

### Sheep Tales

by

### Margaret Minchin

Published by Margaret Minchin at Smashwords  
Copyright 2014 Margaret Minchin

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER 1. A NEW CAREER IN THE COUNTRY

CHAPTER 2. LIVES OF FARMING WOMEN

CHAPTER 3. THE YARDS

CHAPTER 4. A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A SHEEP

CHAPTER 5. THROUGH THE YEAR DEALING WITH SHEEP

CHAPTER 6. FLY STRIKE AND LICE

CHAPTER 7. WINTER FOOD AND SHELTER

CHAPTER 8. FEET PROBLEMS

CHAPTER 9. TAILING AND MARKING

CHAPTER 10. EXTREME SNOW EVENTS

CHAPTER 11. HOW A SHEEP CAN COMMUNICATE WITH A HUMAN

CHAPTER 12. INTELLIGENCE OF SHEEP

CHAPTER 13. SOCIAL GROUPS OF SHEEP

CHAPTER 14. DOGS

CHAPTER 15. INFERTILE EWES AND PREGNANT EWES

CHAPTER 16. MATING GAMES

CHAPTER 17. SAFETY WITH SHEEP

CHAPTER 18. BIRD LIFE

CHAPTER 19. RABBITS, HARES AND POSSUMS

CHAPTER 20. ACCESS TO WATER

CHAPTER 21. ACCESS TO SHADE AND SHELTER

CHAPTER 22. OUT IN THE RIVERBED

CHAPTER23. USEFUL PLANTS

CHAPTER 24. DEADLY PLANTS

CHAPTER 25. PLANTS NOT EATEN BY SHEEP

CHAPTER 26. LAMBING AND THE LUNAR INFLUENCE

CHAPTER 27. LAMBING EVENTS

CHAPTER 28. ASSISTANCE FROM THE VET

CHAPTER 29. TIME OF BIRTH

CHAPTER 30. FEEDING LAMBS

CHAPTER 31. MULTIPLE BIRTHS

CHAPTER 32. POST LAMBING ESSENTIALS

CHAPTER 33. REMEDIES FOR SHEEP ILL HEALTH

CHAPTER 34. TRANSPORT FOR SHEEP

CHAPTER 35. DEALING WITH THE LOSS OF SHEEP

CHAPTER 36. MONOPOLY TRADERS

CHAPTER 37. THE NEIGHBOURS

CHAPTER 38. THE OLD AND MODERN VIEW OF SHEEP

CHAPTER 39. MISTREATMENT OF SHEEP

CHAPTER 40. HEALING ANIMALS

CHAPTER 41. ORGANIC METHODS

CHAPTER 42. USES FOR WOOL

CHAPTER 43. RETIREMENT

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

CHAPTER 1. A NEW CAREER IN THE COUNTRY

I have been caring for a few sheep for about 20 years and I want to tell you about it. I had a great time and I learned a bit about life. This activity was something to do all day after the children grew up. I was working for nothing on the farm and keeping myself amused and being active. It was a subsistence life style imposed on many of my generation in New Zealand by political decisions of a conservative labour party in the 1980s.

My primary and secondary education was at private schools. These were religious schools which I have no reason to complain about. It was not very expensive.

As a nurse I received a small allowance while I was training. I worked for 5 days attended lectures for one day and had 1 day off per week.

When I was at the Post Office there were training periods as the service changed I took 6 months maternity leave from the service to have a baby. During the time I was there I worked on the counter, in the telephone accounts department, and at compiling of the annual telephone book.

At the post office I found that I could not work and look after my baby. It was unfair on my mother who was in her forties and ready to go back into the work force. I gave up work and became a pauper and had 2 more wonderful children.

I could see that there were not going to be any jobs for me in my mid forties after my three children grew up so I had to adopt this life style. My husband divorced me when I was about 36 years old.

The parliament of the day granted me a subsistence allowance to live on, as I was without income at that time and I will be grateful all my life.

The next part of my life was as a single woman who had a sheep farm as a hobby. I was able to express my anger by being a farmer. It suited me down to the ground. I had a beautiful location to live in. There was peace and quiet and not much else. I had 20 hectares of land which was a dry river flat. The altitude was about 200 metres above sea level. It could be cold with snow in the winter.

When I fill out a form asking for my occupation now, I can put retired farmer. Before I came out here I had no such label. I did not know what I wanted to do with my life apart from rearing children. I was interested in finding out if I could tame the sheep. This would make it easier for me as I did not have a trained sheep dog as I could not afford one. My teachers were all nuns and so schooling taught me to be nice to people. My children grew up and went away to work. I had the sheep to look after and it filled a gap in my life and I did not have an empty nest.

At the time I started with the sheep, I had moved to the country to try to improve my health. I travelled to Christchurch to work in real estate part time. The trip was 110 kilometres per day. My health was terrible and I had to carry a nebuliser in the car, at work and in the house as my asthma was uncontrollable. I was trying to hide my asthma, but it was difficult especially at work. I was admitted to hospital a few times by ambulance, in an emergency because of my asthma. My peak flow in my lungs was only 200 and it should have been 400. I had come out in the country because I thought that it was fresh air that I needed. One night in winter I had one of my frequent attacks and I was drinking black coffee to try to make myself feel better. My youngest daughter came into the kitchen to find out what I was doing. She had to phone a doctor and an ambulance as I fell on the floor unconscious. She gave me mouth to mouth resuscitation. When I had recovered she told me later me what she had done, as I did not remember anything. In the morning she got up had her breakfast and went off to high school in the town on her own She was a brave girl.

I got the sack from the job that I had in Christchurch, which was a two-hour drive each day, and it was tiring anyhow. I had not sold enough real estate in three months, so that was that. Interest rates were too high for people to buy a house anyhow. The crowd that I was working for are no longer in existence. I enjoyed working with the people to find them houses. At the time I used to think that I would have managed better if I had help in my house, when I got home at night and on the farm. It was tiring.

Five years later I was given an operation on my stomach, called a Nissan fundoplication. There were a lot of consultations with the doctors and surgeons about how to stop the stomach acid getting into my lungs especially at night. Acid brought on the asthma. My asthma improved and as the years went by, newer drugs gave better control of the disease.

They did not tell me that one of the side effects the operation was to prevent wind or flatus coming up my throat. My interior was sewn up to keep the acid out. This caused years of discomfort. It seems that I may have developed this problem after pregnancies.

I bought my sheep through a newspaper advertisement. The seller was a member of a fundamentalist Christian group. His wife had long hair in a bun and I met her at their home in a country town. They were older people who had retired to a townhouse and did not live on the farm.

The sheep were good and I remember unloading them off the truck and not knowing what I was in for. I must have got a ram as well and I had no yards and no dog. My only experience was holidaying on a farm as a child and having a pet lamb called Lambsie for a few months when the children were small.

The size of my flock grew rather quickly as they started reproducing every year. It was about getting to know the social groups of the flock. It was great and I finally decided that 70 ewes were all that I could manage. They were able to recognize me over the years. There was plenty of exercise walking up and down the paddocks. In the winter they came up to me for food pellets. I could have had more but they kept escaping through the fences. At various times I had very good years for twins and triplets. There were some Coopworth sheep and they are good for multiple births, but they are big gangling creatures. I had 50% twinning and a couple of sets of triplets in good years. The Coopworths are large sheep.

I tried to keep them calm as I moved them into the yards. I found that they are a lot like children to control. I learned to cope when they raced out of the yards just as I got them in. I can remember the light thundery sound of their 4 feet going by me and not into the yards.

All my ewes seemed to have a cycle in their lives. They would all have a multiple birth in their lambing career, at some stage when they were fully fit. I replaced the rams after a few years to vary the genes by replying to advertisements in the paper for a Perendale ram.

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CHAPTER 2. LIVES OF FARMING WOMEN

I was interested in attitudes to a woman farmer. There was no hostility to me and everyone was helpful. One aspect of women's lives in the country is the isolation imposed on them. This is in my local area but I believe that many women live in a kind of purdah. I hesitate to say this. The attitudes are to me, 100 years out of date and in some cases 400 years out of date. My closest female neighbour did not even go out to the letter box. She did not drive a car or ride a bike. Some of the churches do quite well. Some groups are quite militant and offer more services such as child care. Two of the churches contacted me to ask me to join, but I did not take up the invitation. There is no place for a single woman in modern Christianity. The most successful churches are the ones that can claim financial assistance from the state for the services that they provide. They are quite enterprising.

The town has no public bus service, so a car is essential. There is a daily bus for school pupils attending Rangiora schools but it is early in the morning and it returns after school. The town is on the main highway to the West Coast so it is surprising that there is no public transport. There was a train service daily in the early 19th century. A bus service travelled into Christchurch and the airport daily in the 1980s but not now. It was a marooned town for the young during the school holidays and for the elderly who do not drive.

The nearest point for an essential bus service would be 25 minutes drive to Rangiora to connect with a bus service to Christchurch nowadays. This would improve the lot of women if it was available. The cost of a trip by car can be taken privately for $50, which is very expensive. The cost of a bus service should be about $5. Rich ratepayers would not consent to the cost of paying for a daily bus service.

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CHAPTER 3. THE YARDS

There were no yards when I first came out here, so I had to make a place to deal with the sheep for crutching and drenching. I started by buying gates or hurdles from a gate maker down the road. I bought iron stakes called waratahs and wooden posts and I had them hammered into the ground.

I counted the maximum number of sheep that I was going to have and then multiplied the number of sheep by 2.5 square yards. The sum I got was the area of the yards that I was going to enclose. The yards included a drive through area, beside a fence to a secure paddock. I put the yards in a more sheltered area of the paddock, with easy access to the shingle road for the stock truck.

A small hosepipe was put in so that there was a temporary water supply when it was needed. I tied the hurdles to the posts and I had a place to attend to the sheep. Gradually I got a large, wooden, fruit crate inside the yards for a bit of shelter for a sick animal. The interior of the yards slowly evolved as I learned how to place the gates to control the sheep. I had put the yards alongside a fence line, and it acted as a lead up race. From there the sheep stayed in the new holding yard and it was also a drive through to a larger paddock. The interior of the yards was divided into three areas. There was the holding area and next to that was the working area. On the far side there was the counting pen. I lay old, hardwood, fence posts straight on the ground in the working area to do the crutching and shearing on. The working pen opened into the counting pen. From the counting pen the sheep were released back into the paddocks. The gates being tied allowed for a fluid system to allow the sheep to be released either side into the paddocks or to be loaded into a stock truck. The transport company brought shingle and spread it over the drive through part of the yards, so that I would not get stuck in the mud in the car.

