Mother’s Day (and haircuts)

I tried to get pictures of my sheep mamas with their grown-up babies, but they were not cooperative. The sun also kept popping in and out from behind clouds and made the shadows odd. The only “Mother and baby” picture I got was of Holly and her constant shadow, Marigold. I wish the light in the barn was better in the mornings and evenings so I could get a picture of how Marigold still worries about losing track of her mama when they’re coming in and out, and drapes her front legs across Holly’s back and runs sideways on her hind legs so they don’t get separated.

“I’ve got my eye on you, ShepherdPerson! No snatching my lamb!”

It’s early enough in the year still some of the Soays may still shed, but I’m pretty sure Holly will need help this year. Her old wool is starting to dangle pretty low where it came loose but felted together before it quite fell off. They are all itchy and irritable when the weather gets warm and the loose wool gets uncomfortable.

Of course my photography efforts were complicated by having my own baby Mira underfoot. Literally, at times. I wasn’t paying enough attention to her and she forced her way between my knees. I think she might have been trying to scrape her wool off against my legs.

“Stop paying attention to things-that-are-not-me!”

I walked up to visit the Dukelings, who are not mothers but should be grateful to them, given how often I’ve told them when they’re in trouble that I only put up with them out of affection for their mothers. They remain unimpressed by any of my complaints about their shenanigans.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, I am a treasure and a delight!”

Apple’s perfect confidence in his own charm is sadly too endearing for me to ever stay annoyed with him for long. He is the friendliest of the four Dukelings and every morning waits for me to scratch his chin and say hello before leaving the barn with his brothers. He also looks like he will need help getting rid of his old wool.

Mira followed me down to the fence and was standing behind me giving me the backward ears of annoyance. And maybe waiting to see if there were any treats available for her, as my baby.

“I SAID, stop paying attention to things-that-are-not-me!”

And Lady also came by, a bit more cautiously, to see if there might be any treats available for her, as the flock matriarch.

“What are you doing out here if you don’t have treats for me?”

I suppose pictures of Lady are fitting for mother’s day. She was always a very excellent mother, and she’s the only ewe in the flock who still keeps tabs on her sons as well as her daughter and granddaughter. I think she’s mostly the flock queen by virtue of having a built-in group of followers in the form of her lambs.

Of course the boss is usually the oldest ewe and the only other ewe Lady’s age is Duchess, who emphatically does not want the job. She’s temperamentally unsuited to that kind of pressure and was a nervous wreck the one time I tried splitting the flock during breeding season in a way that left her as the oldest female and therefore the ewe in charge. Which in turn made the rest of the flock with her a nervous wreck as well. That was not a fun experiment.

“I’m very sneaky!”

She didn’t follow me down to the boys, she just spied on me through the fence. Spying through the fence, even a wire fence, is much safer and more fun than looking through the open gate right next to her.

Her son, Clover, spied on me through the fence on the other side of the same gate.

“What are you up to, ShepherdPerson?”

Angel, who stood with her whole body in the gate and half her face behind the post, did not understand the assignment I think. In her defense, she is not generally a cautious sort of sheep and her biological mother Mira was at that moment trying to crawl into my lap and chew on the camera strap where I’d crouched down to take pictures, so “sneaky” is not something that comes naturally to her.

“Ha, you can’t see me behind this post!”

Usually Duchess and Daisy are almost as close as Marigold and Holly, but Daisy was busy doing a Misery Plop instead of following her mama as usual so I didn’t get a good picture of them. A Misery Plop is when your loose wool is driving you crazy and you can’t get it to come off so you just collapse to the ground in frustration and sulk about it. In her shaggy coat with her head and legs hidden she looked like a lump of solid wool.

“Grrrrr, this is so miserable!”

This sulking should not be mistaken as a request for help of course. The only thing worse than having loose itchy wool is ShepherdPerson trying to take your loose itchy wool away.

“You keep your nasty shears to yourself, ShepherdPerson! I’ll do it all by myself!”

From experience I usually have a pretty good idea who will be able to shed and who will need help. Flynn got sheared earlier this week, but I think he’s mostly forgiven me. He’s been hanging out a lot with the Shetlands and Neo, as fellow frequent shearing victims.

