Counting Sheep

by Philip Walling

  The Cheviot is usually polled in both sexes, although in the past, rams would have been horned; some still display vestigial horns, despite breeders’ efforts over generations to eliminate them. The Cheviot Breed Society allows that horns are ‘permissible but not desirable’, recognising the difficulty of extirpating them without losing the breed’s integrity. Every Cheviot must have white legs, white face and a black nose with ‘a bold dark eye’. A pink nose indicates softness, as do pink cleats, which predict foot troubles.

  As with all cloven-hoofed herbivores, sheep have two hooves on each foot upon which they walk on tip-toe (with a cleat (cleft) between the two). The hooves grow like fingernails, are hard at the extremity and need to be worn down by coming into contact with an abrasive surface. In the skin of each cleat there is a gland that exudes a scent which is passed onto the ground as the sheep walks. Each member of the flock recognises the scent given off by the glands of other members of the same flock and, in a way not understood, this encourages their flocking instinct. Some breeds have a better-developed flocking instinct than others. Primitive sheep like the Soay and Jacob, for example, tend to scatter when threatened, whereas more highly bred types flock together more tightly.

  Another attribute esteemed by breeders is oval leg bones (‘flat’, as they describe them). Oval is stronger than round and an indication of superior milking ability. Black dots or ‘ticks’ on the skin, particularly on the face, are valued as a ‘stylish’ indication of hardiness. These are examples of Cuvier’s Law of Correlation, which connects the presence of one obvious characteristic with some secondary, often hidden, trait: for example, white cats with blue eyes are almost invariably deaf, and Herdwick lambs born jet black with pure white ears will be stronger and better sheep than their pure black-eared contemporaries. It may also explain why breeding off the horns can destroy the integrity of a breed.

  In essence, it means that one obvious trait in an animal indicates that others will be present in that animal’s makeup as part of a balanced and integrated whole. Bakewell knew that a sheep’s carcase could not be changed without its wool deteriorating, because to improve the one necessarily causes the other to deteriorate. At first sight this seems to run against Darwin’s theory which suggests that organisms are infinitely malleable and that by domestic selection (i.e. selective breeding) one characteristic can be altered independently of all the others which will remain unaffected. But Darwin did not reject Cuvier’s Law; on the contrary he recognised ‘that when one part varies, and the variations are accumulated through natural selection, other modifications, often of the most unexpected nature, will ensue’.

  Lug marks are the traditional way that sheep owners marked their sheep. They belong to the farm and not to the owner, who is merely the guardian for the time being of the flock that lives there. That is one reason why at the autumn sales of draft ewes the name of the farm is given equal prominence in the catalogue to the name of the farmer. They have to use ear tags as well now, because the EU has made it compulsory, but many farmers do not like them because they tend to make the lambs’ ears fester and then the tags fall out. The plastic tags required by the EU earmarking regulations are unsuited to the erect ears of Cheviots because piercing often damages the cartilage, causing the ear to flop over, which destroys the distinctive ‘cock o’ the lug’ that goes with the ‘glint o’ the eye’ that is so characteristic of the breed. When a shepherd looks at his sheep, it is always defects that catch his eye, because they indicate illness or distress, and a damaged, flopped-over ear is one of the first things he will notice, and keep on noticing every time he inspects his flock.

  Lug means ear in the north and it is derived from the Old Norse lög, meaning law. So the lawful mark has come to mean the place where the mark is made. It is done more to prove ownership to a stranger, than to the owner, because a shepherd knows his sheep and recognises them on sight, although he might occasionally have to check a lug mark, just to resolve any doubt. Lug marks are made in various combinations of slits, notches and holes, each with its own description. A ‘bit’ is a notch, and a ‘fold bit’ is exactly what it says: the ear is folded like a piece of paper and the corner cut off to make a ‘V’ shaped notch. ‘Key bitted’ is a square notch and ‘bitted’ is a notch which looks as if a bite has been taken out. The ear can be ‘halved’ – half the end cut off, ‘forked’ – a ‘V’ shape cut out of the end, ‘cropped’ – the end cut off entirely, ‘slit’ when a cut is made half-way down the length of the ear, or ‘ritted’ – when a sliver is taken out down the length from the end to divide it into two halves, or ‘twice ritted’, which is pretty drastic. It looks barbaric, but it can’t be much more painful than the piercings and tattoos in fashion today.

