Saturday was a busy sheep day for me. I know I only have six ewes but I'm still relatively new to all this so things take me multiple times longer to do than a truly experienced shepherd.
I still hadn't tagged Jamie's twins' ears yet, and Poppy was the last of the ewes that needed to be sheared. I knew the shearing would be the hardest and take the longest, so I got everything ready to do the tagging first.
I used to do the tail banding and ear tagging the day after they were born, but this year when I tagged Ewenice's twins, one of them ended up with a floppy ear. Maybe I didn't put the tag close enough to the ear base, I don't know.
I went into the pen and cornered one of the twins. It was the second born, the ram lamb. I put him under my arm like a football and took him to the patio table where I had my equipment set up.
There was an upside down top to a Kool Lube can filled with alcohol, two CA state scrapies tags, and two sets of blank tags that I previously wrote their numbers on. 07-04 and 07-05, for the 4th and 5th lambs born in 2007. To round out the equipment list were the two tagging implements, one for the state required scrapies tag and another for the farm tag, because they are different sizes and are not interchangeable, unfortunately.
With 07-05 tucked under my arm I put his tags in the respective taggers and dipped the first in the alcohol. This part always makes me a bit nervous because I don't do a lot of lambs and my books always advise to be careful not to hit one of the two main veins in the ear. I positioned the tagger carefully and gave a hard squeeze. Success! The second tag went smoothly as well.
My confidence was up and I knew I'd get better the more I did it.
I carried the lamb back to the pen and set him free, where his mother carefully checked him out to make sure all was well. Then I cornered his sister and just as she was about to leap away I managed to grab a back leg. I got her into the same football hold under my arm and carried her to the table. Her tags were placed in the taggers and dipped in the alcohol. The first tag was placed on her ear and I squeezed the tagger. That's when she decided to put up a big struggle.
I didn't have her head in a good enough head lock and by the time I got the tagger released she had helped herself to a nice big hole. It's supposed to be like getting your ear pierced: a quick, hard squeeze that lasts just a second, but now she had a huge hole like those kids that wear the "plugs". Blood was dripping. So much for my confidence. I managed to get the other tag in without any problem, but boy did I feel bad. I set her loose in the pen with her brother and mother. They rushed over to her and checked her out.
The hole in the ear
Great. Now she has a floppy ear too, due to the large hole. This must be the year of the floppy ear. At least it stopped bleeding fairly quickly. I rationalized that some people cut tips or notches out of their livestock's ears, so I knew it was more traumatic for me than for the lamb.
Now it was time to shear Poppy. She is the notoriously dumb sheep. A couple of weeks ago my daughter was here helping me with some shearing. We had sheared all but Poppy. We managed to get a rope on her and tried to bring her to the big garage where we had done the other sheep. It's much easier to clean the cement of the wool and droppings than the grass, plus it was in the shade.
After dragging, pushing, pulling her out of the pen she promptly flopped down on the grass and refused to move. Okay smarty pants! We got the lawn tractor with the little trailer attachment that I use for feeding. We managed to get her mostly into the trailer (it has a dump feature) and sort of half dragged, half trailered her to the garage. We got her to just outside the gate leading to the garage and pushed her out of the trailer onto the grass. It was like she was paralyzed.
Everyone was kind of huffing and puffing from the exertion so I decided we had done enough for the day and we could shear Poppy another day. Not surprisingly, there were no arguments.
Poppy before
Saturday was that day. This time I thought I would bring the equipment to the sheep. I had a long extension cord coming out of the big garage window and all my shearing equipment in a big bucket. I had two ropes, one to catch and tie her to the fence and the other to tie around her feet if needed. I was going to get this done, one way or the other.
I got her cornered and got the lasso around her neck. I chased the other sheep out of the little pen and closed that gate so they couldn't come back in and interfere. Poppy still had herself wedged into a corner. I eventually managed to push her out of the corner and drag her to where my equipment was waiting.
I knew I wouldn't be able to put her on the stand so I didn't even bother with that. I figured if she was going to flop down like she did previously I would try to shear her like a real shearer would, on the ground.
She did flop down and I got to work. I started at her head and was going down her neck when I encountered an obstacle. Oh come on now, I knew the clippers couldn't be that dull. What was it? I thought it was a giant wool knot that I couldn't get through. I worked on it for a few moments when suddenly I felt really silly. The "knot" was the lasso around her neck! No wonder I couldn't shear through it!
I pulled the rope higher up her neck to the shorn area and continued without too much more trouble. She only jumped around a few times (a couple when I cut her skin--well who wouldn't jump at that?) and a couple times when she thought I wasn't paying attention and she thought she could break free. Once she managed to wrap herself and me with the rope and extension cord. I'm still not sure how I was able to get out of that predicament. Another time she had been standing nicely and then suddenly flopped down, taking me out with her. Now I have a nice little bruise and abrasion on my right collarbone for her trouble.
Poppy after
Finally she was done! And it only took, what, an hour, maybe an hour and a half? (Real shearers only take a few minutes per sheep!) I gave her a handful of grain as a reward and set her free. I let the other sheep out to enjoy the grass and set about cleaning up.
07-04's ear was already better and she was racing about the yard with her brother and half brothers. Poppy was nonchalantly nibbling the grass and looking much more comfortable without her wool coat on.
A big time shepherd might laugh at me but I felt like I got a lot accomplished.
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