“It’s weird, I feel a lot lighter and cooler since ShepherdPerson was so mean and cut all my wool off. Do you think that’s connected, Neo?”

“I don’t see how it could be, I’m sure it’s a coincidence!”

Neo hasn’t been sheared yet this year but he and Mira are both on the list of Soays who never manage to shed at all, so their turns are coming. Neo is an easy-going sheep and usually doesn’t get too mad at me about it. He’s a very good boy.

“Wait for me! Where’s my treats? You better not try to pull on my loose wool, Mommy!”

Mira is a very dramatic sheep in general, so she gets very dramatically mad when I pull off loose tufts of her wool or have to shear her entirely, and always makes sure I see how thoroughly she’s ignoring me about it. But fortunately for me she is too attached to her crunchies and petting to give me the cold shoulder for long. I suppose there are some perks to being her mama, even if she doesn’t give me a mother’s day card.

It Has Been Zero Days Since Our Last Nonsense

Fortunately today’s nonsense didn’t require an emergency vet, or even much property damage.

Neo got his horn stuck in the welded wire of the stall door and had to be maneuvered free. Lady’s whole bloodline has a curse of getting stuck in things, but it hadn’t struck in a while and I forgot about it. Fortunately if someone’s going to be stuck Neo is the best possible option, he doesn’t panic and thrash around and hurt himself.

Everyone else was panicking on his behalf however, and sprinted out of the barn as soon as I opened the door (with its temporarily attached Neo) in case the barn decided to attack anyone else. Nova was so caught up in things she even forgot her breakfast, and I had to take the tray out and rattle it before she remembered and came back.

“How could I have forgotten my breakfast??”

We’ve opened all the gates to the yard since the grass is at its peak, which causes some confusion when they can’t decide which gates to go through in the morning.

“What’s the holdup up front?”

The Shetlands (with Liam and Bran since Bran’s stitches are out) were hanging back, still suspicious of me what with Bran’s mishap and all the shearing that’s been going on. The Soays were all lined up to come through the gate towards me, but Angel was standing in the gap and no one wanted to risk passing her. And people say sheep aren’t smart!

“Finally, traffic is moving again!”

The Soays ended up circling around the long way to reach the yard through the middle gate, while the Shetlands split off and took the direct route through the upper gate. Sometimes the upper gate is really scary, for no reason I’ve ever been able to figure out.

“This gate is super scary, but it’s a shorter walk…”

And eventually by different roads we all arrive in the same place, although the Soays and Shetlands do still tend to drift in different directions while grazing.

“So much grass!”

It’s been raining a lot today, so hopefully that will be enough to keep them under cover and out of trouble!

So Rude

Bran and Liam have been sleeping in the barn aisle at night so Bran doesn’t get punched in the stitches, which absolutely everyone is unhappy about. Liam wants back in the private suite with his girls and Neo, Bran wants back in with the other boys, and everyone else wants to be out in the aisle with them so they can steal hay all night.

Last night I must not have latched the private suite correctly or they somehow got the latch open, because Lana, Nina, and Neo were all in the aisle with Bran and Liam this morning. Nobody was bleeding and I didn’t have time or energy before work to try to separate them back out, so I just told them it was very rude to break out of their stall and there better be Absolutely No Punching Bran and let them all go to the quarantine field together. It ended up just being the girls, Liam, and Bran though, Neo walked all the way to the gate, then chickened out and ran back into the barn (where the rest of the Soays hadn’t been let out yet) crying.

I did not get any pictures of them because Bran is still mad at me over the traumatic vet visit and keeps hiding behind what’s left of the lamb-cave tree. I’m not sure if it’s me or him that’s the rude one in this scenario.

Once all that was sorted out, Her Royal Wooliness Nova got her extra breakfast only a tiny bit late, which she was very happy about.

“So rude, to be late with my breakfast! I might have starved!”

And there was no extra breakfast for Mira, which she was very UNhappy about.

“Very rude, locking me out so I can’t steal Nova’s breakfast! I’M the baby, where’s MY extra food??”

I gave her a few crunchies and walked outside so she’d follow me and leave Nova alone. She was quickly distracted by her sticks, which were, as always, not arranged to her liking.

Then thanks to Watcher barking Mira noticed that the rest of the flock had (rudely!) walked off to graze without her! This happens almost every day, but she gets indignant about it anyway.