  The lambs’ ears are cut at dipping time, after lambing, with a pair of sheep shears or a special pair of pliers. If the lord of the manor (the owner of the soil of common land) kept a flock on a common, he was the only grazier whose sheep did not have to be lug marked, so that any animal with clean ears belonged to the lord. And any animal with both ears cropped, so that all distinguishing marks had been removed, was forfeit to the lord; the idea being to make it pointless for sheep stealers to cut off a sheep’s ears because whoever it really belonged to, it certainly could not belong to the man who claimed it.

  Hardiness, resilience and the sheer will to endure are the all-important attributes if sheep are to survive the winters on the bleak hills of Tim Elliot’s farm at Hindhope, which can be blanketed with snow for two or three months of the year, often to a considerable depth, during which the sheep are expected to scrape through to reach the roughage below. If there is plenty of accumulated tussocky grass from the previous summer and the sheep can fill their bellies, then they will usually survive the severest winters.

  On traditionally managed hill sheep farms such as at Hindhope, where the flock lives almost entirely off what grows naturally, the number of sheep is balanced by long experience with the natural growth of grass. The skill of the flockmaster is to ensure that by the end of the summer there is enough roughage remaining to sustain the flock through the winter. Then, just before the grass starts to grow again, the sheep should have eaten off last year’s accumulated roughage and the land be ready for the new growth. May is the only month of the year when hill grazings ought to be bare. This is because most of the natural sedges and grasses grow from the middle of May to the middle of October and because there is little growth outside that period the winter’s store of rough-age should have accumulated by the time growth ceases and should last until the spring.

  Lambing is carefully timed to make best use of the first and most nutritious spring growth. Most breeds (apart from the Dorset and a few with Mediterranean ancestry) come into season once every seventeen days or so, for about three months in the autumn. Hill sheep have a shorter breeding season than lowland breeds, and for Cheviots the window of breeding opportunity is from about the end of September until the end of December. Gestation is roughly 147 days, or five months. At places like Hindhope, which are nearly all open hill land, there is no room for all the ewes in the fields at the same time. So they stay on the hill for lambing and the shepherd goes round them at least twice a day. It is a considerable job, even for three men, to do the rounds of 1,400 lambing ewes that are ranged across 3,000 acres of rough, open hill land.

  The rams are not allowed in with the ewes until 20 November to ensure that the first lambs do not arrive before 18 April, so that when the first shoots of new grass start to grow about the beginning of May, the first lambs, at two weeks old, are just capable of making the best use of the flush of milk that it stimulates in their mothers. In theory the whole flock could lamb during the seventeen days following 18 April, but in practice this never happens, which is a mercy for the shepherd, who would otherwise have to deal with all the ewes lambing in two and a half weeks. On the other hand if lambing extends over too long a period it prevents the flock being managed as a whole, and late lambs miss the advantages
of an early start in the year, a longer grazing season and more sunshine. In practice most lambs are born within about six weeks (two cycles of ovulation) and nearly all the ewes will have lambed by the end of May.

  Most ewes lamb without any human interference. In fact the more they are bothered the more trouble they tend to give. A ewe, left alone on the hill, when her time comes, will separate herself from the flock, find a sheltered place – a hollow, or the lee of a rock – make a rudimentary scrape in the ground – an atavistic concession to her wild ancestry – lie down and give birth. Hill ewes normally do it quickly and easily because they have inherited that quality through natural and domestic selection. Those that didn’t lamb easily either died in lambing or their lamb did. Almost immediately after giving birth the ewe is on her feet and licking her lamb clean of its birth fluids. This licking cleans and stimulates the lamb to struggle to its feet to take its first milk. All this will usually be accomplished within less than half an hour. The lamb’s suckling causes its mother’s womb to contract and expel the afterbirth, which she will usually eat – if the foxes, badgers, crows or buzzards don’t get to it first.

