We all like sheep have gone astray

The hut was dimly but warmly lit and covered in straw. It was getting cooler, the evening light was disappearing. The ewe lay facing away from me, panting, with its hind legs streaked with blood. Its first lamb lay by its head, asleep. Behind the ewe crouched one of the community members, arm deep within it, struggling to gain a grip on the as-yet-unborn lamb which had its legs twisted round, making its safe entry into the wider world unlikely without external assistance. I was witnessing my first lambing.

At last the legs were located and drawn around, and with a little tug the lamb slipped out legs first. It lay there comatose, bloody and glistening. Its nostrils were cleared but it wasn’t breathing. Lifted up by its back legs, a few thwacks to its body helped to dislodge blockages within its lungs, and after a mouth-to-mouth puff of air, its breathing was kick-started. Propped up on its legs, it just flopped back to the ground. But the danger was over, it would gain strength in time. It was placed with its sibling, while her mother got up, stepped over them and nonchalantly chewed on some hay from a feeder. She was waiting for us to leave before she tended to her newborns. She also had a third to give birth to in a little while, hopefully in a less dramatic way and without human interference. We left her to it.

Out of the five Lleyn (usually pronounced “Clin”) shearlings living here, only one has yet to give birth. The lamb I saw being born was the eighth so far, including one very cute black one (all the rest are white). For some reason sheep tend to have twins or triplets, so we end up with a whole set of new ones. It is an absolutely cliche of a pastoral idyll to go up to the back field at 6am under a beautiful big morning sky to bring the Jersey cows down for milking, and to spend a few minutes just watching the lambs fooling around nearby on their tiny legs, never straying too far from their mothers. 

Of course the reality is that their ultimate destination is the dinner table and this fact is not easy to forget at Pilsdon; we recently received some of our pigs and cows back from the slaughterhouse for butchering. It saves a lot of money to do this ourselves; sometimes the animal has been partially butchered (into quarters, say, and with the yucky bits removed) and we finish it off, parceling up the results and popping them in the freezers. Personally I’ve not had the chance yet to get involved in the meat-hacking but no doubt will be called upon at some point to sharpen my knife and separate the rump from the silverside. Meanwhile I’ll do my best not to remember their fate as the young sheep and calves innocently gambol around the pasture under the spring sun.