I was a matter of trial and error and I would tie the gates this way and that until I had the sheep controlled and able to flow back to the paddock. A lot of doing up and undoing of gates went on over the years. It was all about angles and the amount of space that there was.

Later on I got the hurdles enclosed with wire sheep netting for added security. I always seemed to be buying gates. The foehn wind did damage by blowing the gates over but I just stood them up again. There was a great deal of pleasure in rounding up the sheep in the afternoon into the yards and I would then leave them overnight to empty out before being sent to the sale yards by stock truck. The pleasure was that the gates had held the sheep.

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CHAPTER 4. A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A SHEEP

Sheep have a natural rhythm to their days and I tried to allow them to have that. I let them graze where they wanted to. They are such patient and endearing animals. They learned to recognise me as another sheep, I think. They were wary of me at first and gradually they learned to walk at a normal pace, when I was in sight. If they find themselves in a paddock that they cannot get out of, they will sit around the nearest gate and wait for hours and sometimes days, for the gate to open. When they finally decide to move down to the other end of the paddock to where there is an open gate or another water trough, it is a group decision. The leaders make their way uncertainly in the other direction and then slowly the rest will move. If the gate is left open by accident, they will not go through it especially if it is on the road. They do not lightly step into unknown territory. It is as if there is an unknown barrier there. I am writing this about sheep that do not have a dog behind them.

Of course there are trail blazers in the flock but they only number about 1%. These are the fence jumpers and the ones that wriggle through the wire. A trailblazer in a flock could end up culled, as it can lead the other sheep astray. Sheep are supposed to conform, as we all know. I tolerated the oddball sheep as they were good producers and very hardy. Certain grasses are more palatable than others, so they will move to where the favoured grasses are.

The breed of sheep that evolved was based on mainly Perendale, which is a mixture of the old Cheviot breed, and a Romney. The land did not suit Merinos, although their halfbred offspring, (the Perino) did quite well.

I had a lot of broom growing as a weed when I first arrived. I spent years cutting it down and the sheep would eat it in the winter. They would follow me around the paddock or into the riverbed to get a branch of broom.

One winter I cut bags of gorse flowers for the sheep. I had a weed mulcher which ground up the gorse flowers and tips into a yellow green salad. I gave them a large feedbag in the morning, when it was cold and frosty. Often I would see the sheep nipping off the gorse flowers and tips when I was walking around.

At night when there was a frost I used to love to go outside to see the flock asleep in the moonlight and the sky very clear. It was a very comforting experience and I felt safe. This was one of the memorable experiences of farm life. In the lambing period if a sheep were in difficulty, the sound of her baa would send me walking out in the dark paddock with a torch to try to find her and help to shelter.

In the morning the sheep do not get up unless they are hungry and they can still be sitting down at 10 o'clock. Sheep have a natural sleeping and grazing area.

So when I see the sheep coming down through the gates at 10 in the morning it always looks as if a deputation is coming to visit. They are very purposeful in their walk. There will be about 20 in a group. They will fan out and some will go to the salt block and others to favoured grazing areas. They will graze for about an hour and then sit down again.

I used to take the sheep out on to the quiet country lane where I lived for an hour's grazing. I took my knitting at the time and there were no cars for hours. Today I could not do that because of the growth of the traffic.

As the day gets warmer the sheep rest under the trees that line the creek beds or camp under the pine trees. They seek shade even on a winter's day when the sun is out. I planted a few trees to make sure that there was some shelter in every paddock.

In the afternoon they will get up about three p.m. to graze again. As dusk falls they will find a spot through the gates in the sleeping area. Sometimes at night they will still be feeding and I wondered what they could see to eat. This is when feed is short. In the evening the lambs if they are well and healthy will combine into teams and run around to tire themselves out before sleep. They are powered by their mothers' milk. It is a typical sight in the late spring.

Because my fences were not that good, I had mostly free range grazing. I wanted my sheep to have an enriched or natural environment. When I had goats I used a portable, battery driven, electric fence to try to have more control over them. I got over that attitude, as I grew older and disliked the way some animals were restricted in a very small electrified area.

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CHAPTER 5. THROUGH THE YEAR DEALING WITH SHEEP

In January, which is summer, a contractor or I had done the shearing. When I first started I got a contractor to do the shearing, as I did not know where to start. First of all, the two shearers helped me to get the sheep into the yards. They used a version of a large, fishing net to walk the sheep up the fence line like fish and into the primitive yards that I had put up.

It was a very basic task and the men sheared the sheep with hand shears. I had large, woven, plastic bags, called fadges, clipped on to the sides of the fences. As each sheep was done the belly wool was put into a separate bag. Next the head wool was taken off and then the bulk of the fleece. The dags or dirty wool around the tail was kept separate. The edges or skirts of the fleece were separated as well.

The fleeces were put into a pile under the blazing, hot sun to be attended to later. It was how it was done 2,000 years ago as far as technology goes. I sorted the wool later and filled up the fadges when the shearers had finished. There was not time during the actual shearing as I was too busy clearing the fleeces away from the shearers.

When the shearing was done and paid for, I would move the wool on to a trailer and into the shed for shelter. If the fadges were too heavy with the wool, then I would have to leave them out in the paddock overnight or for several nights until the wool buyer came. The wool that was moved into the shed I was able to take to town to sell. It depended on the weight of the bags of wool and if I could manage them.

One season I walked the sheep down the road a couple of kilometres to a shearing shed. They were shorn undercover and that was great. I paid for the hire of the shed and my brother and his children helped to guide them on the road.

When I started to shear my own sheep I had spent a lot of time watching the shearers doing their work. I started by doing lambs and they were easy to shear. The wool just fell off them and they are easy to control.

I read about a way to remove the wool from sheep, which was being developed in Australia. It was by giving them an injection. I used to wish that the chemicals were available when a woolly, difficult sheep confronted me. A net can be put over the wool at the time of the injection and it was able to come off after a few days

A sheep's wool will come away from the skin if it gets severely ill at any time. It would suffer from exposure if that happened. I had a great dream of not having to shear the sheep, and it remained a dream.

The stock and station stores had good, second- hand, blade shears for sale to people like me, so I purchased good shears from them and got them sharpened at the stores very often.

I ended up virtually sitting on the sheep to control it, but not using my weight and I got it done. I was quite a contact sport I used to think. All the time you have to think about the sharp blades that are being used and the damage that they can do. I did not suffer any bad cuts. I loved shearing really and I did not guess that I would. It reminded me of wrestling with an errant child.

I learned how to get a sheep on its back and it is quite strenuous. I could shear large sheep just by standing them up and restraining them with a collar and a rope around the leg if they were too heavy for me. My weight is about 55 kgs. The way that I sheared the sheep was to crutch and drench them all, in as short a time as possible. I would then go through the flock doing about two a day until they were all shorn. The method I used depended on how well I was able to cope with each one. I first turned them over on to their backs. I grabbed the front feet from behind and walked backwards for a few steps. It was rather like dancing with the sheep. The sheep was resting against my body and I let the sheep go down on the ground. I then cut the wool off the belly and around the genitals. I did the inner legs as well. I put the wool into separate piles. The next part was the chest, the neck and the face. The wool seemed to be very thick on the neck. I would then put the animal on its side and starting at the neck and working to the spine, I would cut off all the wool on one side. I then took hold of two legs and flipped the sheep over on to the other woolly side and cut the wool off on that side. I cleared around the tail and the rear end.

It all depended on what sort of sheep I was dealing with and most would lie quietly. With the difficult ones I would crouch over them so that they could not move and then shear them that way. The extremely difficult sheep I sheared standing up with a collar on and tied to the wall by a back foot. The secret was to take care of my hands and keep them from the blades. The next job was to go inside have a shower and change my clothes. Shearing was very liberating for me. I did not think that I could do it.

On one occasion a sheep died instantly as she was being done. She had a heart attack and fell dead as the shearer was holding her. It was virtually an instant death and a shock. She was a healthy, older ewe I thought at the time.

I received some money and I decided to buy an electric handpiece, but I was not very successful in using it. I did not have enough strength in my arms to hold the sheep and move the machine through the wool. It was too difficult. I put the electric shears away and went back to the blade shears.

Ideally sheep should be shorn every eight months and then the coat does not get too heavy. As each sheep was shorn I would apply a lice killer liquid down the spine of the animal. Each sheep would have about eight mls. squirted on whether there were lice present or not.

It is best to get the shearing done as soon as the winter is over as the wool is in better quality. Wool is at its best in July in the heart of winter. When there are low light levels the wool stops growing temporarily. I would not shear a sheep in July unless I had a woollen, replacement cover to put on it.

The sheep were caught for shearing by having a salt block in the paddock close to where the shed was. They would come in for the salt and I would shut the gate on them for the night and then shear the next morning. Sometimes I could manage without a dog.

The most modern sheep shearer who came to the farm brought a small, mobile unit. It was made up of a Ute or truck, which pulled a half caravan trailer. The trailer had sides on it and a roof. The shearer had a small pen with gates to keep half a dozen sheep ready for shearing. He had a petrol driven shearing plant. After shearing a lice killer was applied. The yards that were here were used as well.

I found that shearers are fine athletes, being able to shear the number of sheep that they do. They are economical with their movements, which is the secret of shearing.

About March or April the sheep and lambs would be rounded up to be sold in lots of about twenty. The sheep had to be crutched and tidied up for the trip to the city. I sold them in small lots. There was a form to be filled in showing details about the type of stock being carried to the saleyards. The form asked if they had been born on the property and if they had been recently drenched with drugs which had a withholding period.

I found that moving sheep around in paddocks was a bit like sailing in a small boat. I learned to steer them where they were going by walking behind them and walking to the left or the right. If the angles are okay and you can get where you want to go. I locked them overnight in the yards ready for an early morning trip in the stock truck and the early start could be at 6a.m.

There was a wooden, portable ramp with corrugated iron sides temporarily attached. It was hoisted up on the lower deck of the truck. The loading ramp always looked as if it would collapse in a strong wind but it did not.

In May and June there is a quiet time with the ewes mated and eating moderately. July and August bring the winter chills and possible snow falls. The ewes need extra food as August comes along. This can be sheep nuts or barley and hay. I did not scan the ewes as I thought it was a waste of money. Sheep do not overeat and multiple births are to be expected. I thought that they should all be well fed at this time, not just the ones with twins and triplets. Drenching the ewes and crutching them can be done if necessary. September brings the lambs. Sometimes early births can mean trouble for the ewe and they need to have shelter available, as it is very cold.

