Waking up in a War Zone

Last Saturday we woke up to a bloodbath.  First our lovely German wwoofer, Matthias, found one dead sheep, then another, then another. Floating in the river or dead on its banks.  Four beautiful girls, all with puncture marks on the inside of their hind legs, victims of a concerted attack by a pack of wild dogs.

We walked the river banks and bed looking for the rest of the herd.  We found one girl resting between two logs with blood around her.  We turned her and found that she had been ripped open and mauled.  The only solution was going to be a bullet, so we fed her and I wept tears of despair and frustration at the senselessness and waste of the attack.  Like a fox in a hen house, this had been a terrorist attack with no other purpose than the thrill of the hunt.

The herd that we had built slowly over so many years, who were so friendly and relaxed with us, decimated.  Mattie had found another dead sheep earlier in the week, and the dogs had taken the lovely little lamb a few days before.  Clearly lamb is on the menu for the feral dogs this autumn.

Mattie is a sensitive soul who returns to Germany to begin his training to be a vet.  I mentioned to him how the energy of the farm had changed overnight – from a peaceful oasis to a place of grief and devastation.  ‘It’s like a war zone’ he said.

We dragged the carcases of my lovely girls into a row beneath the house so that Ged could sit and watch, sniper-like, overnight in the hope that the predator perpetrators would return to feast on their kill.

We found two sheep exhausted and terrorised, perched like goats on a rock on the far side of the river, barricaded behind branches and logs.  No amount of coaxing or tempting with lucerne could get them out and we could see they were injured.  We had to grab them and carry them across the river and tend their wounds.  They hid for two days this week, just so weary and stiff after their night of abject terror.  The little boy recovered mid week and came calling for food at feeding time.  But the ewe was still secreted away at the top of the hill, dragging her leg behind her when she moved.  Mattie and I tried to catch her twice but for a three legged sheep she sure can run fast.

Finally, on Thursday night, we cornered her after she had fled from us down to the river.  In a scissor like movement we approached and she made a dash for it.  Mattie’s long legs in pursuit and he managed to grab onto her fleece and amazing held on and wrestled her to the ground.  We turned her onto her back in shearing position and found a huge bulge of infection around her rump but I couldn’t squeeze it out.  I administered the milky penicillin and then we lifted her, with great difficulty, into the back of the farm car where Mattie held her while I drove to the yards so we could secure her for a week to heal her.

Needless to say there’s been no sign of a dog since.  The howlers are coming at 6 tomorrow.  Normally I have a very live and let live philosophy to the wildlife we are privileged to live alongside.  But when our babies are hunted down I become biblical.  An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.

The howlers are coming at dawn tomorrow.  I want 5 dead dogs, especially that big black one which has been terrorising the alpacas and sheep for so long.

What a waste.  The wild dogs normally take one or two sheep a year and we accept that as our rate of attrition, but this has been appalling.

The only consolation is the old farmer’s adage ‘where you have livestock, you have dead stock.’ And apparently we had to have this devastation before taking defensive action.  My poor girls.

The Circle of Life

Our first live twins

The reality of life on the farm is a constant experience of life and death. As natural as each other – essential even, but as great is the gift of every addition to our lives, so stark is the loss of those taken away.

Stardust dropped a perfect baby girl when Pamela last came to visit so we called her Pashe (pasha) in honour of the two extraordinary women who have shared their ‘paca passion with us and provided us with most of our flock.

Then our first lamb appeared.  Another girl birthed on the river bed under the house so we could watch from the window.  Ben is our eagle eyed spotter for birds, birthing, and anything that changes the gestalt!  We were so proud but no longer had she landed than the alpacas told us that a dog was about one morning so Ged got his rifle, sighted and shot it.  But the lambie was gone.

Next we had another little girl lamb born and both Mother and us were so careful and protective and locked them up at night for several days and watched like hawks – so far, so good.

Then Tinkerbell finally unpacked a little white boy on a grey and cold day.  We wiped him down and warmed him up with the homemade rug because he was shivering so much.  We left them alone to get on with the beginnings of life until we realised that Think was off foraging and the poor little lad was still unable to stand.  And when we got him up we could see that his legs were all wonky.  Still, we managed to get him under Tink for a couple of colostrum feeds before she flatly refused to do more.  Her vulva was very stretched and she was clearly very sore so we left her to do her own thing and recover while we took over the bottle feeding.  Firefly slept by the fire inside for the first two nights of his life, then I rugged him up and rigged up the old playpen on a deep bed of straw on the verandah and he slept there for ten days or so.  During the day he was mainly just lying in the sun, healing, and getting up for his bottle.

We even had to take him to Port Macquarie one day because if you’re bottle feeding a baby you can’t leave them at home!  He got passed around from pillar to post and surprised a few beach goers.  I took him to the vet for splinting but after a few days a friend noticed that it was rubbing so we took it all off and then tried a few different configurations before finally those bendy legs started to take weight, Firefly took heart and his Mum had hope.  Then he was back on the boob, off the bottle, and standing on his own four feet (finally!)

We had our first twin lambs but the runt wouldn’t get on the boob despite our best efforts and my first ewe milking (easier than I thought!). We had them in the pen on straw but he wandered outside in the night and died. We should have brought him in the house and bottle fed him but we thought he would be ok with mum.

