Tag Archives: sheep

Little Bo Peep has lost her sheep . . .

by . Posted on
28 Feb

I do know where to find them.  All dead.  All gone.  Bodies strewn around the farm in various stages of decompositions.  Wanton wastage to the wild dogs.  All my beautiful children gone.  No more kisses at feeding time.  No more chasing them away from the alpaca food bowls.  No more racing antics as they run from one to the next . . . no more watching them grazing quietly on the hill above the house, or racing down same helter skelter when I go to the feed shed with the yellow bucket.

No more pitiful bleating when bollocky boy loses the flock (again!) and wanders the farm over trying to find them . . .

I woke up at 5am on Monday and went to the loo.  Looked out of the window into the grey gloom and saw three sheep being herded in terror.  Raced into Ged and woke him up to get the gun which was locked away in the gun cabinet.  By the time we were both up and dressed there were only two sheep huddled on the hill and no sign of the wild dog.  Typical!  There never bloody is when Ged and his gun are around.

Still, we went for a drive and a wander and luckily found the third sheep hiding with her head under a fallen she oak down by the river, her body screened by a huge clump of weed.  She was exhausted, terrified, in shock.  We fetched the Emergency Essence and dribbled it into her mouth and on her poll.  We reikied and talked to her.  She didn’t appear to be injured and eventually she got up and wended her way back to the others.  She was limping on a foreleg, but otherwise seemed ok.

Ben and I spent the day building a yard below the hill where they have been camping out with the thought that we could tempt them down there with food.  We laboured hard and were proud of the results and our efforts.  But of course they were so traumatised by being hunted every night – so skittish and scared, that they wouldn’t come near us or our brilliant construction.  So we just had to pray.

On Tuesday at feeding time first I tried to tempt them down, and then, in frustration, tried to herd them.  Which is impossible with just one person.  It didn’t work.

On Wednesday the prayers seemed to be working, since nothing else was.  On Thursday we came home and couldn’t see any white woollies on the hill.  I raced in to put supper in the oven and then Ben and I drove up to the top of the hill.  Two sheep.  One badly injured.  We tried to tempt them closer with food but instead they limped off the hill, down the flat and up into the bush.

I had to leave them there and feed the small person and got Ged to sing him to sleep over the phone so I could go out and feed the alpacas.  Then I ‘went bush’ and she had lain down in exhaustion and let me pet her and examine the injuries.  I assured her that she would be ok and went home to fetch a bucket of hydrogen peroxide, clean cloth, and a syringe of penicillin.  Cleaned and dosed her up and realised there was no way I could leave her stuck in the bush all night.  She was a sitting duck, or a lying sheep.  Easy prey.

(Language takes on a whole new meaning out here on the land with Nature as your friend and foe)

So I had to get her home.  We weigh about the same and at first tries it didn’t seem possible that I could move her out.  But sheer grit, determination (some would say bloody mindedness!) and adrenalin fuelled my endeavours.

She was on a hill of loose rocks and leaf matter so my feet could get no purchase and a couple of times we slipped and went roly poly together as I tried to haul her out.  Finally she was wedged by some young trees and I couldn’t budge her.  So I had the bright idea of getting bandages and ropes and hauling her behind the car (I admit that Ged and I started watching Django last weekend which may have inspired me).  I retrieved what I needed from the shed and bound her front legs together (back legs would have been better but one had a deep two inch rip in it that was bad enough already without further stress).  I positioned the car and was about to attach the rope when I realised I couldn’t drag her past the trees.  Back to the drawing board.  I tried to persuade her.  I lifted her up onto her feet and finally she got the messages I had been exhorting into her ears.  And me holding her up we walked step by step down the hill.  I told her that she need only make it onto the flat and then I could drag her behind the car but she was very brave and we probably did 50 metres before she stopped and said she could go no further.  I felled her and bandaged her and ‘hog tied’ her and very very slowly dragged her behind the car to the house.

In retrospect I should have made a sled.  I’ll know for next time.

Got her home, cleaned her up again and liberally administered the Emergency Essence and Reiki.  Covered her with a red blanket so she looked very Red Cross Emergency victim.  And went in to clean up me and the house.  By the time Ged came home (a day early to try and shoot these bloody dogs) she was doing well.  Ged stayed home on Friday to nurse her and work while Ben and I went to preschool and yoga respectively.

