The Sheep Calendar

We have two barns on our farm which we have creatively named the white barn and the red barn. The rams live in the red barn and the ewes live in the white barn. Today we shook things up and moved the maiden ewe lambs to the red barn and moved one of the rams to the white barn for breeding with the adult ewes.

The ewe lambs are in one stall and the remaining ram is in another stall with a vacant stall in between them. The ram who was left by himself went a little nuts and climbed over the partition into the vacant stall. I had to add a cattle panel and another 2x4 to raise the height by about 18 inches. I went out later in the evening to get a tool out of the barn and all was quiet back there. He either calmed down or went into a hormone-induced coma (hypotestemia?)

The other ram went a little nuts, too. It makes it a little tough on the ewes when there are only five of them with one ram. They would get a little more peace if the ram had about 30 or 40 ewes to keep track of. He constantly checks to see if they've come into heat by smelling their urine stream and laying his head on their rump to see if they'll stand still for him. Things will calm down a little bit after everyone settles into a pattern. The ram will leave the ewe flock around the last day of the year, which brings us to the title of this post.

Most reference books written about raising sheep include some sort of the calendar which describes a year in the life of a shepherd. Oftentimes, it seems that these calendars begin a new year at this time when breeding begins. Some might think it appropriate for the new year to begin when the lambs are born. Neither of these seem right to me. On our farm the shepherd's year follows the western calendar perfectly. Right now feels like the beginning of the end of the year to me. The last major task of the lifecycle on our farm has been put into motion and will be complete when the rams are back together in their bachelor pen and the ewes are reunited. Then we will quietly slip into the new year and all will be right with the world.