第44章 CHAPTER X(4)

As soon as you have done with the mob,let them out.They will race off helter-skelter to feed,and soon be spread out in an ever-widening fan-like shape.Therefore have someone stationed a good way off to check their first burst,and stay them from going too far and leaving their lambs;after a while,as you sit,telescope in hand,you will see the ewes come bleating back to the yards for their lambs.They have satisfied the first cravings of their hunger,and their motherly feelings are beginning to return.Now,if the sheep have not been kept a little together,the lambs may have gone off after the ewes,and some few will then be pretty certain never to find their mothers again.It is rather a pretty sight to sit on a bank and watch the ewes coming back.There is sure to be a mob of a good many lambs sticking near the yards,and ewe after ewe will come back and rush up affectionately to one lamb after another.A good few will try to palm themselves off upon her.If she is young and foolish,she will be for a short time in doubt;if she is older and wiser,she will butt away the little impostors with her head;but they are very importunate,and will stick to her for a long while.At last,however,she finds her true child,and is comforted.She kisses its nose and tail with the most affectionate fondness,and soon the lost lamb is seen helping himself lustily,and frolicking with his tail in the height of his contentment.

I have known,however,many cunning lambs make a practice of thieving from the more inexperienced ewes,though they have mothers of their own;and I remember one very beautiful and favourite lamb of mine,who,to my great sorrow,lost its mother,but kept itself alive in this manner,and throve and grew up to be a splendid sheep by mere roguery.Such a case is an exception,not a rule.

You may perhaps wonder how you are to know that your sheep are all right,and that none get away.You cannot be QUITE CERTAIN of this.

You may be pretty sure,however,for you will soon have a large number of sheep with whom you are personally acquainted,and who have,from time to time,forced themselves upon your attention either by peculiar beauty or peculiar ugliness,or by having certain marks upon them.You will have a black sheep or two,and probably a long-tailed one or two,and a sheep with only one eye,and another with a wart on its nose,and so forth.These will be your marked sheep,and if you find all of them you may be satisfied that the rest are safe also.Your eye will soon become very accurate in telling you the number of a mob of sheep.

When the sheep are lambing they should not be disturbed.You cannot meddle with a mob of lambing ewes without doing them mischief.Some one or two lambs,or perhaps many more,will be lost every time you disturb the flock.The young sheep,until they have had their lambs a few days,and learnt their value,will leave them upon the slightest provocation.

Then there is a serious moral injury inflicted upon the ewe:she becomes familiar with the crime of infanticide,and will be apt to leave her next lamb as carelessly as her first.If,however,she has once reared a lamb,she will be fond of the next,and,when old,will face anything,even a dog,for the sake of her child.

When,therefore,the sheep are lambing,you must ride or walk farther round,and notice any tracks you may see:anything rather than disturb the sheep.They must always lamb on burnt or green feed,and against the best boundary you have,and then there will be the less occasion to touch them.

Besides the yards above described,you will want one or two smaller ones for getting the sheep into the wool-shed at shearing-time,and you will also want a small yard for branding.The wool-shed is a roomy covered building,with a large central space,and an aisle-like partition on each side.These last will be for holding the sheep during the night.

The shearers will want to begin with daylight,and the dew will not yet be off the wool if the sheep are exposed.If wool is packed damp it will heat and spoil;therefore a sufficient number of sheep must be left under cover through the night to last the shearers till the dew is off.

In a wool-shed the aisles would be called skilions (whence the name is derived I know not,nor whether it has two l's in it or one).All the sheep go into the skilions.The shearers shear in the centre,which is large enough to leave room for the wool to be stowed away at one end.

The shearers pull the sheep out of the skilions as they want them.Each picks the worst sheep,i.e.that with the least wool upon it,that happens to be at hand at the time,trying to put the best-woolled sheep,which are consequently the hardest to shear,upon someone else;and so the heaviest-woolled and largest sheep get shorn the last.

A good man will shear 100sheep in a day,some even more;but 100is reckoned good work.I have known 195sheep to be shorn by one man in a day;but I fancy these must have been from an old and bare mob,and that this number of well-woolled sheep would be quite beyond one man's power.

Sheep are not shorn so neatly as at home.But supposing a man has a mob of 20,000,he must get the wool off their backs as best he can without carping at an occasional snip from a sheep's carcass.If the wool is taken close off,and only now and then a sheep snipped,there will be no cause to complain.

Then follows the draying of the wool to port,and the bullocks come in for their full share of work.It is a pleasant sight to see the first load of wool start down,but a far pleasanter to see the dray returning from its last trip.

Shearing well over will be a weight off your mind.This is your most especially busy and anxious time of year,and when the wool is safely down you will be glad indeed.