(WordPress has changed how videos get added to posts and I can’t tell if I did it right, apologies if it won’t play.)

Watcher was pouting because we shut the gate in the OuchyZappyFence in his face (rude!) so he couldn’t chase the sheep.

“There would not have been any problems out there if you’d just let me help!”

And Echo was pouting because we wouldn’t let him back in the basement. He said morning is too early in the day and the grass was still wet and who cares about sheep he wanted to go back to bed.

“I only want to count sheep when I’m going to sleep!”

When I got home from work, Bran & Co were too hot to bother running back to the tree to hide from me, so he just hid behind Lana.

“Nothing to see here, I am just a shadow, pay no attention to that sheep behind the curtain…”

I stood at the dividing fence trying to zoom in enough to get a picture of Bran in the quarantine field who was trying to avoid my attention while the rest of the flock crowded around my legs demanding attention food.

“Hey! Hey! ShepherdPerson! Why are you looking at him and not us? Where’s our treats? Why’s it so hot? Hey!”

Maybe someday everyone around here will learn some manners, but I’m not holding my breath.

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

Warning for description and a not-very-graphic picture of sheep injury.

Today the boys started beating up Bran, and since I still haven’t gotten a verdict on what was wrong with Johnny I am paranoid, so I tried to separate Bran from the others.

Just because I haven’t had enough catastrophes lately, while trying to squeeze through the gate Bran caught his skin on on the edge of a fence panel I didn’t know had a sharp place and gave himself a big gash all the way down his shoulder. So for the second time in two weeks we had to wrestle a very large sheep (by my standards) in the back of a very small car and haul it to the emergency vet. Bran did not like any part of this process.

A very exciting ride, a bunch of shots, and what felt like approximately a million stitches later, he is back home and sharing the “quarantine” pen with his sire Liam, who is too polite (and too arthritic) to beat anyone up. The vet says it was very clean and didn’t puncture anything important, just torn skin, so he should be fine.

“Like they say, nice guys finish as Designated Quarantine Buddy every time somebody gets hurt. Or something like that.”

Liam was compensated in crunchies for his babysitting service and I think he forgave me.

Bran kinda hates me a lot right now though. Wouldn’t even eat crunchies unless I threw them over to him.

“I’m not letting you within ten feet of me for love nor crunchies, you’re not taking me to that awful TortureJailPlace again!”

Poor guy. I’m going to leave him with Liam for a week or two and then move him over with the girls and see how he gets along there once the skin heals up. At this rate I’m going to end up moving the whole boys group over one by one, which at some point will defeat the purpose. Maybe I will just glue foam padding to their heads or something.

“I get no attention or love or treats at all, I have to make do with just stolen hay!”

Between shearing the fluffiest ones on weekends, Jeb still having to have the hole in his broken horn fly-sprayed every few days, Nova needing supplements in the morning to help her keep weight on, Johnny’s mysterious illness, and now Bran’s injury, Mira says (loudly and frequently) that there is entirely too much attention being paid to sheep-that-are-not-her lately. But all the doctoring has been giving her lots of time to steal hay from the barn (superior to hay in the hay rack, and apparently even better than fresh spring grass??) so I say she’s still coming out ahead on the deal.

Little John

Baby Johnny with his mother Nova.

Johnny front and center with the rest of the guys in the boys’ field.

Little John

April 5, 2015 – April 5, 2024

The Grass is Greener…

We locked the girls out of their large field a while ago, because it was looking a bit over-grazed and we wanted to let it recover before winter. This was a massively unpopular move, but the sheep are mostly resigned to it. Except if we go out in the middle of the day, then we must obviously have come to open the gate.

“We’re starving, open the gate!”

The boys were also hanging around their gate into that field, maybe thinking if the girls weren’t allowed in someone should be allowed in. A closed field is of course the best grass around.

Except for Mira, who was of course more interested in crunchies.

“Any crunchies for your baby, Mommy?”

“Let me make sure no one’s looking…”

“OK, quick, they’re not looking! Give me crunchies!”

I did not have any crunchies, but Lady also had to come check. As flock matriarch and everything, if there are any crunchies she should get a share.

“Did I hear something about crunchies?”