In October the ewe lambs should be tailed and the male lambs castrated. November and December is the time to crutch and shear the flock. Some lambs may need drenching for worms, as well as the sheep. Flystrike may occur if the weather is hot and damp. A nor' wester or the foehn wind brings a sometimes warm, dry wind to the area. In mountain areas the wind pretends to be warm but there is a chill in it often. It comes about every ten to fourteen days from across the Tasman Sea.

In the spring, there is a period of fierce, foehn winds that melt the snow on the mountains. It brings the establishment of the summer. These winds affect people and animals. Rounding up sheep without a dog is almost impossible. The animals are made more capricious with the wind. Walking into a head wind in the paddocks is like walking in a desert as the power of the wind takes the sense of direction away from me. I used to think that the fence line was a life line because it was straight. It was a strange psychological effect. All I could think of is about the grass moving and the wind blowing. The same winds from the northwest or north makes it difficult in the autumn as well. At this time they can sometimes precede the onset of winter with a snowfall. It is best to round up sheep on a day when the northwester wind is not blowing.

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CHAPTER 6. FLY STRIKE AND LICE

If the weather is rainy in the warmer periods, the ewes could become fly struck on their backs because of the warm wool. It would show up as a dark, wet patch and looking like a saddle on the affected animals. The wool would start to fall out and a teeming mass of maggots would be revealed. The blowflies will also attack the lambs. I found that it was a good idea to trim the lambs' rear ends with a "buttonhole" so that there was little wool able to be soiled. Flies target wet, daggy tails. I would check the flock daily in a bad season. At times a ewe would return to the shed with a fly struck lamb in tow.

One way to prevent flystrike in lambs is to shear in January so that there is little covering on the lambs to be attacked by the flies. I would look in sheds and very shady spots, as a sick animal will seek out a cool, hidden place such as a dark, dry creek -bed.

The maggots must make the sheep feel hot as they try to find quietness and peace. They are not going to have that unless they are treated to remove the scores, hundreds of crawling maggots. At first I was revolted by the sight of maggots crawling in and out of the flesh of a living animal. I overcame my revulsion because I had to do something to get rid of the parasites.

In severe cases an animal will die if the maggots invade the intestines or the blood vessels. It is a ghastly thing to happen to a sheep. At this time sheep farming is very labour intensive, as it takes quite a while to treat individual animals. Of course sheep rearing is labour intensive at lambing time as well.

Older sheep can be struck at this time of the year if they have not been shorn. Shearing is a priority to prevent flystrike. One way to avoid this is to apply a spray made of an organophosphate poison. This acts as a deterrent to prevent flies being attracted to the wool. The spray can be applied again in three weeks. There are dangerous poisons, which are used to kill lice. It is applied directly after shearing, in very small amounts to each animal. The dose is about 5 ml per animal sprayed along the spine. It will last for several months. I only used it at shearing time. The dose has to be carefully monitored as too much can kill an animal in a few hours. Managing these chemicals means that one has to be careful not to get it on one's hands. Every amount on the bare skin must be washed off immediately as it causes nausea and is alarming.

If a lamb can be brought to the garden hose that is an easy way to get rid of the maggots. Often two or three sprays with water at hourly intervals will get rid of all the maggots in an occasional outbreak. The lamb will still need an application of an organophosphate poison to deter a later infestation. The lambs should be held overnight in a pen and then examined the next day to make sure that they are not struck again. I kept affected animals close to the house for care until they were well enough to rejoin the rest of the flock. Flies will attack an already weakened animal.

Poisons are an annual application but can be used more frequently if it is necessary. It should not be put on sheep that are about to be shorn, as it is dangerous for humans handling the wool.

There are herbal remedies for these 'beasties' but I have not used them very much. I did try to use derris dust once but it was not satisfactory, as it clogged up the fleece.

After dealing with the sheep, I collected a few bites on my legs from sheep lice. Sheep lice can sometimes be seen on the skin of an animal when the wool is parted. A sheep with lice will be always scratching by rubbing itself against a tree or a fence. The wool will start to fall out and the animal will look miserable and "frazzled".

I did not see what did the biting on my legs, but saw the marks. They are easily washed off and have no lasting bad effects. I would shower and change my clothes after close contact with the sheep.

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CHAPTER 7. WINTER FOOD AND SHELTER

When the winter came I would make sure that I had some small bales of hay, some sheep nuts or a bag of barley. The sheep nuts are the easiest to manage I found. I needed to store about thirty bales of hay. There were two large sheds the sheep could shelter in when it was snowing or at night if they wanted to. The hay would be available every day of the winter from the sheds.

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CHAPTER 8. FEET PROBLEMS

Sheep evolved in stony areas, so when they are put on to soft, green grass, it may not be good for their feet. If it is continually wet then that is worse. If a sheep went lame I would pen it and examine it. What was wrong was usually the nail or the cuticle of the foot was unbalanced. It was a bit like having long ingrown toe nails in a human. The 2 pieces of the foot had grown unevenly. The foot was trimmed with sharp pruning shears to make it the same size. Older sheep are more prone to this problem. In this case it is an uneven foot is causing the limp.

Sometimes there is an infection around the foot and it can smell. The vet had a spray to kill the infection. Once the feet are trimmed and free from infection the problem resolves itself.

Merinos that sit around could be prone to lameness and a walk in a stony riverbed did them good. Affected sheep were put in a dry paddock.

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CHAPTER 9. TAILING AND MARKING

The lambs are tailed when they are a few weeks old as the weather starts to warm up. There is a tool called an elastrator available to apply the rubber rings. Tailing can be done at birth but it is stressful for the lamb to have it done then, when it is cold. It is bad enough being born on to frozen ground and then to have a tail which is for warmth removed, so I do not tail at birth.

Counting the lambs is done at tailing and records are kept. I carried a notebook and a pen. One can discover how many have been stolen at this stage.

They are tailed so they are not at risk from flystrike but it is a convention in this country and takes no notice of the animals' needs. The testicles should be pushed down into the scrotum before putting on the ring in the male. The ring will stop the animal from jumping over fences. If the ring is put on when the testicles are not pushed down, then they will develop inside the abdomen, which makes for a sheep that is infertile anyhow. The lambs feel pain and they baa afterwards. They lie on the grass, moving this way and that and it is painful to watch. I have not found any long-term damage to a lamb when the testes and tails are removed.

Sometimes if tailing is carried out too late in the year, there is a danger of the areas becoming fly struck. I usually left the tails on the wethers (castrated males) as it is bad enough being neutered without losing a warm tail. The ewe lambs were tailed for the sake of convention and so there was less crutching to do throughout the life of the ewe. In some rare cases where I had a racy, scared ewe I used to think that she had been tailed at the wrong time and she had suffered some psychological damage. I did not think of any other reason as they were all treated kindly.

I did not mark the ears for the year of birth as evidence was in the mouth, and in the number of the teeth. Inoculating for disease was uneconomic. Sometimes I would lose a healthy, well grown lamb, such as 1 in 200 lambs, but I tried to avoid unnecessary expenses in producing stock. I used a spray on dye to mark sheep temporarily at lambing when there were multiple births.

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CHAPTER 10. EXTREME SNOW EVENTS

The worst snowfall, which I experienced, caused a loss of 10% of the ewes as they were very close to lambing, as it was late in the season. The snow was too deep to allow access to the paddocks as it came up to my knees when I went to walk in it.

Afterwards there was help from the government to clean up the damage. I applied to get assistance but the assistant only stayed one day. He was not a very satisfactory worker. The government help was useless to me as it was to support the transport firms and the helicopter operators. There was no compensation for the loss of stock. It gave public servants, a few farmers and their wives a job for a few months

The next big snow event that happened was not so bad for the stock, as it was earlier in the winter. The snow came up to my calves. The sheep were in good condition and the snow was not so deep. They were able to walk around in the snow and graze on the broom. I lost only about 2% from the flock. There was no electricity at first, but I had a coal stove to warm the house and the hot water.

During some of the snowfalls I have found twin lambs born into the snow and they survived as they were born under gorse and broom bushes. The wild places were good for shelter. When the snow comes, it breaks all the scrub and greenery down, so the whole riverbed can be seen. Everything is levelled and even the branches of the hard wood eucalypts collapse.

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CHAPTER 11. HOW A SHEEP CAN COMMUNICATE WITH A HUMAN

She had got through the fence. There was plenty of water and grass as it was late spring.

The foehn wind had been so strong that I had not gone out the previous week unless I had to. On bad, windy days the flock would not go out either. They stayed under the willow trees on the lee side. On an ordinary day the flock would move to a day camping and grazing spot, not far from the fence in the lone sheep's paddock. The lone sheep was missing her companions.

I had taken the car out and loaded up a new tree I was going to plant and a bucket, a spade and a plastic, tree protector. I was enjoying the beautiful, windless morning and the wire fence was humming. It took me ages to dig the hole for the tree and fill the hole with water, as the ground was quite stony. I was ready to put the tree in and I heard a loud "baa'' by the gate.

I looked up to see the lone sheep, which turned out to be a ewe hogget (teenage ewe) standing there. She came to the next gate. I opened the gate into the paddock where the rest of the flock was and stepped back. The teenage sheep ran through and danced her way back to her companions. I found it interesting and amusing.

Sheep have no method of enforcing their will on humans except by bunting. If a sheep is displeased with a person all they can do is lightly scratch the ground with one of their front feet to stir up the dust. It really is a weak, ineffective protest but that is all they can do. Any other ability to disagree has been bred out of the poor sheep.

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CHAPTER 12. INTELLIGENCE OF SHEEP

Different breeds of sheep are more intelligent than others. This is what I found with my limited experience. I guess intelligence is not what farmers look for in a sheep. I had the time to get to know my flock. The least intelligent are a very old breed of sheep the Merino. The most intelligent breed of sheep is the Perendale (Cheviot type of sheep) and the brown-faced sheep. By intelligence I mean that they react to a human better. This may not be the correct way to describe their behaviour, but they are lively sheep.

The merino is not very adaptable and it will not move very easily to a different paddock. They will sit around all day waiting for food to be brought to them whereas the Perendale and the brown-faced sheep will seek out grass in another area.

During lambing Merinos are best carefully left alone to look after their lambs. They do not take kindly to their new lambs being moved to a different place after the birth unless they know you very well. They are very passive and stick with their own kind when they travel. They stick with their kind

Most ewes will go to shelter when they are lambing if they have a choice of where to go. I have found that they go back to the area of the farm that they were born in. I discovered this over the years, as I knew their mothers and their faces to some extent. If something happens and during the birth the ewe has to walk before the lamb is born, it can upset the pattern that would have been set for a birthplace. I have had sheep lambing in dangerous places such as the banks of a fast flowing creek because of the urgent nature of birth. They try to keep up with the flock because they are such social animals.