I have been watching the alpacas obsessively for weeks as we have so many babies due, but last weekend I took off for a couple of hours of chainsawing (the noise of the chainsaw is sweet music to my ears after weeks of 4 year old prattle!) and when I came back one of the alpacas that I didn’t even know was pregnant had birthed and the baby had died in the attempt. A lovely white girl . . . gone.

And every day when I go to feed my beautiful horse, Baby, I wonder will she still be alive? She is in so much pain and can barely walk but I just can’t give the instruction for Ged to pull the trigger until we have explored every avenue and tried everything to make her well. I just can’t picture my life without her in it. And as much as I believe in spirit, as much as I see beyond the veil to the other side, I just want to be able to touch her, feel her warmth, stroke her mane and look into her big, brown, beautiful eyes.

At the moment she resides ‘on the other side’ of the farm and she can’t come home because she can’t walk that far. I know in my heart and soul that when she is gone it will be the thus, she will be ‘on the other side’, exactly the same. She will be running in the Elysian fields, full of life. I just won’t be able to touch her except in my mind, memory and heart.

The longer I am here on the farm, the more ordinary conversational terms have great meaning – bite the bullet, stay of execution, the circle of life etc

Harry is in the freezer and on the table and even I, vegetarian for 20 something years, have enjoyed him. Hector is gone and just alive in my heart where I miss him still. Christmas will forever hold a very special place in my heart and a feeling that we failed him. They live on, these lost ones, that we have loved, however briefly. And maybe, just maybe, we are being trained to prepare for death, to cease to be scared of it, to accept its inevitability, and even, one day, embrace it.

Two Dead Lambs

We have been waiting and waiting and waiting for our big ewe to birth.  Checking her udder every day and saying ‘surely it can’t be much longer’.  Every day as Boo and I drive past I have said ‘What is she waiting for?’ and 2 year old Ben has replied ‘Christmas’.  I hope not . . .

This morning when I went for my run at about 6 she was standing on her own obviously labouring.  I went back to the house and googled sheep birthing schedules and positions.  After my experience with Daisy I determined not to get in there too early so I decided to go for my run and check on her when I got back.

She was still straining when I got back so I consulted google again.  I should have got in there a lot earlier (hindsight is such a wonderful thing!)  Ged went up to the office (she had returned to her favourite spot under the office) and said there was a nose poking out so we grabbed the camera and Pickle and walked up to the office all excited, expecting to see a lamb or two at last.

But when we got there it was still just a nose and it was definitely time to go in.  So we hung up the camera and I put my hand in.  Bush midwifery – no antiseptic, scrubbing or gloves!  The head was stuck and the lamb was definitely dead but I couldn’t get any purchase and couldn’t get my other hand in.  Ged took over and I do not know how he got both of his big hands in there.  After some manoeuvring he pulled out one huge dead lamb.  My poor child witnesses too much death on the farm.  One can only hope that what he learns  is that death is a constant part of the incredible cycle of life.  Natural, inevitable, not to be afraid of . . .

I sent Ged back to the house for the Emergency Essence, Bug Buster, Penicillin, hot water etc.  The lamb smelled pretty bad and had obviously been dead for a while.  She knew she was birthing death.  When he got back Ged wanted to go back in in case there was another lamb.  I said ‘surely she would still be straining’ and was convinced that the size of the first lamb precluded another.  But when I felt along the flank I agreed that there was probably another and this time he soaped up before beginning his grim task.  The squeamish should turn away now . . . I am sorry to say that the lamb came apart in the process (long dead).  We shielded Ben from the gruesomeness.  He kept saying ‘I don’t want a dead lamb’ . . . neither did we.

The worry now was the poor ewe.  The uterus was obviously infected and she was exhausted.  I administered Emergency Essence orally and over her head, Bug Buster orally and a penicillin injection.  We cleaned up the vagina but it didn’t look good.  She was so weak and tired.  I gave her water too and we got her some food.  She had a huge drink but she wasn’t interested in food.  Ged didn’t think she would make it and certainly it looked very unlikely.

We walked home and I left a message for the vet to call us and rang the sheep breeder for any tips or advice.  He had nothing to offer us but luckily the vet was more helpful.  He told us to go to the Dairy and borrow syntocin to encourage uterine contractions to expel any retained placenta or other debris.  And also to borrow Ketol for energy and prevent pregnancy toxaemia.  And keep up the massive doses of penicillin.

We did as we were told and she made a truly miraculous recovery although she was pretty depressed for the first week.  We knew how good she was feeling by how difficult she was to catch!  Ged’s rugby tackles improved significantly in a week but he sustained some decent bruises in the process!  She’s a big girl!

We were all pretty depressed that our first foray into sheep breeding had delivered such sorrow although we have to be grateful for opportunities to improve our livestock knowledge and midwifery skills . . .

Two weeks later we awoke one morning to two live lambs huddled by their proud Mama.  They are now frolicking in the fields as one would expect for a lush spring at Avalon.

As Sticky taught me long ago and as farmers have been saying since time began ‘Where you’ve got livestock, you’ll have dead stock.’  Such is the nature of life.  Witnessing the bright brilliance of birth and the sweet sorrowful surrender into death is the privilege and humility of the farmer’s life.