  The hill shepherd’s role is rather like a policeman on the beat – keeping an eye on everything that’s going on. Even though only a small proportion – 10–15 per cent – of hill ewes ever need help, when they do they are harder to deal with because they are out on open land, often a long way from any sheep pens or buildings. You can usually tell from her behaviour that there’s something wrong with a ewe, but you don’t know exactly what it is until you catch and examine her. That is where your dog comes in. A good dog on an open hill can, by force of personality, prevent a single ewe from running off, blocking her escape long enough for the shepherd to catch her with his crook. There are some strong dogs that can catch a ewe by gripping the wool at the neck and keeping hold until the shepherd can take over.

  A ewe usually has trouble lambing because the lamb isn’t positioned correctly in the birth canal. The correct presentation is to have the lamb’s body elongated, so that it is as narrow as possible, with front legs together, like a diver, but with one hoof slightly behind the other, neck stretched out with the chin lying between the legs, so that the nose comes an inch or two behind the hooves with the head lying along the legs and slightly to one side. So long as the lamb isn’t too big – and that’s unusual with naturally fed hill ewes – a ewe should have no trouble giving birth to a lamb that comes like this. Even if it’s breach, but small enough, she will usually get it out backwards.

  But the problems start if there’s a leg back, or two legs back and the head has come out and swelled up so that you can’t push it back down the canal far enough to hook the legs forward. Sometimes, you can have two little soft hooves visible (they are soft in the womb and quickly harden in the air) but the lamb won’t come. These can be a front leg and a back leg of the same lamb, or a mix-up of legs from two or more lambs. You can only tell what’s what by tracing the leg back from the hoof and feeling for the second joint. If it bends backwards it’s a knee on a front leg and forwards it’s a hock on a hind one. You may have to feel your way further down to where it’s connected to the body to find out if both legs are connected to the same lamb. Once you have worked out what the problem is you have to manipulate the lamb into the correct birth position. This usually involves pushing it back far enough into the womb to create space to manoeuvre it. The ewe will be straining to push it out, so you have to wait and push back between contractions. It’s fairly straightforward if there’s only one lamb, and once it’s straightened up the ewe will often be able to get it out on her own. But by the time you become aware that she’s having trouble the lamb could be in difficulty and it’s best to get it out as quickly as possible.

  Sometimes the umbilical cord gets wrapped round the lamb while it’s in the womb, starving it of oxygen. At other times if it is a big lamb it will be presented as a humped spine, because all four feet are pointing back into the womb. It’s quite common when a Suffolk or other large meat breed has been crossed with a small ewe, which has become too fat during the winter, to have a lamb that is too big for the ewe to give birth to without help, because she quickly becomes exhausted. You have to wait until her time comes, catch her and pull the lamb out, working with her contractions. Often big single lambs result in ‘hung lambs’. These are when the lamb is too big to come down the birth canal in the normal birth position. As the ewe’s contractions intensify the head is forced out but the legs slip back to make way for it. Once the head is out it soon swells and unless you catch it early the lamb will choke to death and the ewe die of exhaustion.

  If you’re lambing on rough land where there are lots of places ewes can sneak off to have their lambs, sometimes the first thing you come across is a ewe with a grotesquely swollen lamb’s head lolling out of her back end. If the lamb is still alive there will often be an obscenely swollen dry tongue protruding from its mouth. You can neither push it back nor pull it out because the head is too big and both front legs will be bent backwards. I once found a lamb hanging like this and in a desperate attempt to save its life, pulled on its head and got it out alive even though both legs were back. I didn’t realise I’d dislocated its neck in the process and for the rest of its life it went around with its head at a quizzical angle.