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CHAPTER 13. SOCIAL GROUPS OF SHEEP

Sheep have family and friendship groups, which travel together to graze and sleep together, if they are given a choice. A grandmother sheep, her lamb, a mother and a lamb would be in a group together. My pasture was permanent and not very good. I had a wild area of riverbed and it was fenced off. I also had access to the wild riverbed through a wire gate. There were a few holes in the fences that the sheep found for themselves.

I would always speak to the sheep when I came up to them to help them to be tame. I was rewarded by them "baaing" at me when they wanted something.

Ewes make more sounds as they call their lambs. Sheep that are in an unfamiliar group will baa as they are looking for their friends. Contented sheep do not baa. The baa is a sign of distress to some extent.

Rams do not make much sound at all. If they cannot get over or through a fence for food they will give a real "baa." When they are trying to catch up with a ewe at mating time they make different, grunting sound.

Rams will colonize an area and make it their own Ram paddock. Once you step into their area they visually check you out. The chief ram will be sitting under the biggest, shady tree. They will not travel with the ewes for most of the year. In the drought times they went out into the riverbed from choice.

Rams will not bunt newborn lambs. In fact they seem to be frightened of them. Once a lamb is mobile and larger they will keep out of the way of the ram as they are likely to be bunted gently out of the way. Hoggets (teen age sheep) will be bunted if they get too close to a ram.

Wethers will associate with a ram and be a companion to it. If another ram enters the paddock, he will immediately go up to address the resident ram side on. They will jostle each other for days pushing and shoving to get used to each other's smell. The behaviour reminds me of a scrum in the game of rugby. Gradually they become companions for most of the year.

On one occasion I had a two tooth large ram that was attacked by a black-faced ram from next door. It had jumped somehow through a fence across a stream. My poor ram I found lying on the ground unable to get up. There was blood on his head and he died. He was bunted where a stunt of his horn was growing through.

He was very large for me to dispose of and I could hardly lift him on to the trailer. I had a trailer with a metal gate on it and removable wooden sides. I mostly used it on the farm. I let the metal gate down to rest on the ground and I put a jack from the car under the metal gate. I dragged the dead ram on to the metal gate so that he was lying at a 45-degree angle and gradually lifted him off the ground by turning the jack. Once the animal was level with the trailer, I pulled him on to it I then drove him to the place that I buried the dead animals in and said goodbye to him.

Later in the year in the spring, one of the ewes had twins with brown faces. They were from the neighbour's trespassing ram and they were born just outside the fence where the ram had come through.

When I eventually spoke to the neighbour about what had happened, he denied that his ram had got through the fence at all. He said that it could not happen. I thought that he was a mad old man.

Another time I had a ram that got drowned in a pond. Some rams live dangerously I guess. I did not know what happened, but there was a rainstorm and his paddock mate may have pushed him into the water. He may have slipped down a muddy, steep bank under the pine tree. The water was two metres deep in places. Anyhow I did not find him until he had floated out of the pond, down the creek to where it goes under the road. His carcase caught in the fence across the creek. I found him and had to dispose of him by wading into the creek and dragging him on to the bank. Once he was on the bank, I drove the car and the trailer as close as I could to load him aboard. He was then taken to his final resting place.

A couple of hours later I looked across the paddock and saw that the dead ram's companion was standing beside the hole where I had laid his dead friend. When I saw that I was quite shocked. I came to the conclusion that the dead ram's companion knew his friend was dead and in this other place. He went to see where his friend was and he could tell him by his smell. I thought then that animals had some life feeling about each other that humans are not aware of.

One time during the lambing period a ewe walked up to me and baa-ed. She was on the other side of the creek and wanted me to come across. When I walked further in the paddock I saw that her lamb was lying nearly dead on the ground. She had asked me to help in some way. The ewe used one of her front feet to try to make the lamb respond to her by scratching it. She was trying to make the lamb wake up. I was amazed that she would communicate with me the way that she did. I used to walk around the sheep without a dog a lot of the time, so that they would become tame.

To counter what I have just written I will tell you that in my garden I have several quite big lumps of white limestone, which come from the local riverbed. I put them in for decoration in the garden. What used to amuse me was that when the lambs were loose in the garden as they often were, they would sit down to rest beside these big, white stones. I guess they thought they were sitting next to a real white sheep.

Many times I have noticed how a flock of sheep is like a family, a group or a large team. This is an example of what I mean. When one or two animals get through a fence and on to the road, or through to some unknown territory, the rest of the flock become restive and anxious. Two sheep were on the road, so I walked down the road leaving my gate open and approached the pair. They kept on grazing until they saw me and quickly ran towards the fence line. They could not find their way back through the fence. On the other side of the fence, the rest of the flock was watching and following the other two sheep. I spoke softly to the sheep and walked them up the fence line to my gate. The rest of the flock followed anxiously on the other side of the fence. They did not like their paddock mates in a dangerous situation, it seemed to me, and were concerned that the two outside the fence went back to the main flock.

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CHAPTER 14. DOGS

I had a total of three dogs that I used to help me with the sheep during the time I was on the farm. I had a pet lap dog called Penny when I came to the farm and she was around for about fourteen years. She was a Pomeranian. I had her put down because of her age. She was no use in the paddock with the sheep. For a few years I had a second Pomeranian called Buff. He was a great little dog and he amused me a lot. He was a pet and a companion. Small dogs do not need to be exercised as they patrol around the place and exercise themselves. He had a heart attack and died instantly. I think that is what it was, as he died in the garden.

When I came to the farm my daughter arrived home one day with a pup, which she said was for herself, but I ended up taking control of it as my daughter went away somewhere. The dog was called Jeana and she was an average 'Bitsa'. I used her as my official, sheep dog and we rounded up the sheep with Jeana on a lead. I did not get to train her. Without Jeana I could not have managed the sheep the way I did.

If a sheep was attacked by flies, my dog Jeana and I went out to bring in the sick one for treatment and a few others as well. We would bring in about twenty a day and gradually treat the whole flock for worms as often as it was necessary. I used to treat for worms quite regularly when I first started farming. As I got older I only drenched the sheep when it was obvious that they needed it. When their backsides became soiled I drenched them.

At sixteen years I had to have Jeana put down. The next dog I had was called Jan and she was a lovely, old, trained sheep dog but she was too old and tired when she came into my care. She died after about two years and she was a great loss to me. After Jan died I tried for quite a while to do without a dog but it was very exhausting. I had to get another dog. It was possible to round up half a dozen sheep at a time, but it was no good. I went to the S.P.C.A. I saw there a nice, big, quiet dog that just looked at me. There was another low-slung dog there as well, but it looked to me rather unsafe, so I had little choice. I took the big, quiet dog. His name was Fred. It was high summer and I was desperate for some help as there was flystrike about.

Once I had a rogue dog arrive that chased the sheep around the paddocks. I raced out and chased the dog but one of the sheep was injured, but not fatally. The dog came from a place two km. up the river and nearer the hills. There was a layabout living there and he owned the dog. A farmer arrived on the scene as the chasing was taking place and he looked after the sheep. Later the dog was shot by a group of farmers. I asked the owner of the dog for compensation but he disappeared.

A strange dog roaming around a paddock will set off mental alarm bells and I will always chase the thing away. It is a rare sight to see a strange dog roaming around in this country area.

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CHAPTER 15. INFERTILE EWES AND PREGNANT EWES

I found infertile ewes in quite large numbers, sometimes around about 8%. If a ewe did not produce a lamb I was always reluctant to cull her. Often they would produce a lamb the next year and were very good and untouched. In some cases of infertility a ewe would have to be culled because she was unwell or weak in some way. She would be unable to carry a lamb in that case. The normal ewe shows stress as she ages but the infertile ewes did not. Infertile ewes did not have the same smell as fertile ewes I used to think.

Feeding pregnant ewes in the last weeks of pregnancy is important. I found that walking out with a bucket of sheep nuts was a way to assess how well the sheep were feeling. A ewe can be given up to 500 grams of nuts if she wants it. There should be hay available as well.

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CHAPTER 16. MATING GAMES

When a young, new ram is put into a paddock with an older ram he could be attacked by the older ram. A young ram would not know what his status was. Rams have to get to know each other before any mating behaviour happens. I had an instance where I had dairy goats and the male goat was killed instantly by a ram. I had two rams on my farm all of the year and they had their own paddock which they could retreat to for peace and quiet. I had a small surplus of rams in case something went wrong. It would be unfortunate to have no lambs in the spring. In theory a ram can serve fifty ewes. It depends on the aggression of the older male animals and if they allow younger and weaker males access to the ewes. It is then that there is a lot of "racing and chasing" out in the paddocks.

As late summer was moving into autumn, I had to strengthen the fences and wire up any holes. I did not want the lambs too early in the spring. The earliest lambs that arrived were born dead.

I used the dates between 1 April and the 14 April because of the weather. By those dates the worst of the cold weather would be over when the lambs are born. Often the rams would not wait for the dates and they would jump over the fences. Every day counts at this time of the year to make sure of the safe arrival of the lambs. I preferred a long drawn out lambing, for more chances of fine weather. Looking back now, I think that the beginning of April was too early to let the rams out. A ewe is pregnant for about 150 days.

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CHAPTER 17. SAFETY WITH SHEEP

There are dangers with domestic animals and I suffered a couple of times with hoggets (young teenage sheep) running and hitting my knees accidentally. I had to stand behind a gate for protection. When there is a ram I make sure that I do not confront him and I always have a ewe in the pen or close by as well. He will follow her behaviour and not notice me. One has to have respect for animals.

To get a ram turned over for shearing is a big effort but it can be done. Once they are on their backs they cannot do much to you. They virtually act like lambs when they are on their backs.

Touching a ram on the head is dangerous as they treat it like an insult and they will bunt the hand. I recently had a ewe jump at me and hit me on the right side of the chest. She was running out of the yards and I was getting older and was not quick enough to move out of the way. It was like having broken ribs for a month or so.

Ewes can be aggressive if their newborn lambs are picked up to move to safety or a warm place. They would sometimes bunt me behind the knees but it was not life threatening.

On rare occasions when a ewe will bunt and reject a lamb, something has gone wrong with the mothering process, which involves human intervention. If they get annoyed with their lambs, such as at weaning time ewes just get up and walk away, so that the lamb cannot drink.

It can often happen that a lamb is found suffering from hypothermia on a cold morning and it is removed from the mother's care and taken back to the house to be fed and warmed by the fire. When it is returned to the mother, she could reject the warm lamb. She had probably not licked it when it was first born. A twin may have come out and she has started caring for the new one. The lamb may have to be fed with a bottle of cows' milk for six weeks.