Once they decided there were no crunchies and I wasn’t going to open the gate, they all ran to the yard.

“Useless ShepherdPerson, doesn’t care if we starve!”

… and congregated around the other gate into the closed field.

“We have nothing to eat because this gate is closed, woe is us!”

Look at all that grass, I’m pretty sure the yard is actually larger than their regular field. In all fairness I’m not sure if they were hanging out there because of the gate or the shade, but it’s still funny.

I let Mira follow us into the field to evaluate the grass situation, firstly because she’s usually good about following me back if I let her go through gates with me and secondly because she runs up and down the fence crying if I don’t let her follow me. This time she decided to be stubborn and refuse to leave the Forbidden Grass.

“You go on, Mommy, I’m good here!”

It took two people, a lot of coaxing and/or chasing, and a minor temper tantrum on her part to get her back on her side of the gate. Probably if I’d actually left she would have eventually come running, but odds were good the rest of the flock would run in before she came out if I left the gate open. Once we got her out she camped in front of the gate and sulked.

“Worst. Mommy. Ever.”

I am a terrible mother. No treats, never let her have any fun. She gave up and ran off to the rest of the flock once we went back to the house.

“We’re so glad you’re back!”

We had to re-electrify the net fencing because Watcher kept trying to chew through to the sheep side and Nova kept getting her head stuck trying to graze on the dog side. There’s one section of the netting that looks like it’s more patches than intact strands. I’m sure Watcher thinks everything would have been much easier if I’d taken him along to boss the sheep around.

“I need belly rubs!”

Or not. Sigh. Maybe he was on break.

The sheep may be grumpy about being banned from the field, but I’m sure they’ll appreciate having grass in there later.

Hurry Up and Wait

When I let the sheep out in the morning they all run out of the barn in a rush, except of course the bottle babies who hang back with me. With poor grace, on Angel’s part. She’s torn between her desire to Always Be First and her determination to make sure Mira doesn’t get any treats behind her back. It’s very deeply frustrating, sometimes she has to punch Clover about it if he’s nearby.

“Hurry UP, we’re going to be LATE!”

Mira on the other hand is a dawdler. I have to chivvy her out of the barn so I can close the door, then she has to check on her by-the-barn pile of sticks and rocks, and then she has to check on her by-the-boys’-gate stick pile, and then she has to stop and investigate any new sticks she finds on her way to the yard gate, and she wants me to stand there and wait for her at every stop.

“What’s this stick doing over here, this stick does Not Go Here!”

She does not, however, want my help with any of her Very Important Inspections.

“Don’t leave, stay right there until I’m done fixing this mess! But don’t touch the stick, it’s mine and I can do it all by myself!”

I suspect that stick is bound for her by-the-yard-gate stick pile, which has the biggest sticks due to her flexible definition of “stick” and several dead and slowly disintegrating trees nearby that sometimes drop pieces for her to find.

She wanted that particular pile to be directly in the middle of the yard gate opening, but after having to move them out of the way over and over despite her protests I think I’ve finally convinced her that if she doesn’t want me to touch her sticks she has to keep them out of the footpath where I won’t trip over them. Or at least it’s been a while since the last time there was a chunk of wood directly in my way across the gate.

“Are you guys coming or not??”

Angel is very concerned someone might eat the exact blades of grass she was planning to eat if we don’t get a move on. The heat doesn’t bode well for future pasture health, but I think she’s panicking a bit prematurely.

“Hang on, I need to scratch my itchy wool! But don’t touch my wool, I can do it all by myself”

Poor girl’s always so very miserable with the itchy loose wool she can never get off by herself despite her firm belief otherwise. Somehow this does not translate into any gratitude for haircuts. I’m such a bad mother, always giving her haircuts and not letting her keep big chunks of tree in the middle of the path but not giving her enough treats attention when she wants it. It’s so hard, being Mira.

“Ugh, fine, you guys do what you want, I have to take this watermelon rind away from Nova before she eats it all.”

Because clearly that rind is all that stands between them and starvation. I think it’s just the principle of the thing, no one’s allowed to have anything that Angel doesn’t have.

“Wait for meee!”

Mira finally finishes her morning routine and catches up with the rest of the flock, temporarily reassured that her various collections are still in order and the wool situation can’t be improved without a haircut right now though she’ll definitely get it all off all by herself later.