  Quite often the shepherd will be faced with a dead lamb. He usually finds the ewe standing over the carcase, defending her lamb from all-comers. It is best to leave her guarding it until he can find a foster lamb – either an orphan, whose mother has died, or one of a set of twins. If the twins are one of each sex he will probably leave the gimmer lamb with its mother so that the inherited instinct that attaches it to its home ground – the heafing instinct – can be passed on. If both twins are gimmers he will have to decide whether to take the bigger or the smaller. The bigger may be more likely to get over the shock of fostering, but if the ewe is doing a good job he will want to leave her with the better of her own lambs in case the fostering doesn’t work. If they are both ram lambs he will leave the bigger, stronger one with his mother unless the smaller one is too small to get over the shock of being fostered.

  The decision is a fine one – and has to be made quickly – but having chosen his lamb the shepherd proceeds to the next stage, which is to get the ewe to accept the strange lamb as her own. This is nearly all about how it smells. The knack is to disguise its smell so that the ewe believes it to be her lamb. Most ewes do not readily accept another ewe’s lamb. Although they are fiercely protective of their own, they are usually hostile to the offspring of any other ewe.

  The age-old, and still the best, method is to skin the dead lamb, to make a little jacket of the skin to fit the foster lamb, often with the mother standing close by to keep her interest. It helps sometimes to have the dog lying off, watching the ewe, just to keep her defences up. If it can be done right there, out on the hill, so much the better. This is where that other essential of the shepherd’s trade comes in, a sharp pocket knife. The way to make the jacket is first to cut up the dead lamb’s belly, from its anus to within about an inch of the throat, being careful not to penetrate the membrane of the abdominal cavity, and to leave enough at the neck-end to make a collar to fit over the foster lamb’s head. Then cut round the legs above the first joint and pull the legs back through the skin. Then pull the whole skin off the lamb and over its head. If it is done well you will be left with a little jacket with five holes in it – one through which you can pull the foster lamb’s head and the others for the legs. It’s just like dressing a baby. Then, for good measure, the dead lamb’s skinned carcase should be rubbed over the exposed head of the foster lamb to disguise its smell.

  Then quickly pick up the carcase, leave the live lamb in its place and get out of the way as fast as possible. It helps if the live lamb is new-born and still finds it difficult to get to its feet because a foundering new-born always seems to provoke the ewe to greater maternal affection. If, as most ewes do, the
mother accepts the imposter straight away then you will have no further trouble with the adoption. She will be overjoyed that her lamb has come back to life and nuzzle it making little bleating, mothering noises, encouraging it to suckle and licking its coat with small quick licks.

  The new jacket will not come off if it is well-tailored and a neat fit. It needs to be left on until the ewe has completely accepted the lamb. If it is left on too long in warm weather it will start to putrefy, although that never seems to bother the ewe if she has accepted the lamb as her own. But if she hasn’t been taken in and isn’t too particular about the smell not being right – it’s always the smell – you could try to disguise it with Johnson’s Baby Powder or Eau de Cologne, or if all else fails Chanel No. 5 sometimes works.

  I never found a ewe that cared a jot about the colour of the little jacket her lamb had been fitted out with. A black skin on a white lamb, or vice versa, worked fine so long as it smelled right. But, if she rejected the lamb at the outset, it could often be a long tedious job with them both cooped up in a pen until the ewe’s milk had come through the lamb and it had taken on its mother’s smell. Sometimes nothing would induce a ewe to take another’s lamb and she would spend the summer geld, getting fat and often, it seemed, slightly unhinged by her loss.

  Sometimes it worked if her head was secured in something like the stocks, so she could stand up and lie down but not turn round to attack the lamb. But there is a type of fiercely independent ewe (often the best of mothers with her own lambs) that will actually starve herself to death, rather than accept a foster lamb. Such a ewe will either refuse to eat until her milk dries up, or stamp on the lamb whenever it tries to suckle, or in extreme cases, butt it against the side of the pen and kill it.