... and little lambs like lucerne

Press, 30 August 1980, Page 16

... and little lambs like lucerne

Country Diary by

Derrick Rooney

The wages of greed are stuck heads. The pet lambs, Sooty and Freckles, learned this home truth the hard way because of their passion for First, there was one woolly, pair of shoulders pressed against the slatty •partition in the hayshea, and then there were two. The heads were on the other side of the partition, scoffing every bit of lucerne within neck radius. Sometimes I wish .we had never introduced them to the stuff. But it was their salvation. Sheep, and especially pet sheep, can be fussy about their food, and the lambs were as thin as rakes in midwinter because either they had not learned to eat hay, or did not like the homegrown kind’. “Those lambs are hungry,” said a knowledgeable friend, who visited about the end of June. Well, we knew that What to do about it? “Give them some lucerne,” said our friend. “Anything will eat lucerne.” The lambs did —• all too keenly, as it turned out I had to tear the partition to pieces to get them out But at least it got them started on hay.

Now the greedy little so-and-so’s are so fond of the stuff that they elbow (or whatever it is that sheep do) aside the ewes every morning to be first in line for the daily flake of meadow hay. You can’t even finish climbing over the gate before being butted in the backside by a pair of woolly, impatient heads. ■ The ewes, which were raised in a flock, are more standoffish and keep a respectable distance, at least until the hay is on the ground. When we step aside they move in, tively, and always in the same order: first, the one which is heavily pregnant Ctwins at least), then a dry one, then the other pregnant one, then the other dry one. Two dry out of four — what will that do to the national lambing percentage (for those unfamiliar with the byways of rural lingo, "dry” is a euphemism for barren).

We don't mind too much. The empties, will go off to the mutton and ham sausage department any week now, and they will not be expensive eating. A fortnight ago we clipped

enough wool off them to recover most of the $l5 a head , they cost us last spring. They are not big sheep, but they were very woolly, so woolly that I had great difficulty getting their legs together to tie them up after catching them.

The shearing was not accomplished without blood (mine, from an encounter with barbed wire), sweat, swearing, and a sprained finger. As everyone who watches "A Dog’s Show” must know, any duffer can round up a mob of 100 . sheep but catching four is an exercise for an expert. I thought I was being smart when I spread their hay inside an open shed, so that I could shut them in ■ when they started eating. But only two went in. I shut them up, anyway. Then we had a bit of a Benny Hill around the .paddock, with, wife, children,, and dog joining the chase.

Fritz was no help because he was unable to decide whether the whole thing was a game, or the sheep were game that he was expected ,to chase. Eventually we got them

cornered against a fence, I pounced, and came up, or rather down, with one in each hand and one index finger bent at a funny angle. Fortunately, the experience did not give them any hang-ups about going into sheds. The morning after the shearing we had the hardest frost of the winter — the . hardest, some of the locals . say, since the mid-19505.. The plumbing was iced up, and the car tyres were frozen to the gravel drive. The lambs, which are really hoggets by now, were out bright and early, nibbling at the gorse hedge, but the naked ewes in mid-mornihg were still huddled in a wee heap inside a shed. It took a good whiff of turnips and lucerne to bring them out. The capacity of. sheep to stuff themselves with turnips is amazing. In fact, the lambs were ’in the dog-box over turnips just the other day. We left a sackful overnight in the shed where my wife keeps her wheel, clay, and pottery tools. The lambs battered open the door to get at the turnips, and come morning the shed

was a mess of mud, turnip tops, and droppings. It was a grand advertisement for turnips, but not a very good one for the eating habits of sheep. What do turnips, or “roots” as my Scottish grandfather called them, have to drive sheep to frenzy? We ate some in a stew, and they were quite bland. My daughter nibbled a raw one, and announced it was like “a radish without the hotness." The sheep don’t say anything. They . just crunch them up. Turnips have somehting; I can’t ..think, what,, be’ cause they are composed mostly of water. Perhaps, as my grandfather said, “tha watter mun’t be no ord’ry watter.” He was a carpenter, and as far as I know his experience of agriculture was restricted: to the enormous swedes and cabbages that he grew bn the slope beneath his house in Timaru. But his father was a shepherd in the border country. There is something to be said for inhere ited learning.