Learning patience from the farm flock

Years back almost every ranch kept a "farm flock" of 100 – 200 ewes. They provided extra income from their wool and lambs, but could be a nuisance with their fence crawling ways and propensity to die when offered any opportunity.

We got started in the business when a herder working on a ranch that ran thousands of sheep gave our father thirty orphan lambs. I don't know how our mother managed. She had at least four or five children then, none old enough to be much help, plus she had lambs to feed four or five times a day.

The milk had to be heated, then poured through a funnel into Coke bottles and taken to the lambs. We kids could help feed them, but that was about the extent of our abilities. Then all the bottles had to be washed and things readied for the next feeding.

Eventually the herd grew to about a hundred mature ewes which our father kept until the effort proved uneconomical and the coyotes became insupportable.

The sheep were good teachers for us. Our dad used to say, "If sheep were any dumber or any smarter, nobody could handle them." They taught us humility, if nothing else.

Many "cowboys" express contempt for sheep only because that's the cowboy way, I guess. But if a person works with the animals long enough, he or she develops a respect for them, and also learns that using their instincts is the key in getting them to do what's wanted.

The herd instinct is what mandates sheep behavior. Watch the cars lined up a stoplight, and you'll see the same thing in humans. If one vehicle moves forward a foot or two, everyone follows suit. It's a hard urge to resist, and it's not because someone else might slip into the front, it's due to our primal instinct to follow. I've played with the phenomenon and found that the drivers behind me are good for about three times before they realize the futility of the act.

The sheep we had were good for all six of us kids. They weren't large enough to injure us like a cow could, so we helped as much as our respective ages would allow.

Lambing was the most labor intensive part of the year. A ewe's fertility cycle is initiated by the first frosts in the fall, and if the rams aren't penned in early September or before, the 152 day gestation period causes the first lambs to arrive in January and February.

The newborns couldn't withstand much cold, and our father was rather relaxed in his management so he often didn't lock the rams away in time. We had to keep a close watch, night and day when it was cold. That's when we learned about sheep.

The ewes and their lambs had to be taken into the barn and put in small pens with dry bedding and a heat lamp. Like the herd instinct, the mothering instinct in sheep is stronger than that in cattle.

When the lambs were newborn and still wet we picked them out of the snow or off of the frozen ground and started walking toward the barn with the ewe following. Often, we had to walk backward and hold the lamb or lambs out where the mother could see and smell them. In our small bunch, the ewes were relatively tame, but the younger, yearlings could get crazy and run off, so we learned to work slowly and calmly.

During lambing, the sheep spent their nights in the corral, out of the wind and near the barn. The corral light was poor at our place, and the old alkaline flashlight batteries lasted only a few hours.

In the darkness it was impossible to see a tiny lamb sunk in the snow, so I learned to stand quietly in the herd and listen. I've written before that the sound of a ewe talking to a newborn lamb is one of the more distinctive and evocative experiences I've had, and if I heard that noise, I followed it to the newborn and its mother.

The ewe usually came with its lambs when they were carried to the barn, but it wasn't rare that a younger sheep would get part way, then run back to where the lambs were born. That's where the work and often, tears would come in.

It was a frustrating and difficult struggle for a ten-year-old, but the satisfaction of seeing one or two or three tiny lambs warm up and start nursing made it worth the effort every time.

Patience and respect are the most important facets of handling sheep and also people, but I never managed that. It's too late for the people, now, but I could manage it with sheep again, I bet.