Although sheep will soon become used to the whistling and holloing
shepherd, together with the barking dog, apparently paying little
attention to them, they do, nevertheless, fret, causing them to roughen
and lose in flesh. We have seen sheep become so thin by such treatment
that they were actually too weak to follow the herd longer. They will
always do their best to stray away from such surroundings. Sheep know
the intelligent shepherd never whistles, hollos, or rushes the dog at
them unless it is absolutely necessary, and they very readily mind such
a person.
Surely it is not the sheep that is at fault when the shepherd selects as
their pasture, during a stormy day, a bleak flat or mesa, where the
sheep in their discontent are compelled to run around seeking shelter or
to maintain their warmth, vexing the herder, causing him to dog them
severely.
BEGINNING.
Should you have plenty of pasture, put your dropping ewes upon the
lambing ground 143 days after the rams were first with them. This gives
them a little time to locate, their dropping time not being up until the
145th day. If lambing upon the open range, two or three good, live men
to each 1,000 ewes will be necessary, while for shed lambing there
should be four or five for that number of ewes. In each case the amount
of help necessary depends upon the range and method of lambing. The men
should have enough clothing and bedding to be out in all kinds of
weather without chilling. Inform them that abusing the sheep by using
the crook as a club, dogging, or otherwise, will not help you nor ease
their work in the least. Truly, the man worth while in a lambing camp is
"the man who can smile when everything goes dead wrong"--the man who
sees many things and can find the time, the way, and the will, to better
them.
Do not bed dropping ewes upon steep hillsides, where they will cast
themselves during or before lambing. It may often become necessary to
bed small bunches out by themselves; this gives the coyote a great
chance to do his work. To keep him and other predatory animals away
during the night, it is well to have firecrackers, fuse, or powder,
scare-crows and lanterns on hand. To catch and chain a live coyote out
upon the lambing ground has been the most effective scare-crow the
writer has ever used to keep coyotes from the lambing range. As a
disinfectant for bites, cuts, sores and maggots, have carbolic acid,
turpentine, or some good creosote sheep dip. Marking materials are also
very handy at times to mark certain ewes and lambs. The remedies given
here for the treatment of ailments generally found at lambing time are
not those found at a drug store twenty miles away, but, rather, those
camp necessities which are most always at hand. They have proven their
merit and can be relied upon.
THE DROP BAND.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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