For humans and sheep, lambing can be confusing. A can of marking spray is helpful. One of the ewes rejected her lamb when I brought it back. The lamb cried a very sad "baa" when it was bunted and it sounded like a baby. It was an unforgettable sound. It had expression in the sound it made. I fed it for 6 weeks with milk. The lamb grew up to be the chief ewe in the paddock and her name was Elsie. She lived for years, but she was very upset by her mother's rejection of her at birth.

A ewe will reject a lamb that is not her own if it does not have the right smell. I would wash my hands after carrying a lamb so as not to transfer the wrong smell between the ewes. I would dip my hands in the water trough. I did buy a can of spray to encourage a ewe to adopt an orphan lamb but it was ineffective.

In later years ewes did not bunt me. Catching a ewe can put you on the ground but I was never hurt. It is the nearest thing to a game of rugby that I have done.

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CHAPTER 18. BIRD LIFE

One of the nicest things about living in the country is the great number or birds that I have seen. Around the house there are the sparrows, starlings, blackbirds and thrushes. There are the visiting wax eyes that come to take the nectar out of the red, hot pokers and the cherry blossoms. They come also if there is a severe storm coming and they search for flies close to the cottage. Sometimes a bellbird comes in the morning about ten o'clock when the sun is out. I have planted some eucalypts for the flowers the bellbirds like to eat in the winter. There is a pair of kingfishers that sit on the wires or on the clothesline. Once I had a visit from a pair of rare, native parrots. I heard this strange noise and they were eating the prickle seeds. There are red polls eating the tall grass seeds.

The spur winged plovers live somewhere around here, as well in the paddocks. There is a pukeko and a pheasant, which are fairly rare. In the sky there is the cruising hawk being chased by the unwelcome magpies. I first heard the skylark when I was a child came out here for a holiday in the summer with my family. It was the first time in my life that I became aware of birds singing in general so I was quite young. We walked down to a dry riverbed in summer and I heard this bird singing. I looked up and there was this skylark singing up in the sky.

About August the black and white oystercatchers sweep in with their screeching whistles and I say to myself that the winter is over. I think that they fly in from Auckland for the summer. They look for any areas of swampy ponds to find food. They do not find any oysters here. The riverbed is their nesting place so I kept the dog on a lead when we were out there. The new chicks would come back to my place later in the season. The grey heron flies in for the life in the farm ponds in some years. It makes a harsh, croaking sound as it flies.

There is an interesting, brown sparrow like bird that is in the riverbed and the paddocks. It runs ahead of a person, who is walking and I think it is called the pipit. It reminds me of the bird the "Road runner" in the cartoon that was on television.

At least one pair of paradise ducks is more often than not here. They are the couple where the male has a coloured head and the masculine call and the female has the white head and the higher pitched call. One year the "paries" had a cluster of ducklings down in the willow shaded parts of the farm. . They do not do any damage because there are not great numbers of them. I found nests on the ground in the middle of gorse bushes.

I am pleased to say that there is at least one mohua, or yellowhead living within a couple of hundred metres of the house. It comes in the winter to eat the barley and the hay that is left out for the sheep. In summer it lives in the wilderness of the riverbed.

For all except the very cold months there are quail here, which are a game bird. They flutter around in the scrub and grassland and have a little feather on the top of their heads. I have often thought that they would be a good bird to farm as the climate suits them and they have large families. When it becomes cold in April and May they disappear down country, towards the coast. The only sound that I have ever heard is the flutter of dozens of pairs of wings as they scatter when they become aware of a human close by. In the barn there are about half a dozen pigeons roosting all the year.

People drove into the reserve or park at the west end and dumped live roosters off, leaving them to fend for themselves. I felt sorry for the roosters and the worst thing I did was to feed them in the winter with sheep pellets. When they found that I was not going to feed them, they attacked me by pecking my legs savagely. I used to walk around with a long branch of a willow to defend myself from them. They were generally unloved birds. Finally they disappeared when hungry campers killed them as a free source of food. All that was left were a few brightly coloured and white feathers in the reserve.

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CHAPTER 19. RABBITS, HARES AND POSSUMS

There were a plague of rabbits here once. By that I mean that I counted fifty rabbits when I drove one kilometre through the farm. It was about that time that I planted a paddock of apple trees. The rabbits got the apple trees so that was the end of that project. It was a dead loss. After a few years there was a rabbit virus that came through and killed all the rabbits and that was a good thing. We did have a cooked rabbit, if someone with a gun came to visit. I used a book to learn how to skin and gut a rabbit. I did learn about it as well, by watching my father as a young girl. My father left me a shotgun because I had the farm. When I asked my brother for the shot gun he would not allow me to have it. I decided to let it go to him. Some men in my family like their guns. There was no problem as if I asked one of my young male neighbours to assist, they were more than happy to use their guns. I felt safe without a shot gun as there were rules about keeping guns. This could have made me at risk if I had one in the house.

There are no rabbits here at the moment. The most that I would see is a pair. A few years ago I had a rabbit living under the house and below my bed. I could hear it scratching and it was annoying. When I opened the curtains in the morning the sight that would greet me was of the rabbit washing its face, on the front lawn. The rabbit was untouchable, as I could not shoot it without a gun. I knew the virus would strike again in the autumn and the rabbit would disappear.

Walking through the paddocks was enjoyable, as I would come upon a hare resting ahead of me. The hare would lope off and then of course go around in a big circle to trick me.

Every year for a long time I had visits from a solitary possum. It would come during the autumn season, as I had an apple tree outside the bedroom window. The possum would climb noisily about on the iron roof and hiss away in the night. It was a spooky sound if you did not know what it was. The tree was no good as it was too close to the house and brought big spiders into the house, so I had it taken out. Every year for several years I had visits from that possum, scratching around and looking for apples from the old tree, at the same time of the year. The possum had a great sense of place.

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CHAPTER 20. ACCESS TO WATER

There is a three thousand litre a day stock water allowance so I should not run out of water. In the winter there can be a problem when there is a snowfall. The water in the pipes freezes and there is no water in the springs and the creeks. Fortunately sheep do not drink much in the winter. They are a bit like camels.

In one drought, which was very bad I let the flock out in the riverbed beside the farm. It was not worth selling the flock, as the prices were too low. I have always been thankful for my access to the riverbed. The sheep were trained up to come back home and I made sure that the water troughs were full. I cut a path to the riverbed through the scrub.

The sheep would stay out in the riverbed, which was empty of water for about seven to ten days. I kept going out every day to check how they were getting on. When they did come home they followed their own paths and the one that I had cut through the scrub. I used to wonder if they came home at night to drink the water, but I did not stay outside to find out. They had a great sense of place – their place.

I was reminded of the nursery rhyme about "leave them alone and they will come home wagging their tails behind them". If my sheep saw me in the riverbed they would know that I wanted them to come home and they did. They would stop grazing or get up from resting and make their way to the vague pathways leading to the home paddocks. I never ceased to amaze me the way they came home and they were like obedient children. The riverbed looks the same and yet they knew where home was.

Sometimes I would go alone and sometimes I would take my 'non-sheep' dog on a lead. Once the sheep had been absent for about ten days and I was getting worried about them. It was in the height of summer in one of the big 'drys' during February and I walked about five kilometres up the riverbed in the heat. I was beginning to think that they were lost but I found them coming back down the riverbed in groups of about a dozen. There was no water anywhere but in the troughs at home. It was always about the time of the full moon when they would come home. Once in the home paddocks they did not head for the water troughs, so they must have got a lot of moisture from the plants out in the riverbed.

It was an act of trust letting them out in the riverbed, as people were free to walk or drive through. If there were water in the river then fewer people would have access, as people do not like getting their feet wet by wading through the river. Four-wheel drive vehicles are another matter unfortunately.

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CHAPTER 21. ACCESS TO SHADE AND SHELTER

Since finding how sheep love the shade in summer I have planted a few trees. They go for shade in the winter sun as well as the summer sun and disappear to rest under the willow trees and have left parts of the farm ungrazed in the summer. Willow leaves are a favourite food of sheep. They choose to holiday in the shade in the summer.

In winter during the storms, gorse and broom hedges provide shelter as well as the pine trees. At night they return to the sleeping areas of the farm. I have tried to give them a natural life, which they choose.

There were two large sheds and a number of other smaller sheds that could provide shelter for the sheep in the event of bad weather. They could all have a roof over their heads in a heavy snowfall.

I planted some trees in forty-four gallon drums with the tops and bottoms removed, in a semi north south line on some fence lines. I found that eucalypts were the most successful. If the tree grows too quickly the drums are heavy to lift off the trees.

Conifers of various kinds were planted with not much success because the drums would be pushed over by the rams in their desire to have fresh conifer tips. They would constantly back into the drums to get at the trees. Every paddock needs some tree shelter for the animals.

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CHAPTER 22. OUT IN THE RIVERBED

One of the pleasures of living on the banks of a braided river is having free access to wilderness areas. It is a marvellous place for adults and children. Every riverbed must be slightly different and the one that I live beside is an absolute treasure and no one knows about it. To the average car traveller crossing a dry ford in a cloud of dust and flying shingle it is a non-event place.

In a dry summer there used to be swimming and paddling places that appeared in different places. The altitude is about two hundred metres so the pools do not last very long with the shingle underneath.

I go for a walk in the riverbed nearly every day and it is a great thing to be able to do. When I was a child in the 1940s my family used to go out to another similar riverbed to this one. My parents did not have a car at the time. By the 1950s when I was nearly grown up we went out in our own car. It was out in the riverbed that I learned to appreciate the big river and the little streams that it divided into. There were open spaces, shelter and the snowy mountains in the background. I used to take my homework books on the weekend. This was when there was a family picnic. Later we took our own children to try to recreate the same family picnics and gentle fun.

As I am a bit of a rock hound, I used to 'travel hopefully' in the riverbed as I was always hoping to find a meteorite, but I did not. I used to take a small pack with me and bring back quite large rocks sometimes. These turned out to be a local jaspagate. I could only bring one rock each trip as they were not very common and so one per trip was all I could manage. In another time and place the stones could have been worked into nice objects such as bowls or goblets. I tried to find someone to work the stones but it did not happen.

The riverbed that I know best now has a myriad of exotic plants in it, but it is accepted today. Many of the plants have escaped from gardens since the early days. In summer it is a sea of colour with yellow green, a bright yellow and blue. There are hectares of flowering gorse, broom, wild fennel, evening primrose and borage. As well there are flowers such as snapdragons, marigolds of both varieties, red and white poppies. At one time I collected plants out of the riverbed and garden and boiled the dye up to dye woollen jumpers. The local landscape came out as a soft yellow green.

