Raising Sheep

or

"Mom, who are we eating tonight?"

When we moved to the country, my husband talked with the local extension officer and decided that the best kind of animals to have were sheep. At the time my huband was a salesman for a glove company and he would go into the city each day to work. Sometimes he also traveled.

I knew nothing about taking care of or raising sheep but I was soon to learn.

Lambing usually starts in January or February and almost always on the coldest day of the year. My husband did a lot of traveling and naturally when the lambing started, he was gone.

Everything went well for awhile. I would go to the barn every couple of hours and if there was a new lamb, I would put it under a heat lamp to help it dry off and not freeze in the cold.

But then there was a ewe who obviously was having trouble giving birth. I watched for awhile and didn’t know how to help so I called the veterinarian.

He came and said that this was a breech birth and he put a hand inside the ewe and turned the lamb to be born head first instead of tail first and everything was all right.

He charged me five dollars!

After I called the Vet several times I decided that I could handle the situation and save the five dollars. I bought a pair of doctor’s rubber gloves….the very thin kind and would put them on and go out and help any ewe that was having difficulty.

During one lambing season my husband was home and said that he would take the night watch for the lambs. So he got up every two hours to check.

Finally he came back and said that he had to call for me because his hands were too large and he couldn’t help the ewe who was having difficulty.

Naturally I was back to getting up every two hours!

But if there are twins, the ewe will sometimes reject the second lamb and unless you can get another ewe to accept it the only solution is to bottle feed the rejected lamb.

One year we had a bottle feeding lamb that always could get out of the fenced in area and would come to the kitchen door and bawl for someone to come out with food.

When you went out the door,the lamb would butt its head against your leg….just as it butted the mother’s udder to get the milk starting to flow.

I had a difficult time with the Suffolk Sheep for they were jumpers. And were adept at jumping over the fence and coming into the yard.

I would go out and holler at them and they would jump back over the fence and into the sheep yard.

No matter what I did,they jumped!

It wasn’t long before I sold them and stuck with the Shropshires who were easier to handle.

Our Ram was a beautiful animal named Duncan.

The children always named all of our animals and the sheep were no exception.

The boys tried to ride Duncan but he objected to that and would dump them off. And if they were not careful he would butt them hard. He had a head like a baseball bat.

There came a time when we sent the lambs to market.

However we kept two of the smallest ones to put in our freezer. They were named Sickinger (he was not as big as the others) and Not Table Talk which referred to an elimination procedure that we didn’t discuss at the dinner table.

Unfortunately I let the family know who was put in the freezer and so every time Lamb was served for dinner the children would woefully ask ”Mom,who are we eating tonight?”

Never again did I let on who or what was in the freezer!