see their breeding,’ she said. ‘Are they all registered?’

  Over a cup of tea, I showed her the paperwork. She kept trying to denigrate my shearlings and to beat me down on the price, but I was beginning to dislike her manner and refused to budge. Both Duff and I were relieved when she drove away without buying anything, and congratulated ourselves on keeping our tempers.

  Later that evening, the telephone rang. ‘Barbara here,’ said the lofty voice. ‘Just ringing to tell you I’ll buy the lot at your price. The shearlings and the lambs as well. I’d like you to bring them over to me next Monday in your trailer.’

  I hesitated, half wanting to tell her to jump in the lake, half knowing that it would be stupid to turn down a perfectly good offer. Besides, I was curious to know what kind of set-up she had.

 

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