“I kind of want that watermelon rind, but not enough to provoke Angel over it…”

Mira (right) and Duchess (left). They don’t know Mira is Duchess’s daughter and neither of them know Angel is Mira’s, but the family resemblance is clear. They’re so beautiful, even though they all three still need haircuts.

“Don’t make eye contact she’s thinking about haircuts again…”

The Shetlands are quite fed up with all this shearing business and are staying as far away from me as possible while keeping the Soays between us. They should know by now that shearing is an annual event, but since I’ve been catching Jeb and spraying stuff down the hole in his head every day for months now, they’ve probably decided safe is better than sorry.

“Hurry up, we’ve been waiting for you to come back for ages!”

Watcher wants me to hurry and throw his frisbee and Echo wants me to hurry and let him go back to bed. They were both disappointed. I keep telling Echo most dogs would be happy to have such a big yard to run and play in but no he just wants to lay in his bed and sleep. Going back to bed is also what I want to do most of the time so I can’t tease him too much.

I would have thrown Watcher’s frisbee, but he had to cancel the game to go say hi to Nova at the fence. I’m not sure if she was waiting for him or just wanting to eat grass on the dogs’ side of the netting. Nova and Watcher have been particular friends since they both were babies and hang out together often, but Nova is also very fond of sticking her head through fences.

“My mama always said the grass was greener on the other side!”

Her mama, Princess, did always say that, which is the only thing that mitigates my annoyance with her every time she gets herself stuck in spite of me, Watcher, and her own past experiences all telling her to keep her head and most particularly her horns on her own side of the fence. I have so many pictures of Princess with her front knees folded under her and her head shoved under fences, stretching as far as she can reach while there’s a whole field of grass behind her. I keep threatening to hook the electric netting back up to actual electric, but we haven’t done it yet.

I finally have all of the Shetlands sheared except Barney, who is a nightmare to shear and belongs in a category all his own, and the two half-Shetlands who may or may not cooperate but are easier to shear regardless due to inheriting the Soay lack of wool on their bellies and other twitchy places. After that it’s just trimming some of the Soays who are hanging on to their old wool, and tidying up a few hooves that I can tell need trimming.

I’m very late on getting the shearing done (thank you Jeb for complicating my life) but I’m finally getting caught up!

Ten Years

This weekend is the tenth anniversary of when the first four sheep came to live here. Now there are twenty-six! Mostly I attribute this to the dedicated efforts of Duke, who is sire or grand-sire to a whopping 16 out of those 26 sheep. Nature gave him one job and no one can say he shirked his duty, but he’s much happier and less stressed since he was, ah, shall we say involuntarily retired from the lamb-siring business and is now safe to live with the girls full time.

To celebrate, I gave Nina her haircut this morning, for which she was not at all grateful. She wasn’t badly behaved except when I trimmed her hooves, but she did yell the entire time and that girl has the loudest voice of anyone in the flock. Having a sheep yelling at the top of her lungs right next to my head for an hour straight is not the most fun I’ve ever had, but I’ll take it over the sheep who spend the whole ordeal trying to knock me down or kick me in the face.

Once I’d finished, I let her go and she ran off, still yelling. The whole flock came running to check out her haircut, her mama and Jeb leading the charge. Liam was either too lazy or too suspicious of me with shears in my hand to come up, but he did hover in the background and yell back to her. His voice is very low and gravelly and my phone microphone won’t pick it up at that distance, but he was calling to her.

“Hey! Hey! Everybody give me sympathy, I’ve just been tortured! Hey!”

The whole group followed Nina over to Liam, before they all lost interest and went back to grazing.

“Come back here Nina, if that’s really who you are! We having finished sniffing you yet!”

The bottle babies of course couldn’t care less and just kept trying to steal the bottle of fly spray I had hooked to my belt while using the camera.

“Everything Mommy has must be for us, right?”

Angel is doing a good job of shedding her own fleece, but Mira is in line for a haircut this year. I meant to have the shearing done by now, but Jeb for whatever reason developed an infection in the stump of the horn he broke all the way back in 2019 this spring, and the necessary treatment of that has put me behind schedule. He’s mostly gone through the denial, anger, bargaining, and depression stages of grief about having medicine squirted on his head on a daily basis, and is now mostly settled on acceptance.

