Footprints on the Web

Weaning comes when the lambs are ready to be separated from their mamas. This means that they no longer get ant milk, eat grass/hay and live on a completely separate field. Its one of the other big milestones during lambing season. This is also time when the foster lambs get weaned off from bottle/bucket feeding and join the rest of the lambs. I liked to think that the foster lambs get weaned off of me, their mom.

The weaned off lambs end up in 1 of 2 places. Either they get chosen to stay back in the farm and be used for future mating. Or they get sent to the market close to the end of the winter. I knew I did not want to be here for that.

The day of weaning required much preparation like any other big event on the farm. The lambs have a tendency to go back to the field where they last saw their mom. Some moms looked honestly relieved to no longer have constant suckling. We had to separate them in the barn before leading them to their designated fields. While weaning, all field lambs were crying for their moms and staying away from any humans. My foster though could not understand why there was so much commission and simply stuck to my side tried to chew off my jeans and giving me ear nibbles. The fosters are the toughest to wean believe it or not. Because they are not afraid of humans. With sheep and their lambs, if we wanted them to go in any particular direction we just had to walk in the opposite direction. With fosters they either follow you or they get distracted with grass.

The day of weaning all lambs but the fosters were led to the field successfully. Almost everyone tried to get the foster to move The patriarch game in a side by side, hoping to scare them and get them to run. That didn’t work. He told me to go get one of the farm helps to get the foster lambs to move. I took offense to that. These were my babies! They are not going to listen to just anyone. Everyone tried pushing them 1 by 1. That didn’t work. They would see grass patches and just get distracted. There were some tourists going oooh and aah looking at the tiny ones. They were not helping- just taking pictures and attracting the lambs towards them.

I had enough. I left to go to basement of the farm house and returned with two empty buckets to the scene. I started chanting “Come on, lambs…c’mon, c’mon” and banging the 2 empty buckets over and over. Well, voila! It was like velcro. They left all their distractions and followed along in a straight line bleating and baahing. As I chanted and banged away, I walked towards the field they were supposed to be in. Now I had become the center of the weaning scene with pictures and videos being taken by everyone witness to this sight. As the lambs followed me into the field, one of the farmer closed the gate behind them and everyone was just smirking at me stand there with 2 empty buckets surrounded by the fosters. The remaining lambs were far off into the field away from the humans. The matriarch came over and smiled as she said, ‘well, don’t you have the pied piper effect’.

At a later time, I got to ask the patriarch if he remembered of the time when he dismissed me and told me to get help from someone who knew how to move animals? I told him well he needs to remember how wrong he was because no one was able to move a single foster that day but me. Including the guy he asked me to get. So remember that. He smiled and walked away.

On the days that followed, I visited my fosters in their field. They seemed happy and trying to get the hang of their new surroundings. I was always weary of the bigger lambs picking on them. The lambs who grew up with their moms tend to be bigger than the fosters. The shepherd assured me that none of my foster lambs would be picked on. I think he thought I was a little silly.

Sheep’s hoofs are hard. You might as well practice trimming rocks. The trimmers we had did not help as they were old and rusted. You have to use all your muscle strength to trim the sides. Sometimes you cut too deep just like with dogs and they start bleeding. But if you don’t trim their hoofs, they can be overgrown and cause limps while they walk. It was not a one person job. We were doing over 500 sheep. Luring them into the barn, then pushing them up the chute, releasing and catching a sheep and turning it upside down to be trimmed but not holding it there long as it can cause them to fall unconscious and stop breathing. While pushing one into the chute, you need to watch you back as you can get rammed on from the behind by another sheep. It can cripple you. Sometimes while releasing a sheep, they can jump over in which case a farmer would have to manually catch, flip and hold them down as the remaining of us trimmed the hoofs. It was not a job for someone who lacked physical strength. We tried to do about 50-60 per day. It took us over a week. Day after day of this wrecks your back, quads, hands, wrists, elbows, you name it. As someone who is anemic and bruises easily, I had bad blue, black, green, red bruises hip down all the way down through my ankles. It took a good little while for my normal complexion to return. My hand cramps were especially hard in the mornings and slowly spread to elbow cramps. It was all part of the trade. I did this once in my lifetime. They have been doing this for 50 years. No comparison.

During weaning, we had identified some sheep who had birthed lambs rather late in the season. We would keep these lambs with their moms as they were not ready to be weaned off. One such tiny lamb was abandoned by his mama sheep. The shepherd and I tried to catch the mam sheep and lamb and force it to feed from its mom. Often at times, once they drink the milk (and the mom lets it), they can follow and keep up with the wandering mom. We marked the lamb and said we would come back to check if they were still together but before we left the field, the mom had already abandoned her sheep. So we decided to make it a foster and brought him back to the farm. I named him Kohl. Kohl grew to be everyone’s love bug because he was super snuggly. We would bring him into the office at times and let him hang out. When he walked around with his hooves on the floor, it sounded to me like one of my high-heeled ex- banking coworkers stomping across the trading floor.

I started going to one of the churches on the island on Sundays. It was a small congregation. Barely 4 of us. It was a very intimate service. The priest at the church was such a gentle soul. I remember talking to him about my dilemma of whether to stay back at the farm and the island or leave at the end of the self assigned sabbatical to go back to a life that really had nothing waiting for me. I hadn’t asked anyone on the farm to join me to church but they would see me drive off every Sunday morning and be back. They were impressed for some reason. Very soon, I had folks approach me asking if they could join me. I had a one of the farmers join me on Sundays. Another farm helper also started coming to church. I found out later that she had a Christian vocational degree. The farmer who shared my tasks with fosters also showed interest in joining me to church. All this interest without me initiating any invite but simply leading by example. I guess the pied piper effect was not limited to my lambies alone.