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 100 sheep in a day, some even more; but 100 is
reckoned good work. I have known 195 sheep 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.
It may have been a matter of question with you, Shall I wash my sheep
before shearing or not? If you wash them at all, you should do it
thoroughly, and take considerable pains to have them clean; otherwise
you had better shear in the grease, i.e. not wash. Wool in the grease
weighs about one-third heavier, and consequently fetches a lower price
in the market. When wool falls, moreover, the fall tells first upon
greasy wool. Still many shear in the grease, and some consider it pays
them better to do so. It is a mooted point, but the general opinion is
in favour of washing.
As soon as you have put up one yard, you may set to work upon a hut for
yourself and men. This you will make of split wooden slabs set upright
in the ground, and nailed on to a wall-plate. You will first plant
large posts at each of the corners, and one at either side every door,
and four for the chimney. At the top of these you will set your wall-
plates; to the wall-plates you will nail your slabs; on the inside of
the slabs you will nail light rods of wood, and plaster them over with
mud, having first, however, put up the roof and thatched it. Three or
four men will have split the stuff and put up the hut in a fortnight.
We will suppose it to be about 18 feet by 12.
By and by, as you grow richer, you may burn bricks at your leisure, and
eventually build a brick house. At first, however, you must rough it.
You will set about a garden at once. You will bring up fowls at once.
Pigs may wait till you have time to put up a regular stye, and to have
grown potatoes enough to feed them.
