Peanut has always been one of our flightiest sheep. She’ll spook at anything and everything, and gets this insane look in her eyes all the time. The other night, as the sun was setting, I was watching all of the new mamas with their lambs, all sitting in a wooded area, off the path. Danny and Zippy were trotting up and down the path way, sort of excited about the warm weather, happy. As they passed Peanut and her lambs, she ran right in front of them, spooked, and both of her lambs got trampled and died. I watched it happen in horror. There was no reason for her to have done that except that she spooks so easily. All of the rest of the mamas were calm, chewing their cud.
In the best of worlds, I’d have another paddock with a shed to put the cows, but I don’t have one, and the weather is still bad enough that I’m not willing to put them somewhere with a shelter. Sigh.
So now I’ve got her in a separate little fenced in area, next to the rest of the sheep, but someplace I can keep her contained so I can milk her. She was starting to get engorged. I’ve never milked her before because she’s always been so flighty and I have lots more pleasant sheep who are used to being milked, but whatever. She and I will learn. It wasn’t too bad this morning, actually. She was very confused, but I still got a quart of milk. It’ll be nice to have fresh raw sheep’s milk again. I wasn’t going to milk the girls this year because I’m so busy and taking a class, but we’ll make it work.
Frank’s got the really unpleasant task of skinning two beautiful little ewe lambs so we can keep their pelts. I’d rather have the lambs, of course, but it would be a crime to waste those precious pelts.
This makes me so sad.
Lisa, life on the farm can be filled with many unexpected twists and turns. It’s always a sad thing to have needless death in animals. I’ve never heard of milking sheep or using sheep milk. Does it taste similar to goat milk?
Have a wonderful non violent farm day.