The stately mullein, which grows two metres high used to be an asthma remedy. It can be dried and burnt as a powder. It has the effect of helping a person go to sleep, so it could be useful, as asthma is very tiring. The riverbed is a treasure trove of old fashioned herbal remedies. I have not bothered much about flowers in the home garden because of the wild garden which is close at hand I have only found a few of the original trees and shrubs and tiny native plants there today. The remains of the largest trees were the burnt logs of the native beech trees, which must have been lying on the ground for about 100 years at least. I only found about three of them. I also found a divaricating, evergreen shrub called mingimingi, which grew about two metres high before it died in the drought. I have since planted a bit of a hedge with the plant and it is growing well. There are also a few flax bushes but they are uprooted when the river floods. Matagouri bushes are there as well, doing no harm. The pohuehue are of two kinds, as far as I can make out. One is a dwarf, shiny leaved plant and the other is a climber.

In the driest and dustiest places there are butterflies in the summer. I have seen the little, native, copper butterfly and the little, New Zealand blue. In the garden and the riverbed there is the white butterfly. There is also two of the red admiral type. At times I see the large American monarch butterfly around the buddleia bush.

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CHAPTER 23. USEFUL PLANTS

On the farm there are useful plants that the sheep like eating. There is the weed blackberry they can get trapped in. I do spray it to get rid of it but it keeps growing. I have cut two tooths with a lot of wool on, out of the blackberry patch. Quite often, when I got out of the car I would hear a baa from a woolly lamb, so with my wire cutters in my pocket I was able to cut them out of the black berry bushes. The blackberry leaves are good for sheep during lambing time.

In the winter sheep will eat potatoes when they are cut up into little chips. They also like carrots and parsnips but they are usually too expensive. In the fruit season they eat apples, pears and plums.

Also they will eat ivy, mint, members of the rose family such as japonica and wild rose. Privet hedges are eaten with no bad effect. There is also the mallow family as well. New Zealand native plants such as lemonwood, some olearias, griselinias, and hebes and in fact sheep like most native plants. They like the leaves of elder, willow, poplar and any fruit trees. The plant called cleavers that crawls over other plants and has little balls for seeds is very popular with sheep and is full of vitamins that they need. In the garden the sheep go around and trim everything back neatly. It is all right if there are no new tiny plants and in an established garden and they are help.

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CHAPTER 24. DEADLY PLANTS

There is one plant that will kill a sheep and that is the larkspur or the delphinium. It is a blue, attractive, garden flower, it seeds freely and sheep like to eat it. I have lost lambs, which were in the garden nibbling, after a few hours. I have seen sheep eating fresh hemlock with no bad effects.

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CHAPTER 25. PLANTS NOT EATEN BY SHEEP

There are not many plants that sheep will not eat. Some can be planted and they will not be touched. This could be useful in a paddock without having a double line of fencing.

The coarse New Zealand flax, lavender, buddleia, red-hot poker, lycesteria, and ceanothis are safe, once they are firmly rooted. These are all evergreen plants. Once the coarse native grasses are established they will not eat them either so they could provide shelter for young lambs in fringe areas.

Sheep also leave hebe cupressoides alone. In winter sheep will nibble the tips of the pinus radiate trees, but they do no damage once the tree is a good height. Sheep do not eat mingimingi, a divaricating one of the native plants of the area as a general rule. In a snowstorm they do damage by pushing their backsides against a young tree and pushing it over.

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CHAPTER 26. LAMBING AND THE LUNAR INFLUENCE

Lambing is a crucial time of the year and when I first started I did not have a clue what to do. The ewes and the rams got together and that was it. The lambs arrived about one hundred and fifty days later.

As I got older I decided to control the event. Rams will let themselves out to get to the ewes, so I kept them apart as long as I could to prevent the births happening when the weather was too cold for the lambing date.

Over a period of years I kept a diary of the dates of the lamb births. The dates were marked to record the new moon and the full moon I guessed that there were going to be more births at those times of the month.

During a four-year period I found that in three years out of four there was an obvious peak of births when there was a new moon. There was a lesser effect at the time of the full moon. In 2006 there was no pattern that I expected. In 2005 there was an influence around the new moon. It was the same effect in 2004 around the full moon. This also happened in 2003.

When there was a quiet period in the lunar calendar I could dawdle when going out into the paddock, as there were unlikely to be many births.

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CHAPTER 27. LAMBING EVENTS

Out of one hundred births I only expected one ewe to get into serious trouble. I chose Perendales as they have a reputation for being easy to manage at lambing. I always felt as a woman that ease of lambing was the most important feature of sheep reproduction.

Most ewes deliver their lambs without any input from humans. They have been having lambs for a long time and are built for it. I did not interfere unless I had to. Providing the lamb was coming out the right way, i.e. headfirst and the ewe was having contractions, she would deliver her own lamb. I did not drag lambs unless I had to. I let nature take its course.

When I had early lambs and it was not from choice I cut up old, woven, woollen blankets and made covers for the lambs. I tied the covers on around the head and under the belly with wool. I did not lose any lambs that had coats on and after a couple of weeks I took them off the lambs. The coats were washed to remove any smell of an earlier lamb and made ready for the next lamb.

I would wait until the ewe had licked her lamb all over before I put on the coat. They were very good for twins, which are smaller, and at a disadvantage in the early spring. The coats are available for sale in the shops now.

Hypothermia is the chief cause of death in newborn lambs. The next cause of lamb death is prematurity which cannot be helped. If the ewe has had a quiet time while she was carrying the lamb, then there is nothing else that a human can do to prevent prematurity. Maternal inattention is another cause of lamb deaths. Putting a likely ewe and lamb in a pen together for care and attention can prevent it.

Maternal death occurs only rarely. A lamb can be born dead due to illness in the mother. There is also genetic malformation in the lamb such as having no anus. Sometimes a lamb can die of a blocked anus with a build up of foaming, dry faeces sealing over the anus. The foam sets and has to be broken open

Checking each ewe's udder is the way to go as she lambs. Reality is that it is only the sheep that come to attention, which are penned up, are able to be checked. Very rarely in about one in two hundred births does a ewe develop mastitis. This is an inflammation of the ewe's milk bag. If the lambs were from a multiple birth one may need bottle-feeding as one side of the udder cannot be used. If mother has some inflammation in her udder she will sit down and not let the lamb drink. The lamb could die of cold without any food very quickly. With a tight udder in a ewe, a human can milk the inflammation out sometimes and the lamb can drink because the inflammation is relieved. The first feed can be just fifty ml. of cows' milk that will help the lamb overnight in the cold air. The vet will supply an antibiotic for the mastitis. Mastitis is where the udder becomes hard, hot and tight usually on one side. The teat becomes blocked in some bad cases and it is very painful for the ewe.

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CHAPTER 28. ASSISTANCE FROM THE VET

Lambing time is when I would sometimes need help from the vet. Fortunately it would only happen in 1% of the time. When I had a problem I would get upset and take the ewe to the vet. I did not care about the expense and happily paid the fees. The fees were reasonable for what they did. I tried to take the animal to the clinic rather than have the vet visit the farm. I was not in farming to make any money. I was in it for something to do when there were no jobs because of political decisions.

Transporting the ewe to the vet was an event in itself. I would roll the ewe on to the trailer and ring the vet. I had to drive a couple of kilometres through the back roads, across a stony riverbed get to the clinic with my clunky old trailer behind my Morris Marina car.

(a) One problem that can arise is where the lamb's shoulder can get caught inside the ewe and the lamb cannot come out.

(b) Breech birth is a nightmare. This is where the bottom of the lamb or the back legs comes first. I would take the ewe to the vet as soon as I could.

(c) Sometimes a ewe could exhaust herself trying to push a lamb out. She would be pushing but there would be no sign of the lamb coming out.

These are not very common events. If there was too much damage the ewe might be put down. Lambing can be gruelling.

A ewe can get very ill when she is pregnant with toxaemia. One way to eliminate this condition is to make sure ewes that are too old, thin, or not well are culled before the ram goes out. If toxaemia happens the ewe will just sit around and allow a person to walk up to her. She will not eat and is likely to die.

If it is early in the pregnancy there is fizzy drink available from the vet which can help. I have hand fed sheep with fresh cut grass combined with fruit, cereals and carrots. In one case, the half-bred (Merino cross) got up and walked away after a day of treatment. She produced live triplets in the spring. The foetuses were an overwhelming drain on her for a while in the early months.

Other times the ewe will die despite being given treatment, or she may produce an early, bloody, dead lamb. If she can keep eating she will get through.

Another situation is when a ewe ready to deliver has a 'hung' lamb and she will not stop walking around. She will walk around with the head of the lamb with its ears sticking out of her vagina. The lamb will be shaking its head and flipping its ears and the mother will keep on walking. If she has the lamb without help she will probably abandon it as she has had such a hard time. She has to be penned up and put down on the ground. I would feel with my gloved hand inside for a limb close to the head. Once there is one front foot out it is possible to get the other front foot out and the body of the lamb slides out and hopefully the lamb lives and the mother loves it. The uterus is a scary place to be as it clamps down on a hand. I am reluctant to go there but I learned how to help the ewe sometimes. After intervention the ewe would be given an antibiotic injection to prevent an infection developing.

When a ewe is close to lambing or for a few weeks after lambing she can get still get very ill. She may need an injection of calcium as her calcium levels are too low. All being well she should recover with extra food and help with her lambs especially if it is a multiple birth.

I found that when I talked to the vet about a ewe's condition they were very helpful.

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CHAPTER 29. TIME OF BIRTH

The time of the day when the lambs are born is quite important in whether they survive or not. I kept records for several years and it can be estimated how many are going to be born each day from the calendar. If the lambing is spread out over a longer period then there will be fewer losses in unpredictable rainstorms that can happen.

Most often lambs are born in the early morning when there is frost on the ground. If they are weak then they have the rest of the day to recover from the birth. They will warm up as the day goes on and have a good chance of surviving.

When a lamb is born in the afternoon it is uncommon. Possibly the ewe had trouble in the morning in pushing the lamb out. She could be tired and need extra care and early shelter before the sun goes down when the lamb is born. She may need some intervention with an afternoon birth.

With lambs born at night sometimes they are well the next morning and sometimes they are dead Even if there was a shed to be moved into at night, it would still not prevent death at night in cold weather. This is where shelter in any form is worthwhile having.

A sheep in a flock can lose her lamb or look after the wrong lamb. This is if the sheep are crowded into a shed at night. It can be a very confusing time for the flock and for me. Sometimes the mother has had such a hard time that she goes off into a corner and forgets that she has a lamb, when she is in a shed at night.

