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.
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