Friends and Followers by Eugene Wyatt

Dominique and friends leading the lambs.

May, 2011

Admittedly, and I must be truthful here, I thought that moving the lambs down from the barn where they were born in March to the lower paddocks where they will graze for the Summer would be easier than it was. 

The first failure came when they balked at the grass over their heads in the field ahead of them-of course, I thought of forgiving the lambs: they can't see where they go or really where we want them to go. I took the tractor with a 5 foot rotary cutter mounted behind on its 3 point hitch and cut them a ten foot swath, back and forth, in order that they could to see the path before them.

This didn't work. The lambs came to the path I'd cut and stopped again, then turned away from Dominique who was leading them shaking a pail of oats (a good way to get sheep to follow) and ran head long into Poem who with me was bringing up the rear.  The 250 lambs over ran us; Poem could do nothing to stop them, so I called her to my side and perplexedly asked Dominique, "How did we move these guys down last year?"

"I think we had some older ewes with them," she said.  But we had no older ewes up at the lambing barn; we'd moved them down to pasture a week earlier when we weaned them. What to do?  

Dominique said, "I can bring up 416-she's a leader-and a couple of other ewes, my 'friends', and they can lead the lambs down as they follow the pail of oats I'll shake for them."  So down the hill we went to bring back up the hill some of Dominique's 'friends'.

She masterfully cut some of her 'friends' out of the ewe flock: 416, her daughter, 123 aka Hot Cross Bun and another ewe from the 200+ ewes and marched them back up the hill (following the pail) and mixed the older ewes with the lambs and we were ready to try it again: shaking her pail of oats Dominique lead, 416 and the other ewes followed and were followed by the lambs with Poem and I bringing up the rear 50 yards back.  When Dominique got to place the lambs had balked she raised a thumb in the air meaning they didn't stop this time.

Truthfully, I'd always let Dominique have her 'friends', not that I'd paid them much mind, but helping us as they did, moving the lambs down the hill, they became my friends too.