COUNTRY ROADS

Hectic
Is your life hectic? Do you have trouble keeping focused? Your multi-tasking is multi-mixed-up? You need two sheep in your back yard!
They are just like deer, only less skittish. Their fleece is thick and soft and often they have the cutest little “maaaaaaaaaaa” sound calling you. However, they may instead have a sound more like that historic nursery rhyme “baaaaaaaaaaaa” which is more guttural and less melodic.
Our two lambs are now four months old. Their names are Patrick and Posey and they are members of the Shetland breed. As many of you know, Patrick cannot see but he hears perfectly and his sense of taste and smell serve him well. He finds his water and feed and can wander around the sheep pen just fine, locating a large oak tree beneath which he likes to curl up and take a nap.
Posey, with sight, can spot a person in her vicinity an acre away. She’s the one with the less than melodic “baaaaaaaaa” and she is quite a character. She has made the transition from being with her herd on the hillside to being the sole companion of a little blind lamb, losing none of her independence and bossiness.
While Patrick usually follows a set routine, Posey is poised for adventure. She locates rose bushes, reaches as high as her length will extend into an apple tree, gallops onto the deck and even followed me into the house one day.
This week there is a young family visiting next door. The girls are six and nine and they love the lambs. Once they learned that Posey enjoyed eating trumpet vine blossoms, they raced over to the fence, harvesting the remaining flowers that were out of the reach of the lamb, even when she stood on tippy hoof.
They made a friend forever, or at least for week. Now when the girls come into the yard Posey follows them everywhere. It is “Mary had a little lamb” come to life except it is Caroline and Julia.
The two lambs get along most of the time, except at mealtime and bedtime. Posey has decided that all food belongs to her; none for Patrick. I was hoping to introduce a nurturing sort of lamb as a companion to Patrick but, in the animal world, the only nurturing lamb Posey would extend that feeling toward would be to her own birth lambs.
To combat this, they are fed grain in separate quarters and their hay in at least three piles along the fenceline they share with the chickens. I chose the chicken fence for the placement of food and water since Patrick can hear their clucking easily and make the connection from anywhere in his yard. It works, except for Posey, rushing between the three piles trying to keep Patrick from enjoying any one of them. Amazingly Patrick doesn’t get flustered. He merely walks to a different pile and relinquishes the desired one to Posey. They play “musical hay pile” for awhile, then settle down to serious munching.
One of our favorite sights is to see the two of them in late morning, resting in their yard, happily, quietly chewing their cud.
Evenings when it is time to bed them down, Posey goes into an old chicken coop that has two adjoining rooms and opens into the sheep yard. Originally we thought both lambs would be housed there, but Patrick gets lost and can get stuck amongst the elevated egg laying boxes and assorted “lamb traps.” It also bothered me thinking of him in the night when the coop rats come out and he cannot see them.
Patrick spends his night in a custom made little house with a ramp on hinges for entrancing and exiting. Once inside he gets his night snack COB (corn, oats and barley) and in his clean straw bed he is safe and contained until morning.
Afternoons, from three until five o’clock the lambs are allowed onto the back lawn and must be monitored a bit. Therefore, no matter how busy we are we become shepherds for those two hours. Everything that is consuming us around the farm and with the family must be put aside for the lambs. It is their favorite time of day and it has become ours as well.
Renee Kiff weeds and writes at her family farm in Alexander Valley.