A lamb can get behind a hay bale, or fall out a door of the shed into the cold night away from the mother and become inaccessible. There are so many things that can happen in the night. Sometimes a lamb that has just been born can fall into a creek and drown, or it can freeze to death overnight when the mother does not sit down close to it. If there is a rainstorm on a morning when there is a full moon then there will be a complete loss of all the lambs born at this time. Lambs can survive a heavy snowfall with a sensible ewe, but a rainstorm chills to death.

The warmest place that I have found is underneath a ewe with a good fleece when she is standing about. She radiates heat like a two thousand watt heater. It is the best place for a shivering new lamb. Lambs that survive are usually sitting around their mother and touching her fleece.

During lambing I used to make three trips out in the paddock every day. There was a lot of walking with multiple births to move the ewes and lambs to shelter. It depended on the condition of the animals and the weather.

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CHAPTER 30. FEEDING LAMBS

Bottle-feeding lambs is an uneconomic activity. It costs about $60 to rear a lamb on expensive, milk powder. The fact is though, that if I had a lamb that was well and without a mother then I fed it for six weeks on the powdered milk. If I had to feed one, I would find another one to feed as well as a lone, bottle fed lamb does not do as well. It is not socialised to fit into a flock. It is worth feeding a female, as she will produce a lamb in a couple of years. Groups of bottle fed lambs make themselves into a little family for the rest of their stay with me. They do everything together.

I offered sheep nuts, which are 11% protein, rolled oats and bran, which I whizzed up in the kitchen from about three weeks. I put the food into their mouths until they became used to food other than milk. The most that I have fed is five. The ten-kilo bags of milk powder disappeared quickly, with the lambs drinking a litre of milk when they were growing well. Often I used to think how valuable sheep's milk is. It is a priceless fluid.

When a lamb needed colostrum I had to go back to the freezer in the house to defrost it. In the meantime the lamb would be given powdered milk. The most essential fluid to help the animal survive is colostrum, the golden liquid. Mammals produce it in the first 24 to 48 hours after giving birth. It is a thick, creamy, yellowish fluid and then it gradually changes to the white liquid called milk. Colostrum can be bought at the vets. Now one does not have to go to the trouble of catching a ewe. I kept the colostrum in the freezer for a year.

To milk a sheep is a very exasperating job as the teats are so small. On the first occasion in the new season that I had a healthy, just lambed ewe in the pen I would bring a small, jam jar to collect colostrum. Some sheep like humans have an ample supply and it is easy to collect fifty or one hundred mls. Other ewes I would give up on, as their supply was so poor. Each lamb needs only thirty mls of colostrum which does not seem very much but in 25% of the time it was too difficult to collect that amount from a ewe to give to another lamb.

I have found a ewe often does not have any milk when she first lambs and I used to wonder what would happen to the lambs if I let them out in the paddock. Many times with a multiple and a single birth I have kept a ewe with lambs in a shed for up to three nights. I have often thought that human mothers are hustled out of the birthing hospital before they are producing enough milk for their babies. The lambs would be offered cows' milk while the mother recovered and started to produce her own supply of milk. When a ewe was able to feed her own lambs I would let her out in the paddock.

There were a couple of small paddocks near the house, which were sheltered and there were adjoining sheds with separate spaces for the ewes.

Sometimes a bottle fed lamb would take to solid foods quite easily but often they would not want other foods for weeks. They needed plenty of encouragement. After eating dried foods for a couple of days during weaning the lambs would start on the garden with great relish. They could get through the holes in the fences, as they were so small. All the shrubs would be trimmed back very neatly. I gave up having a nice garden, as I loved the lambs more. They liked flowers and succulents as well as shrubs.

When a lamb was found to be chilled and unable to suck I had a lamb reviver kit. This was a container with a fine tube attached. I would gently slide the tube down through the lamb's mouth and straight into the stomach. When I was satisfied that the tube was in the correct place I would carefully and slowly pour about fifty mls. of warm milk or colostrum if I had it, down into the stomach . The lamb would be taken to the house to warm up by the fire or the heater. This treatment was not always successful. Hypothermia is a killer.

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CHAPTER 31. MULTIPLE BIRTHS

With multiple births the mother has the first lamb and she licks it, but then the next lamb is ready to come out. She lies down and then she concentrates on the second lamb. The first-born can then get chilled and she forgets that she has another lamb or possibly three to look after. It is very chaotic at times during lambing. I used to mark with an ink spray if I could, after multiple births especially, in the shed. The ideal way would be for the ewes to give birth in a warm, lighted shed in individual pens. The ewes could be checked to make sure that there was milk present. I used to have a bottle of warm cows' milk with me, to complement the mother's supply in a difficult lambing. When there were triplets born, I would move the ewe to a shed with water, hay and sheep nuts. I would make sure that all of the lambs had colostrum either from the ewe or a bottle. The mother would be left for a few days with the triplets and then one lamb would be removed from the mother and bottle fed. I have found that three lambs do not survive any more than two weeks so I would intervene and feed one of the lambs.

After a multiple birth a mother can be given up to five hundred gm. of sheep nuts each day if she needs it and access to hay. Oats are said to produce more milk so I used to give rolled oats I would move the lambs to shelter and the mother would follow me as I carried the lambs to a shed.

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CHAPTER 32. POST LAMBING ESSENTIALS

The most essential event that takes place after lambing is that the ewe gets to know her lamb and licks it thoroughly. It provides the mother's bond to the lamb. A mother will automatically get up to lick her lamb as soon as she has recovered enough to stand. The ewe treats the lamb like a delicious ice cream and licks it all over with ovine delight. The birth fluids are full of hormones and that is what the mother needs to stimulate her maternal urges. Sometimes the mother becomes carried away and eats the tail off the lamb in her enthusiasm. There do not seem to be any ill effects when this happens.

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CHAPTER 33. REMEDIES FOR SHEEP ILL HEALTH

The remedy for an exhausted ewe after giving birth is a mixture of strong tea with honey and about half a dozen dried or green herbs such as vervain, rosemary, rosehips, cleavers and ivy. I could use about fifteen mls. of wine out of the cask and a paracetamol tablet ground up if I had a sheep that was ill.

I used one of the anti-worm drenches some weeks after lambing. I would change the type of drench I used every couple of years. There are white, coloured drenches and a multipurpose drench. It would kill internal and external parasites. I did not use it very often and only in special cases were five, ten and twenty ml containers were easier to use instead of a gun type of syringe.

In the spring when the green grass appears the sheep have very loose bowel motions so they have to be drenched then. I found a way to cut the daggy wool off their rear ends by putting a leather collar around their necks and just bending down to trim the dags. It was a lot easier than turning them on to their backs. In bad cases of dirty wool I did turn them over. I had a sheep holder made out of iron piping but it was not very effective.

If there were flystrike I would use an organophosphate poison with extreme care. It does protect sheep from future flystrike for three weeks. Willow leaves were a food the sheep enjoyed eating at this time as it has good health chemicals in it.

From the vet I used to have a bottle of sheep 'lemonade' which can be given to ewes at lambing time or in early pregnancy. It was helpful to the animals. This is a recipe to give to the sheep, which have been sick.

Homemade electrolyte solution: fifty grammes Dextrose, half teaspoon salt, and quarter teaspoon sodium bicarbonate, dissolved in one point two litres of boiling water. Leave to cool.

I used Manuka honey on a sheep that had an ulcer between her shoulders where the flies had struck her. Any honey would have done but I used Manuka. The honey dressings daily over a couple of months healed the ulcer and she went on to produce several lambs.

At one time I vaccinated the sheep but I decided that it was uneconomic. For no apparent reason I would sometimes lose a healthy, well grown lamb but it was very rare. The death was said to be because the sheep were not vaccinated.

A salt block is necessary in the paddock. A sheep that is ill with worms will keep coming back to replace the salt in her body. It will be obvious that she needs worming and crutching.

The sheep sometimes had eye problems. It was called pink eye and the sheep suffered blindness if it was not treated. I used an antibiotic powder in the eyes for several days until it cleared up. The affected sheep had to be kept in their own paddock.

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CHAPTER 34. TRANSPORT FOR SHEEP

I obtained a small car trailer for $50 and it was a help to me. I had a wooden set of three specially made hurdles and a gate constructed to fit the trailer. I could then shift any sheep around the farm, as I needed to. If I had a ewe that needed shelter I could tie the newborn lamb to the trailer and the ewe would come to the lamb and try to get at it. I would then grab the ewe somehow and she would get aboard the trailer. A sheep weighs about 50 kgs. They are quite heavy. When that method did not work I would drive off slowly with the ewe and the lamb baa-ing at each other. The ewe would follow where the lamb was being taken. Finally we would arrive at the yards where they were going to rest.

I used a wheelbarrow if the area was inaccessible to the car and trailer to move a ewe if I had to. If the ewe was too sick to get up I had a jack to hoist her on to the trailer to take her to the shed. I rolled a ewe on to a fadge on the ground and pulled the fadge along the ground if I had to move her to a shed.

In sending sheep to the sales a safe transport firm should be chosen. Staff driving the transport trucks can be variable. It is not good when a sheep dies on board a truck. I heard of a lamb born in a stock truck and it was left without a mother because the mother was going for slaughter with other sheep in the truck. The lamb was brought home to the driver's family adopted and fed.

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CHAPTER 35. DEALING WITH THE LOSS OF SHEEP

If a sheep died then I had to dispose of the animal, which was a burden. I would lift the carcase on to the trailer and take it to one of the places on the farm that were suitable as they were deep fenced pits. The meat and wool was not used.

I was sad at the loss of my sheep and I knew many of them as having personalities with idiosyncrasies. After a couple of years the weeds grew over everything and I had other pet sheep. I recognised the faces of individuals in the present flock of sheep. I could say that I knew the mother.

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CHAPTER 36. MONOPOLY TRADERS

Monopoly traders are one of the worst things that can happen to farmers. The large firms have so much power over the farming community. The stock and station firms and meat processing companies give a small farmer little choice in where buying and selling goes on. When I first started farming the stock firms offered to lend me money. I did not take up their offer as I felt that I did not have enough experience of farming, but I was grateful for their offers.

A farmer's lot is not necessarily a happy one. One has to accept that a large animal such as a cow is going to be worth more than a smaller animal such as a ewe. Both animals require a lot of labour to farm. For me I chose a few sheep as it was easier to manage a smaller animal. I fed a couple of calves when I first came to the farm. I was pleased when they were old enough to sell.