Everyone has settled down now and is camped in the shade to avoid the heat. Temperatures this high in the first week of June is probably not a good sign for the rest of the summer, but I’m trying not to think about it.

Are We Still In Kansas?

We’ve had suspiciously summery weather lately, which I’m sure is a contributing factor in the recent high winds and storms. Temperatures in the upper sixties in late February/early March is strange on its own, but highs in the upper sixties and lows in the thirties tends to correlate with high winds. The wind Friday evening was so strong I was a bit worried we’d wake up in Oz! And there are rather a lot of woolly munchkins out there…

“That wind was no fun, don’t schedule that kind of weather for us again ShepherdPerson!”

Everything seemed pretty normal in the morning, though. The Soays were falling over themselves racing out of the barn. Liam and the other Shetlands hung back to stay out of the crush then followed more sedately, Liam giving me one of his frequent mildly reproachful looks as he went, presumably judging me for the way I let his flock mates carry on. (The weather and the Soay dedication to Maximum Drama are two things I do not actually have any control over, despite what the sheep seem to think!)

We lost a door off of the barn to the wind, but surprisingly no large trees went down. Mira diligently collected some of the shattered wood fragments of the doorframe for her stick collection, but the door itself was too large for her to move. She was forced to abandon it, with many a longing backwards glance.

“Hmm, I don’t think I can move this…”

“But I really want it…”

On the boys’ side, Apple hung back in the barn waiting for our morning routine of him trying to lick and/or bite my fingers until I take his cute little face between my hands, waggle his head back and forth, and briefly greet him with something like “Good morning, Apple,” or “Apple Stop That, that’s biting, that’s ouch,” or “Why are you such a silly Apple?” Once satisfied that he’d been properly acknowledged, he followed his brothers out for breakfast and apparently dismissed me from his mind.

Mira, Angel, and Lady closely supervised the distribution of hay. Watcher barked at us from the yard, certain there should be a collie supervising instead. Mira, Lady, and Nova followed me to the gate to collect a toll in treats for letting me leave. All routine, as usual. Probably not in Oz, then. Hopefully that was the worst of the weather and we won’t have any more winds like that!

Birthday Girl

I had my good camera all ready to take pictures for Mira’s birthday today, except when I tried to take a picture of her counting her sticks the camera informed me that while the screen would turn on and let me navigate around the menus, the battery was too low to actually take pictures. Would have been nice if it had given me a low battery warning earlier, but oh well.

I pulled out my cell phone to use that camera instead, but Mira saw my hand go into my pocket and immediately abandoned the daily Morning Stick Inspection in favor of Coat Pocket Inspection.

“What has it got in its pocketses??”

Of course she got some birthday crunchies, and of course all the other sheep noticed there were treats to be had, so I had to retreat to the other side of the fence to get any pictures that weren’t noses right in the camera lens.

“Are we having a party??”

Poor Mira on the left, as always very grumpy and indignant that so many people came to her birthday party. Rude of them to just show up like that. She moved off to sulk behind a fence post until everyone else started drifting back to they hay rack to resume their interrupted breakfast.

“That was a TERRIBLE party, Mommy. You paid attention to things-that-are-not-me and gave crunchies to people-who-are-not-me and everything.”

I tried to pet her to make it up, but she gave me the irritated head toss that she unfortunately passed on to Angel. Mira doesn’t have horns so it’s mostly just cute when she does it.

“No pets, only crunchies!”

She got a lot of crunchies. She is very spoiled.

The dogs were more than willing to accept any petting Mira didn’t want. Watcher got over his loud protests over me going to the barn without him (I do this every morning one would think he’d get used to it) and brought me his Jolly Ball. Echo simply wanted to go back inside despite the nice weather and was laser-focused on the back door.

“Play time!”

“Nap time!”

I would have taken more pictures, but at this point my phone informed me my storage space had run out and disabled that camera, too. I could swear I just cleaned out my phone not long ago. Now camera-less despite having two cameras on my person, I gave up. Some sort of technological conspiracy against taking pictures today, I think.

Happy birthday, Miss Miracle! It may be atypically warm for late February, but I’m glad we have nice weather instead of two feet of snow like the day you were born!