When I got home she looked fine.  I didn’t check her before we went to sleep.  But I woke at 3 and after tossing and turning for a while decided to go outside and see what, if anything, was happening, before waking Ged up to go for a walk with his gun.  Fleur as Ben and I had named her when we talked about her in the car yesterday, was in trouble.  Wedged upside down on the hill by the fence.  Breathing really laboured.  Eyes dull, leg so hot and throbbing.  More Emergency Essence, more Reiki in the rain.  But after 15 minutes or so she started spasming and then there was a slowing of the breath.  And then the final breath and she was gone.  I came in and had a hot sweet tea.  And then lay in the dark sobbing for the rest of the night.

Such an emptiness in my heart and on the farm without our little blobs of cotton wool littering the landscape.  I love their wise citrine eyes, the short crop of black hair on the head and legs, sinking my hands deep into their luxurious fleece and imagining all the products to enrich our lives.  I love the shearer and the huge event that is the annual shearing, I love their sweet faces and eager antics to steal every last morsel of food from the alpacas.  I have loved them from near and afar and now they are all gone.

Our last remaining has long been crazy and won’t come near us and I don’t like her chances on her own.

What a waste!  Like a fox in a hen house, the wild dogs have just brought them down, gnawed at them and then abandoned them to the ants, goannas and eagles.  It has just been sport.  Hunting practice.  And it has felt like a war zone.  And now there is a war.  Me against the wild dog population.  I am going to learn to shoot today.  And I am going to hunt them down.  They have wilfully destroyed my ovine family.  It’s personal.

Waking up in a War Zone

by . Posted on
07 Feb

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 Carnivore’s Conundrum

by . Posted on
03 Mar

I don’t eat meat but my little pickle does which means that I have had to get a lot closer to meat and a lot more involved with where it comes from, and, as a farmer, where it goes.

I believe that if you must eat meat you need to have raised it, fed it, loved it, looked after it, and attained its agreement to the kill.  And then you kill it or at least be there at the end to ensure it is killed humanely, kindly, with compassion and care.  After all, these are living, breathing, feeling beings with soul.

This week two of the boys went to the fat sale.  Hector has been avoiding this for years.  Mainly because each time my resolve has failed or the river has flooded or the bank balance has been boosted some other way.  Each time I have gone and talked to him and cried with him because his ending has always been inevitable yet somehow he and I had to make our peace with it.  At the end of last year he told me that he gave himself in the ultimate sacrifice and I understood that animals do this for us – not willingly, not happily, but nobly they give the ultimate gift in service to us humans.  For love of us.

And I understand and ‘get’ that – I really do.  But to get cattle to the table, first they are separated from the herd and mustered which can be long, hot, hard work and confusing to yards which often are places of fear – what happens next?  Then they are loaded on a truck – where am I going now?  There is grief at leaving their home, the land they love and their friends and family – both human and herd.

Road travel must be terrifying and then they finally arrive at the saleyards where strangers prod and poke and sometimes hit them.  They are tired, hungry, thirsty, dazed and confused.  And then they are loaded into huge trucks, crammed in together for often long journeys to the abattoir where they will smell the blood and fear long before they are stunned and killed.  Imagine how terrified they must be, how their last moments are filled with fear and the killing frenzy before them.

And yet when Hitler did this to humans it was called The Holocaust – a blot upon our human history never to be forgotten.  I remember it well.  In another life I was in Auschwitz where I scrubbed floors and the lust of two SS officers kept me alive longer than most.  But before we got there we were herded, isolated, starved and prodded and poked and cramped into ghettos then cattle trucks as we travelled to unknown destinations and destinies.  We too were full of fear.  No one, no living sentient being should be treated like that.  It isn’t right that we do this to cattle and sheep and pigs and chickens.  What have we become that we think this is OK?

We have legalised horror and industrialised death and it is not OK. We have to get back to grass roots and get involved with where our food comes form – where it is grown and nurtured and raised, where it dies and how it is treated every step of the way.  This isn’t just about chemical free or biodynamic food or farming, it is a moral dilemma and soul choice.

If we eat meat we have a moral responsibility to those animals we feed off to ensure they are treated with dignity, compassion and yes, love.

I have cried so many tears for Hector this week.  First he sulked and refused to speak to me.  Finally I reikied him on his way to the abattoir and he said ‘I have lived a good life, a happy life, I have loved my life and my ‘girls’ .  Everyone has to die eventually and I have lived longer than most.  I love Ben and would do anything for him’ and finally he and I were at peace.

It doesn’t stop the tears because I miss him and probably always will and the girls are so so sad without him.  He was the best babysitter and the proud and constant friend and protector of his herd.  Hector the Protector, rest assured that we loved you so much and this was not the end I wanted for you.  You have served us in your ultimate sacrifice and for this we sincerely thank you.  Hector, my darling, rest in peace and thank you from the bottom of my ever more vegetarian heart.