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CHAPTER 37. THE NEIGHBOURS

Even though I am on a farm I have neighbours fairly close to my cottage. The nearest neighbour is directly over the road and behind a pinus radiata hedge, which is about eight metres high. The first neighbour, who was living there when I came to the cottage, was a retired couple. They were kind, helpful people and so very quiet. Once when I had a sick ewe they gave me a jar of molasses to give to the sheep. At the time I did not know that molasses contains calcium, which was good for a pregnant ewe. They grew a great crop of black currants in the summer.

The couple went in the car to do the shopping as it was about a km. from the house. The wife did not drive the car and I did not see the wife outside the property or down at the shops ever without the husband. The husband went out to the letterbox to collect the mail. The mailbox was opposite my gate. He seemed to do all the shopping and make all the contacts with people. The wife was an invisible woman. There were several grown up children who visited at times.

I became aware that this was the norm for many country women. It was not my first contact with a kind of New Zealand purdah. Women were kept away from the rest of the community and this must have been the way that our grandmothers and great grandmothers lived. The ability to drive a car or access to public transport would have lessened the isolation.

Eventually the couple moved to a smaller farm taking their six sheep with them. They invited me around to the new home and I was pleased for them, as it was a better house with less land. They were getting on a bit .The wife died of lung cancer and the husband moved into residential care for help and support.

The couple who moved in next were the worst neighbours I have known in all of my life. The family consisted of a short, older husband and wife and a female teenager. My first contact with them was when a white haired woman came out of the back gate to complain about the way the young men drive on the roads. At the time it was the beginning of the "hoon" era, when young men of the town took more of an interest in cars than guns. The neighbour's first reaction was to complain about something. It was not to say something like, "Nice day" or "Lovely weather we're having." She was moaning about something.

From then on they were the neighbours from hell. The hatless husband had a tractor and worked on local farms when he could get work. I used to say that he was unemployable. He was often banging around in his shed, which was behind the pine hedge. The hatless wife worked away from home and drove around in a "flash" car. It was a second marriage for both of them.

They produced one daughter, who was socially challenged because of her parental inheritance. She was a "horsy" girl who had been showered with all the horse gear that can be imagined to keep her quiet. When she left school she worked on a dairy farm as a helper. She rode alone around the town on her horse and she would not say "Good morning." to anyone and certainly not to me.

After a few years she left home and went overseas. The parents got rid of the vehicle for towing the horse float, the horse float and the horses.

The father had a personality disorder and spent some of his time yelling at my dog and me. He would lurk around the pine hedge and throw stones at my dog if she barked. I had to shift the dog kennel to a safer place where she could not get hurt with stones. I built a stone fence with the stones the neighbour threw at my dog.

Often he tried to drive me off the road and I had to move on to the grass to avoid him. This was when I was walking the dog or driving the car. He would accelerate to scare me. When I was out in my garden he would be calling out foul language. I complained to the police about him three times, and the police visited him. They used to throw all their dead, animal bones outside their fence on the roadside. My dog would rush over and bring the bones back to my place for me to dispose of.

I used to put the sheep in yards close to the house with the dog sometimes. She would bark to move the sheep along and the neighbour would be yelling at my dog to try and stop her doing what I wanted her to. It was a crazy situation. The man was mad. The farm was in a rural area and it was expected that a dog would bark. The wife had three or four, white, yappy, little dogs and she bred from them. I think that they were terriers. Whenever someone came to their house all the little dogs started to yap. The dogs had little coats and she used to take them for walks in the riverbed.

In the riverbed they chased my sheep that were out there. I went out to find little, lap dogs in tartan coats scrambling through my fence and trying to catch my lovely sheep. The woman was following her dogs and climbing over my fence to try and catch her uncontrollable dogs.

I went over and rescued my sheep and the woman walked off without saying a word to me. I escorted her and her yapping charges out of my paddocks without a word being spoken.

Once we were out on the road and playing with a tennis ball and throwing it for the dog to catch. The neighbour produced a gun through the hedge. I complained to the police about that, saying that I did not think that he was a fit and proper person to have a gun. Nothing happened, with the police reluctant to take any power away from a male.

About that time I had a valuable, half bred ewe shot through the eye and killed by an unknown person. She was inside the paddock by the reserve and it was an act of wanton vandalism. The fence wire was cut deliberately at that time. I suspected my neighbour of doing these bad acts, but I had no evidence. I took the ewe to her final resting place and was sad about it. When I told the police they said that I had suffered a loss, so at least they acknowledged it.

The couple had an obsessive desire to have everything tidy on the farm. Once a hedge, branches or cuttings were down on the ground they would immediately try to burn the material. This was before the greenery had dried out at all. Once they had a big rubbish fire when there was a westerly wind and the council visited them to discuss the fire problems they were giving the neighbourhood.

Fortunately these neighbours have now shifted to a more isolated, rural area, which they are better suited to living in.

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CHAPTER 38. THE OLD AND MODERN VIEW OF SHEEP

We underestimate the value of sheep to humans today. Medical, nutritional and other specialist products are being discovered in material that can be made from the humble sheep. Once they were only used for their wool and then they were used as food. Expensive sheep cheese is a new luxury food. We may need wool for clothing again when there is no cheap, synthetic clothing available.

People have been following flocks of sheep for thousands of years and they walk at the same pace that humans do. Paintings of the early days in British art show them in very small numbers. It was not until about two hundred years ago that there was a growth in the size of sheep flocks. There was a steady increase in the numbers of sheep from colonial times. In New Zealand art, the sheep are shown being shorn rapidly and in large numbers or being driven endlessly ahead up dusty roads, in large numbers and into brown paddocks.

They were treated as individual animals once but now they are treated as a great mass of animals. They are amiable, unappreciated animals controlled for the most part by men and dogs.

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CHAPTER 39. MISTREATMENT OF SHEEP

Sheep in New Zealand do have protection from ill treatment by law. In many parts of the world they do not. There is mistreatment in the practice of 'mulesing', which occurs mostly in Australia. The wool and the skin that grows around the tail are cut off in some cases without anaesthetic being used in the operation. This is so that scar tissue will replace wool growing, skin cells.

This is a cruel treatment for sheep and it is to save money by not having to employ staff to watch for flystrike that happens very often. With constant checking during flystrike periods and more staff spraying with anti fly strike liquids, 'mulesing' would be unnecessary.

I have often thought that a Merino is not an animal I would like to be born as, because of the suffering they undergo if struck by flies. When I put on a fine wool garment I think of the suffering the animal had to undergo in growing the wool. Global warming may lead to more wool being worn indoors as the indoor temperature is adjusted downwards.

Sheep should not be used as lamb producing machines by forcing them with hormones to lamb twice a year.

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CHAPTER 40. HEALING ANIMALS

I always felt that sheep have healing properties for humans. Standing close to them is energizing. They symbolise patience, calmness and quietness to humans. They are a good, children's pet for a short time in the spring. Children can learn about the needs of animals in the care of them. When I look out my kitchen window and see the sheep sitting around, I can say that "sheep may safely graze" here. It is a very comforting feeling.

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CHAPTER 41. ORGANIC METHODS

I had no wish to farm organically as it was too difficult. There were modern products I had to use which were dangerous. There were products from the vet to control parasites on and inside the animals and to eliminate weeds such as gorse and broom, which were necessary. There was a mite I introduced to control the gorse, which was reasonably successful, and an insect to kill the broom. It was a bonus to have biological controls for problems on the farm. . There were herbal remedies such as linseed oil and turpentine made from conifers that could be used to control worms but it was easier to buy products from the vet. Organic methods would be difficult to eliminate lice from sheep, in the numbers that are run on farms today.

I used herbal remedies such as slippery elm food for upset stomachs and willow leaves as a food. Yarrow was good for runny noses. It grew out in the paddocks but it can be made into a tea. Ivy, feverfew and blackberry are useful at lambing time as a tea. Marshmallow and dill calm the intestines.

I planted the herbs in the garden and had them flowering rather than the normal cultivated flowers and it was nice. I used rosehips often in any tea that I made, as roses are a semi- stimulant plant. There were plenty of wild roses out in the river bed and I collected them for drying and use as a tea and in an oil for use on the body.

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CHAPTER 42. USES FOR WOOL

There is nothing nicer than pulling on a warm, woollen sweater first thing on a cold winter morning. I like the medium weights for outdoors woollens and a cotton and wool mix for summer wear. Where I live is 55km from the sea so it is a cool place to live at times with mountain winds.

Perendale wool is used for knitwear and for carpets. It is about 31 to 35 microns. A knitted jersey in Perendale wool is very comfortable for outdoor wear and is soft and light. The merino wool is perfect for fine knits, worn close to the skin and is between 18 and 25 microns. Merino wool is more expensive than Perendale, but this may change at any time. The cost of fine machine knitted merino clothing has been reducing over time.

Another use for wool is for to use insulation in a home. I had the walls and ceilings of my cottage covered with a wool lining.

I had a lot of enjoyment through trying out natural dyes from common plants. I used plants such as eucalypt, gorse, elder and privet. The knitted jerseys had very soft wearable colours. When wearing natural colours one blends in with the landscape.

With chemical dyes I made different patterns in the balls of wool. I used a separate colour such as blue on light pink wool by sprinkling the dye on the balls of wool. The wool was cooked gently in a slow oven for a while in a roasting dish in the oven to make the dye permanent.

I made wool rugs by using a single bed frame and I found it good fun.

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CHAPTER 43. RETIREMENT

When I had to leave the farm because I was diagnosed as having Parkinson's Disease I was about 70 something. I knew that I could not keep going in this isolated place. I was sad about that but I was there for 23 years. How I got Parkinsons disease I do not know. I loved what I did. It is a bit uncommon in women to have the disease. I had a very strenuous, tense life, some involvement with very dangerous chemicals but I loved it. Later I was diagnosed and treated with surgery and radiation for breast cancer. I felt that I had done something with my life as well as bringing up children.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

The Complete Herbal Handbook for Farm and Stable Juliette de Bairacli Levy Published by Faber Paperbacks 1990 Printed by Cox &Wyman Ltd., Reading Berkshire.

Practical Small Farming in New Zealand Trisha Fisk Reed Books Reed Publishing NZ Ltd., Auckland Printed in Singapore 2001

Sheepyard and Shearing Shed Design edited by Fiona Conroy & Peter Hanrahan Published by Agmedia division of Daratech Pty Ltd 3/166 Wellington Parade East Melbourne Victoria Australia 1994

Part-time Farming Katie Thear Published by Ward Lock LTD., 82 Gower St., London WC1E6EQ, a Pentos Company 1982.

Buddhism for Sheep Chris Riddell 1996 Ebury Press Random House NZLtd

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